Forms & empty states

A product's signup form and empty state screen can make or break its user engagement.

Form writing for user onboarding

Challenge

Clixflow is a fictional WYSIWYG website builder that uses drag and drop technology to allow users to create websites with no code required.

Right after signing up, the user is guided through a quick form that will customize their experience based on their experience level, what their goals are, and what type of site they want to build.

Approach

The first step was to imagine all the types of users this product might be dealing with and build out a flow that intelligently separated the experience. We could be speaking with a user who has zero experience building websites or one that does it daily for their clients.

Fun fact: 

I almost always start with pen and paper. It helps me organize my thoughts before translating them to the computer.

Solution

The end result divides the user path between two tracks, in the end offering a highly customized and curated experience that is meant to empower the inexperienced user while collecting some useful data for the marketing team.

 

Empty State

Challenge

After a user is guided through the setup form that establishes a baseline for suggested templates and features, they must create their first project before having access to template and feature options.

We need users to successfully create a new project thereby increasing KPI.

Approach

I want to inspire the user to keep going by delivering them an inspirational quote. The risk at this stage of dropoff is so great that encouragement and positive reinforcement can go a long way to encouraging the user to follow their dreams.

Reassuring them that we're utilizing the data they already input during the setup process instills a small amount of fear-based motivation as well so that none of their effort put in so far will be wasted.

Solution

The result is an empty state screen that encourages the user to leverage their effort to conjure up a new project with their suggested template options while leaving them an opportunity to start from scratch with a blank slate.

As stated in the copy docs, I'd ideally like to iterate on this to see if presenting a quote increases or decreases user engagement. I'm worried I might be in danger of presenting a design with too many words on the page that will overwhelm the user.