“We found webuild in the early days of spinning up our product growth org. They think outside the box, are adaptable & responsive and, above-all, are great people to work with. Not only is their design top-notch, they’ve also enabled our engineering teams to move quickly.”
Sep Norouzi
Product Lead
You’ve likely seen their billboards on your morning commute. The “one app to replace them all,” ClickUp is a fast-growing company in the very competitive productivity landscape, alongside tools like Asana, Trello, Monday, or ToDoist. They recently raised a $400M Series C because they aren't just another project management tool.
Productivity SaaS
series C
$537.5M raised
founded 2017
“You can plan, track, and collaborate on any project build the perfect workflow for you and your team, create marketing campaigns, manage development sprints, and more all in one platform!”–ClickUp
Whether you’re a startup, agency, freelance creative, or even a parent trying to manage your kid’s schedules, ClickUp’s many features like views, tasks, assignments, docs, chat, and integrations are all at your fingertips. Users enjoy an array of customizations including personalized dashboards, fields for displaying relevant data, sorting, and filter options.
“You can plan, track, and collaborate on any project, build the perfect workflow for you and your team, create marketing campaigns, manage development sprints, and more all in one platform!”
ClickUp cuts through the competition with powerful features and integrations for virtually every situation and every team. They’re known for customer-obsessed, product-led growth. We’re known for killer designs grounded in both. It was a great match.
10%
Conversions
12.5%
Activation
7.5%
Invites
Problem
When ClickUp came to us, they needed a design partner dedicated to Product Growth Hacking. Just like us, ClickUp never leaves an opportunity on the table. They knew there was potential to increase both their user base and their user growth through design and education. They trusted webuild to lead them in finding out. We were tasked with gaining ClickUp:
- more account upgrades
- improved activation and usage of ClickUp beyond the onboarding stage
- greater user retention
- increased organic growth through user-to-user invitations and referrals
Solution
We assessed the product as a whole by running numerous growth experiments that ultimately led us to create an experimentation engine within ClickUp. This allowed us to rapidly test, learn, and iterate new designs to see what drove the most meaningful results. We also analyzed their existing metrics to have visibility on quantitative data to benchmark our success. With those insights, we developed a three-pronged approach, focusing on different stages of the user journey: acquisition, retention, and expansion.
We designed a growth checklist that simplified the educational curve for new users by educating them on key actions most relevant to their ClickUp experience.
Acquisition through simplification
Our research showed a major growth opportunity - potential new customers needed simplicity, and weren’t getting it.
It was clear that users were having trouble quickly identifying what an initial exposure point into Clickup, whether a doc share, task tag, or invite email was about and what they were being asked to accomplish. Not a great first impression from a productivity app.
We turned things around, utilizing our UX skills to create entry points that made sense for all possible entrances.
For emails, we built a simplified email experience, using our UI chops to make that clean and accessible, and employing our copywriters to make it pop. We created all potential invitation flows, including a plain invitation email, task-related emails that drove users (through @ mentions) back to the app to take action or comment directly via email, and follow-up emails that tailored invitations and reminders to sign up for ClickUp.
Those designs were great, but they weren’t going to be the end of the users’ onboarding journey, or ours. We created flows and designs for when the invite needed to be nudged, and when it was successful (AKA a user joined ClickUp), supporting the initial inviter on a timed schedule to add them to a task, get them involved, and be the force behind their onboarding. That meant a more human, personal, and effective acquisition - just through a few emails.
A few designs from our comprehensive email overhaul that distilled important notifications and information directly in the user’s inbox.
To account for all possible triggers for sending an email, we diagrammed ClickUp’s notification experience.
Retention: Keeping users coming back
Keeping users engaged with your product is always a challenge, no matter your landscape. The very differentiator that makes ClickUp the unicorn it is (a project management app that does it all) unfortunately also makes the product susceptible to user drop-off. The sheer volume of features was overwhelming users. Our next order of business was ensuring users onboarded effectively and stuck around. We solved this by approaching things from a few directions:
- Simplified the onboarding experience, making it frictionless and seamless. We tested out different patterns for how best to onboard users into the app and applied our findings to new flows. We learned that users were much more likely to finish signing up if they had an indicator for how long the process would take, so we added a subtle progress bar that helped the user track just that. We added “Space Creation” to onboarding so that users would have a place to land in after signup. The creation process asks users to choose from a set of templates and claim what they’re using the space for, which gives ClickUp valuable information into their user base. Minor details, big impact.
- Strategically added clear CTAs. A “Give Feedback” button beckons users to get in touch with ClickUp if frustrated or stuck. We also added links to download the desktop app, for a better experience earlier in their journey.
- Came up with ways to educate users, even after onboarding. This includes a new user experience exploration, with a guided step-by-step tour showing users what to do next. In addition, growth checklists give users tangible tasks to complete so they feel empowered to continue using the product.
- Iterated on all of the above after user feedback and testing, to create a constantly better experience.
Collecting information on tools that would allow ClickUp to better understand their users.
By obtaining this information, ClickUp could create a tailored onboarding state for their dashboard.
Expansion is the name of the game
To ensure our client was benefitting from the value they were giving their users, we also spent time focusing on payment. We designed higher-conversion upgrade CTAs, a streamlined checkout experience to encourage more users all the way to the finish line of sales, and overhauled ClickUp’s paywalls and pricing designs.
ClickUp’s many paywalls and inconsistent designs were transformed into 3 main paywall types with a streamlined design across the set, so users would always recognize a paywall when it hit them. After doing diligent research into competitors and auditing current designs we identified a core pain point. Pricing page experiences were disorganized, difficult for users to quickly read and scan - and the features on different plans were unclear. Users simply couldn’t see what great opportunities lie in front of them. We improved pricing tables, page designs, CRO, social proof, and more by focusing on alignment, organization, and accessibility for the user.
Before we redesigned them, ClickUp’s paywalls were inconsistent and disorganized.
Transforming the paywall experience. After conducting an audit on all paywalls across the product, we identified the most active paywalls and overhauled the UX/UI to improve conversions.
And that’s not all!
While our priority was growth marketing, we also improved the existing app by updating and simplifying empty state notifications to benefit user experience. Pulling from ClickUp’s colorful palette, we also spent time adding verified profile badge designs to their brand package. For a client as big and swift moving as this one, the beauty - and the real ROI for Growth Hacking - lay in details like these.
Patience is a virtue
Work is currently being pushed into production, so only time will tell how our designs perform, but early metrics from A/B testing and user data indicate great success. We can’t wait to continue helping Clickup. Given our holistic and effective approach, maybe we can even call ourselves the one agency that replaces them all?
Want to see how design, user testing, and research can lead to greater growth for you too? Contact us today!
Our work's results so far
01
Created an experimentation engine to rapidly test, learn, and iterate new designs
02
Simplified & personalized email experience which boosted onboarding & retention
03
Maintained & updated ClickUp’s design system to ensure global product consistency
04
Added progress indicators and space creation to make user onboarding more successful
05
Strategically designed customer service CTAs and app links to boost user comfortability
06
Increased conversions 5-10%, activation rate 5-15%, and invites 5-10%
