Onboarding & activation redesign
Going (formerly Scott's Cheap Flights) helps people find cheap flights through a subscription-based travel deals service. In 2021, users signed up excited to score deals, but many dropped off before starting a trial. The problem wasn’t the product or the price. It was timing. People were being asked to choose a plan before they understood how deals worked or when they’d see value.
As the Lead Product Designer, I led a top-of-funnel onboarding and activation experiment to remove this bottleneck and help users experience value sooner, with the goal of increasing trial conversions by 5%.
My Role
I owned the work end to end, from diagnosing the UX problem to designing and experimentation across onboarding, plan selection, and value framing, partnering closely with Product, Brand, Growth, and Lifecycle teams. Beyond the immediate redesign, I helped establish a repeatable experimentation framework so activation improvements could compound over time.
I combined behavioral funnel analysis, customer support data, and analytics patterns to identify where activation broke down and why. One insight quickly stood out: airport setup was the hidden engine of value comprehension.
The Growth Problem
Despite high signup intent, onboarding leaked at the exact moment users were asked to commit:
- ~20% drop-off at plan selection
- Trial activation stuck at ~10–12%
- Users unsure how deals worked, when they’d see value, or how airport choice mattered
- Churned users routinely checked the Deals Feed before canceling, a last-minute search for proof
In short: commitment came before comprehension.
What We Built
We redesigned onboarding to shift it from a decision gate into a value moment.
The new flow made it clearer how the product worked, helped people choose airports more thoughtfully, and explained what would happen next. Instead of telling people why the product was useful, we focused on helping them experience it sooner.
Just as importantly, the system was designed to be testable and extensible, supporting future growth and personalization experiments.
Results
Nearly everyone completed plan selection (~97%), removing the biggest bottleneck in the flow. Trial starts increased by 32%, driven by higher onboarding completion. Trial start rates themselves stayed about the same, which revealed the next opportunity wasn’t usability — it was timing.
Just as importantly, the project aligned Product, Growth, and Lifecycle teams around a shared understanding of what helps people feel confident enough to continue.
Why This Work Matters
This project reinforced a simple idea I bring to growth work:
Making things easier helps people move forward.
Helping them understand the value helps them stay.
By shifting onboarding from a commitment moment to a value moment, we laid the groundwork for better personalization, clearer expectations, and more sustainable growth at Going.
Too short; want more?
I would be happy to share my portfolio deck.
Email: galindo.designer@gmail.com