Getting FreshBooks customers to try a radical change

A Little Context

FreshBooks is cloud accounting software that helps small businesses track their time and expenses and bill clients quickly and easily, so they can focus on what they love doing. It’s been used by over 10 million people.

FreshBooks started in 2003, but by 2015 (when I joined the company as Principal UX Designer), it was preparing to launch its new platform, designed and built from the ground up. The creation of that new platform is a fun story on its own, and involved creating a "competitor" to disrupt ourselves; read more in this Forbes profile.

 

The Problem

We needed our customers to embrace change. But people hate change, right?

The new FreshBooks had better UX, but fewer features. So how might we persuade our customers to try our new platform when it wasn’t an obvious upgrade?

We wanted them not only to try the new platform; we wanted them to have an extraordinary experience, in keeping with the company’s motto: “Executing extraordinary experiences every day.” But if the ordinary experience of software change is somewhere south of bad, then what’s an extraordinary platform migration experience?

 

The Approach

I led the design effort for this migration project, working closely with a great team that included a director of product, two designers, and a few product owners.

Research

We needed to learn how FreshBooks customers would react to the news that a completely new platform, designed and developed in secret, was almost ready for them. What would they need to know to feel comfortable with that news?

So, we called a bunch of customers and asked them.

The key takeaways:

  • They needed to know what was new, what changed, and how much it cost—they assumed we would raise the price;
  • They really hoped we added a feature or fixed a bug that was on their wish list;
  • Unanimously, they weren’t interested in seeing a sandbox version of the new platform—they needed to see their own data in it to assess it; and
  • They didn’t hate change so much as they hated surprise changes. They hated it when apps were “redesigned” (which could include a completely rebuilt platform—a meaningless term to customers) and the change felt arbitrary and forced upon them. They liked changes that allowed them to decide whether and when to switch, and to go back if they didn’t like the new app.

To summarize, customers wanted to feel:

  • consulted,
  • respected,
  • supported, and
  • in control.

Don’t we all?

The Concierge MVP

Next, we piloted the migration with a few hardy pioneers: a handful of FreshBooks customers who were willing to try the new platform. The key was that we hadn’t yet designed or built a migration experience—so we faked it.

The “concierge MVP” concept comes from Eric Ries’ book “The Lean Startup”; the idea is that it’s easy and cheap to validate a product idea if a person stands in for that product—your “concierge.”

So, we stood in for our migration experience, and manually flipped a switch that abruptly moved our customers to the new platform. Then we observed them closely for a couple of weeks, interviewing them about what they were thinking and feeling.

We created a PDF care package for participants in our beta program, to help them understand what we were asking of them, and how to reach us if they needed help or had questions.

Based on our observations, I led the team in the development of four personas, and settled our efforts on satisfying one primary persona: Monica, who was a good fit for the new platform, but hesitant about moving.

Three of our personas, including our primary persona, Monica. (Not pictured, Nick, who was a bad fit for the migration.) We saw them as astronauts because it was 1) fun, and 2) we saw ourselves as taking customers on a rocket ride to our new platform--our research participants were hardy pioneers, and it was our mission to land our customers safely.

I also created a handful of design principles to keep us focused, steer us in the right direction, and break ties:

Personalize when possible

Avoid a generic experience when possible. Use what we know about our customers to help them feel more comfortable with, and excited about, the new FreshBooks.

Inspire them to move

We're not just telling them about the new FreshBooks; we're making them eager to make the move when they're ready.

Help them feel at home

Once they've moved, we help them settle in so they can save time and feel they made the right move.

Put them at the controls

Most migrations feel forced and lousy. Help customers feel in control of the entire process, so that they can feel confident in and happy with their decisions.

Key takeaways from the research phase:

  • It's essential to learn about and answer your users’ questions and concerns about radical changes to their experience with a product.
  • Users expected the new platform to have feature parity with the old platform, even if they weren’t using all of those features.

This journey map illustrates how our primary persona, Monica, might move through different points of her journey from a FreshBooks Classic user who discovers the new FreshBooks through considering a change, trying it, and either staying or leaving the new platform.

Lean UX

Our strategy was based on tackling different parts of the user’s journey: discovering that there was a new FreshBooks, considering the move, trying it, and either staying or leaving.

Over several months, we iterated on experiences in each stage using a Lean UX process. I led team design charrettes in which we ideated on solutions to customer problems—for example, “How might we onboard users to the new FreshBooks so that they see the value of the new platform?”—and validated our designs with customers every week.

As the design leader and manager for our group, a key part of my role was introducing best practices in usability testing, like applying success criteria to our usability tests.

 

Results

While I can’t get into the numbers, we set some big targets for getting users to migrate and, so far, we’re hitting those numbers and getting good feedback from customers on the migration experience. (A common customer complaint is that they couldn’t make the move sooner!)

Illustrator Jesse Read and designer Aaron Wright put together a "landing page" for customers who complete the migration. The purpose of this screen was to reassure users that their data had successfully moved to the new platform, and to give them a positive note on which to begin their first experience on the new FreshBooks. We switched from a "rocket ride" metaphor to that of moving to a new city--a little less alien, a little more welcoming!

 

Lessons Learned

If you’re considering designing an experience that entails a radical change for users, consider the following:

  • Talk to your users about change. Find out what their common questions and concerns are, and be open about addressing them.
  • Pilot the change, learn how customers react to it, and iterate.
  • Design an experience that makes users feel consulted, supported, respected, and in control.