Rethinking Onboarding for a Fintech App

Background

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The product team observed a sharp drop-off during account setup but lacked a clear picture of why users abandoned the flow. I was brought in to investigate and to translate findings into actionable design changes.

Research questions

• Where in onboarding do new users hesitate or drop off, and why?
• Which steps feel unnecessary or untrustworthy to first-time users?
• What would give users enough confidence to complete setup?

Approach

I ran a mixed-methods study over six weeks:

1. 8 moderated usability tests on the existing flow to observe friction in real time.
2. 12 semi-structured interviews to understand motivations and mental models around financial account setup.
3. A survey (n = 340) to quantify how widespread the qualitative themes were.

I synthesized findings in Dovetail and built a journey map to align the team around the moments that mattered.

Key findings

• Trust collapses at the identity-verification step. Users didn’t understand why sensitive information was required and feared a scam.
• Perceived length, not actual length, drove abandonment. With no progress indicator, users assumed the flow was longer than it was.
• Error messages blamed the user rather than explaining how to recover.

Impact

The redesigned flow introduced a progress indicator, plain-language explanations before sensitive steps, and recovery-oriented error states. In the following quarter, activation rose 18% and support tickets related to onboarding fell by a third.

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What I’d do differently

I’d instrument the flow with analytics earlier to pair behavioral data with the qualitative signal from day one, tightening the loop between insight and measurement.