Problem

Anonymous users were using our app to create projects without registering for a free account, and our data showed that slightly over 50% of projects were created anonymously. We were losing an opportunity to identify project data to users and also increase our monthly acquisition rate.

We hypothesized that if we made a slight change to the user flow, we would be able to effect both issues. Currently, users were not being asked to sign up for an account until they were in the app. What if we asked them before they began using the app?

Original User Flow

In the original flow, anonymous users were able to access our app directly from the website's main navigation. Once in the app, we provided a small link in the upper right to sign up for an account. Our Google Analytics data showed that a very small percentage (less than 5%) ended up using the sign up link once they were inside the app.

New User Flow

We decided to try asking anonymous users to sign up before using our app. We designed a new intro page that anonymous users would visit before using our app. Users that were already logged in would bypass this intro page.

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The intro page included a short 30 second overview video, and we placed the primary call-to-action button below the video.

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Results

% of Anonymous Projects by Month

After inserting the new intro page, we saw a steady decrease in the percentage of anonymous projects from slightly above 50% to about 27%.

New Visitor Conversion Rate

In addition to a decrease in the percentage of anonymous projects, we also saw an increase in our new visitor conversion rate. After implementing the new flow we saw our conversion rate increase from 3% to 5%. 1 out of every 20 new visitors to our website was signing up for an account now.

Monthly Acquisition Rate

The increase in our conversion rate also led to a marked increase in our monthly acquisition rate.