Custom Design Tool Leverages Key User Insights To Increase Registrations

Key Results

• 6-month product roadmap 
• Backlog of A/B testing opportunities to increase sign-ups
• Deepened understanding of users and segments

The Overview

After 10+ years in business, a multi-million dollar custom-print and design company was looking for new ways to support its user base of side hustlers and small businesses. They built a digital tool allowing users to concept, design, and print their own t-shirts, stickers, and more. With help from The Good, the design tool not only better serves small businesses but also encourages registration to save orders, increasing return visits and decreasing cart abandonment.

The Challenge

The design tool was easy to use, but the company struggled to encourage registration. They had great conversion rates for ordering/checkout, but registration rates were essentially on the floor because users could go directly to order without registering.

On top of that, with tons of free templates, inspiring examples, and fun/easy ways to create, the experience was so frictionless that there were essentially no gated features that would incentivize users to register.

The lack of registration data made it difficult for the company to recover abandoned carts, track user engagement, or incentivize repeat visits.

So, the primary challenge and research question was: How might we encourage users to create an account without disrupting the existing seamless experience and great order rates?

The Process

The Good worked with this Canva competitor on a Digital Experience Optimization Audit™. The end goal was to find opportunities to increase registration, encourage repeat use, and decrease cart abandonment. The Good was tasked with providing meaningful strategies to improve the registration rate—without decreasing order rates.

Starting with a full-funnel analysis of their digital experience (with special attention on their design tool and user flow), we uncovered several areas that were inhibiting sign-ups.

Data Foundations

We started with an in-depth review of their users, including demographics, behavior, and on/off-site journeys. Looking at this data in Google Analytics, we were able to identify the right user profile (age, location, gender, etc) to recruit for user testing panels.

We also found that while mobile made up a larger portion of traffic, desktop visitors bounce less often and view more pages. This gave us clear prioritization for a desktop-first approach and supported improving the design tool.

Users often landed on the site after searching for terms like “sticker design” or “t-shirt design” but weren’t given clear guidance on the value of registering or why they should use this tool versus well-known competitors.

User Testing

With our data foundations in hand, we moved on to user testing the website and the design tool. Using think-aloud protocol with a cohort of desktop users, our goal was to understand how real potential customers see the website and the tool.

We asked them to give us their initial impressions and think aloud as they performed a series of tasks and answered a series of questions on the site while using the tool.

Because we had the quantitative measures from our DXO Data Foundations (like exit pages and bounce rates), the user testing supplemented the information with a qualitative layer and exposed micro-frustrations that impact the user journey. For example:

• Testers expressed frustration when they were asked to sign up before designing, unable to see the value of creating an account.
• The cohort was unclear about where to take action in the design tool, for example, how to save their design.

We also leveraged click, scroll, and movement maps and session recordings to understand the site experience from beginning to end, including tool interactions. We identified a variety of user insights that could inform opportunities, including:

• Movement maps show users miss opportunities for registration with the number of items on the homepage.
• Session recordings showed users who clicked “complete signup” often do so when trying to save a new project. Giving users a free sample of the design tool encourages them to create a free account. However, users are not encouraged to sign up when downloading a design, which lessens the likelihood of making an account.

Our research process and in-depth analysis uncovered a variety of user insights to inform a roadmap of improvements to increase registration.

Armed with information, we synthesized the opportunities to come up with a clear answer to the question: How might we encourage users to create an account without disrupting the existing seamless experience?

The Solution

We recommended strategic feature-gating throughout the digital journey to address these challenges and specific website/tool changes to encourage registrations.

The solutions came in a succinct, prioritized strategic roadmap that delivered optimization opportunities based on the site area and their potential impact on registrations.

Each recommendation came with competitive examples to support and help visualize what that change might look like in action. Some of the recommended solutions included:

• Improve CTA Language: Instead of “Sign-in” or “sign-up,” we proposed switching to more benefit-focused CTAs, such as “Save Your Design” or “Unlock Premium Features,” helping to clarify what users gain from registering.
• Feature Gating: We suggested gating key functionalities behind a registration wall, such as downloading designs, accessing premium templates, or using advanced features like brand books for easy customization.
• Onboarding Experience: To better guide new users, we recommended adding a brief onboarding flow highlighting the most valuable features and encouraging early account creation for a more personalized experience.
• Exit Intent Pop-ups: We recommended adding exit-intent pop-ups offering a value-driven message (e.g., save your design before you exit) to prompt registering or completing their design.

The prioritized roadmap outlined the risk levels of each recommendation and highlighted what was safe to implement and what should be tested. For example, one riskier recommendation was placing a registration wall before accessing the design tool. Because this could affect order volume, an A/B test was the recommended methodology to assess the potential tradeoff between friction and commitment. Not only did this give clear guardrails for how to move forward, but it also helped the team build intuition for when to test and when to implement.

The Results

We were able to come in with a fresh external perspective, expertise, and a toolkit of methodologies to uncover hidden opportunities.

This client left the engagement with a clear path forward to increased registrations. When implemented, our audit’s recommendations leveraged strategically placed friction and a feature-gating strategy that improved the value exchange and clearly communicated the benefit of registering for the design tool.

How They Got There

The custom print and design company improved engagement and encouraged sign-ups with learnings from the Digital Experience Optimization Audit™. The Good’s DXO Audit™ leverages quantitative and qualitative research methods to diagnose your challenges and build a strategic roadmap and custom action plan to address them. To get your own, fill out the contact form below.