Design Discovery: An improved free trial sign-up experience for GitLab.com (SaaS) users
Closed in favor of https://gitlab.com/gitlab-org/gitlab-ce/issues/65086, which is now the implementation issue.
Problem
The GitLab.com trial sign up experience is currently 37 steps and it takes between five and eight minutes to complete.
Much of the reason behind this is because users need to interact with the customer portal in order to complete the trial sign up. Users should not have to encounter the portal to begin a free trial on GitLab.com.
Proposal
We should move all GitLab.com (SaaS) free trial functionality from the portal to GitLab.com. This includes backend functionality as we also want to make the workflow simpler with fewer points of failure for GitLab Team Members.
I've found two categories of Entry Points: The marketing site and via GitLab.com
Within the two categories, the user has several opportunities to start a trial. The starting points of this proposal go through the user flows on about.gitLab.com landing page and Group Settings page within GitLab.com.
(New User Registration using the signup form) Mural link
This new approach reduces the steps (steps as defined as user actions) needed to start a trial to:
- 20 for a New User Registration using the signup form
- 10 for an existing user from within GitLab.com
This is a significant reduction in user-initiated steps and almost halves the original 37 steps required previously.
The designs
This is a high-level view of the process and covers that of the two main entry point categories.
This Prototype will take you on a deep dive into all of the steps involved in starting a new trial. It should also give you access to the individual artboards for further reference.
Key Takeaways
Current | Proposal |
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I removed the GitLab.com signup copy to help users focus in on their Trial Journey.
I have also introduced a new Signup Header Bar in our default colours (originally white) - This is to help tie the user into the feel of GitLab.com as early as possible. This Header colour scheme is a user option and it would great if for an existing user starting a trial, we use the colour of the Header Bar in the user's preference.
Removal of SSO from the Trial Process
Based on ongoing conversations, we have opted to remove the ability for SSO, specifically for users during the trial process. The main reason for this is because if a user signs up with Twitter we do not currently pull their Email Address from their account and instead force users to complete their profiles via the Edit Profile page. For a Trial sign up this creates a broken and frustrating flow. I have created another issue https://gitlab.com/gitlab-org/gitlab-ce/issues/65023 to explore what happens with all of our third-party SSO options.
Free trial signup page
Current | Proposal |
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I originally proposed that we update the Trial Sign up page. Free trial signup flow improvements: Trial Page has ongoing discussions around how we could optimise this page and it would be great to include this in the scope of work.
Result
- 95% of friction for users signing up for a GitLab.com free trial is removed
- Minimise missed opportunities from trial sign up dropouts
- A significantly improved experience as a first touch point for our users with GitLab
Next steps (if any)
Discuss and refine the proposal, possibly break into smaller MVC's if needed and investigate the effort required to deliver this.
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@jameslopez can you please review with the team to understand what's required here and add a weight? -
@dennis for your visibility and input if you have any thoughts/advice -
@timnoah assigning to you to begin the UX/design work required - Please refer to @matejlatin's efforts in https://gitlab.com/gitlab-org/gitlab-ce/issues/59241, although based on our discussion this morning, I anticipate the designs for this to be much simpler. -
@lyle are there other concerns outside of the admin setting I mentioned that might be blockers for this? -
@tipyn to investigate success metrics
The sooner we can get started on this the better as this trial sign up experience needs to be fixed for %12.2 as a high priority. We need to make sure this doesn't slip.