Redesigning the Onboarding Experience for Trustloop
UX DESIGN | RESEARCH | PROTOTYPING
TrustLoop helps businesses turn customer feedback into social proof, amplifying reviews to boost credibility and drive growth. Sounds great, right? Except we had one small problem: not enough people were signing up.
Product Designer
Product Manager, Engineer, Designer
Challenge
Trustloop lacked a central entry point to showcase its value to the users through its core features. This project introduces Trustloop's new onboarding experience designed to clarify its offerings - Trustrating while surfacing actionable insights and simplifying user navigation. The goal was to enhance user comprehension, drive engagement and create a seamless starting point for both new and returning users.
How might we design an onboarding experience that fosters user trust and reduces drop-off rates ?
Impact
increase in activation rate
Increase in accounts created
Problem 1:
"It feels like you gave me a free headline and now you want my personal information for the full story."
The original onboarding experience suffered from a fundamental **misalignment of value delivery and user commitment**, creating significant friction and a poor user experience. Firstly, the flow initiated with a **premature value exchange**, granting the user their "TrustRating" upfront without requiring any initial commitment (like signing up). This meant the primary **Call to Action (CTA)**—the "Sign Up" prompt—was presented _after_ the user had already received the core benefit, leading to diminished motivation and high **drop-off rates**. Users had already acquired the "cookie" and saw no compelling reason to join the "cookie club." Secondly, the journey itself was **abrupt and lacked a clear user journey path**. After receiving their score, users were left with "no clear next steps," effectively placing them in a dead-end, which failed to onboard them into the product's broader ecosystem or demonstrate its deeper value proposition. This resulted in low **user engagement** and poor **retention**, as the app did not guide them towards continued interaction. Finally, the flow presented a significant **"black box" problem**; the TrustRating was displayed as an arbitrary number without adequate context, explanation of its calculation, or what it truly signified. This lack of **transparency** undermined the product's **credibility**, failed to provide **actionable insights**, and ultimately gave users no compelling reason to sign up or understand the relevance of their score.
Problem 2:
"I have to do my own research just to figure out which of these platforms even apply to me."
This stage of the user journey suffered from significant **choice overload** and a lack of **contextual relevance**. By presenting an exhaustive, unprioritized list of all available review platforms, the interface created a high **cognitive load**, overwhelming users and forcing them into decision paralysis. The absence of **user segmentation** resulted in a generic, "one-size-fits-all" experience that failed to provide personalized and relevant options, eroding user trust. Furthermore, the design offered no **decision support** or contextual guidance to help users make informed choices, which degraded the quality of their inputs and undermined the accuracy of their final TrustRating.
Problem 3:
"I got stuck trying to connect my accounts and the system gave me no clue what I was doing wrong"
The experience was fundamentally broken by a lack of a **structured onboarding flow**, leading to a disjointed and inefficient user journey. The process created unnecessary friction from the start with **inconsistent input methods** (location vs. URL) and **inadequate error handling** to guide users. This confusion was amplified by the absence of clear guidance or **progressive steps**, leaving users uncertain of what to do next. This disjointed journey culminated at the critical conversion screen, which suffered from a **vague value proposition** and a **lack of actionability**. The combination of inconsistent inputs, poor guidance, and a weak, unactionable CTA created high **cognitive load**, causing the entire onboarding experience to feel confusing and inefficient.
Goals
Clarify the Value Proposition of the TrustRating
Re-architect the user journey to clearly demonstrate the product's long-term value upfront and transform the TrustRating into an actionable starting point for improvement.
Enhance Platform Relevance and Reduce Cognitive Load
Implement an industry-selection step early in the flow to provide users with a personalized, relevant set of choices, drastically reducing cognitive load and decision fatigue.
Streamline the Onboarding Flow and Improve User Guidance
Design a seamless, multi-step onboarding flow that provides clear progress indicators and consistent interactions, guiding users confidently from initial sign-up to their first key action.
Establish a Standardised and User-Friendly Design System
Establish a cohesive design system to ensure visual and interactive consistency across the product, enhancing usability and creating a scalable foundation for future updates.
To solve the confusing and disjointed sign-up process, I designed a structured, multi-step onboarding flow. The new experience uses a clear progress bar to manage user expectations and logically groups information requests into three distinct steps: personal details, email confirmation, and company information. This guided approach eliminates uncertainty, builds momentum, and ensures users are properly verified, creating a seamless and trustworthy foundation for their journey with TrustLoop.
The original design overwhelmed users with a long, one-size-fits-all list of review platforms. To fix this, the new flow first asks users to identify their industry. Based on their selection, TrustLoop now presents a curated and relevant list of platforms to choose from. This smart simplification reduces cognitive load, prevents decision fatigue, and increases user confidence that TrustLoop understands their specific business needs.
The redesigned dashboard transforms the score into an actionable starting point. It not only displays the rating clearly but also immediately presents three distinct, icon-driven areas for improvement: addressing outdated reviews, managing negative feedback, and increasing engagement. This empowers users by instantly showing them _how_ to improve, turning the TrustRating into a strategic tool rather than just a number.
20%
Increase in accounts created
45%
Increase in account activation rates
20%
Increase in accounts created
