BaseKit Onboarding
Designing an onboarding flow for the BaseKit website builder.
Overview
Basekit is a white-label website builder, e-commerce, and booking software used by millions of small businesses in over 40 countries. The previous onboarding flow had an outdated user interface and experienced low user retention rates.
The goal of this project was to design a new onboarding flow that prioritizes the user experience, with the aim of improving the onboarding retention rate.
My Role
Lead Product Designer | BaseKit
User Researcher, UX Design, Interaction & Visual Design, Prototyping & Testing
Project Outcome
This new onboarding flow was showcased to our partners at CloudFest in Germany, where it was well-received, added to the roadmap, and released in 2024, being widely considered a success. As a result of this project, our onboarding completion went from 82% to 93.9%.
The Challenge
By the end of onboarding, we are losing 17% of our potential users.
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Out of 100 customers, only 82 completed the setup.
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10% of our customers drop off when choosing a website template.
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Loosing 17% of our total customers represents a minimum of approximately £269K in lost revenue annually.
Website Category Selection
100%
Onboarding Funnel
Website Name Input
98.7%
Theme Selection
96.3%
Template Selection
84.7%
Visit Website Editor
82.1%
Who's It For?
End Users
New users of the product are there to set up a website after purchasing a domain. Research indicates that most users on the platform are non-technical and lack previous experience with website builders.
BaseKit Partners
Partners want lower onboarding dropoff rates, with an updated UI that fosters a positive brand affiliation through increased confidence and competence.
Design Process
We utilized the User Centered Design process to assess user reactions to the existing onboarding flow. Guided by user research, we brainstormed and designed various solutions, which we then tested through usability tests. Our findings led to the development of a high-fidelity interactive prototype.
Research
Synthesis
Evaluation
Research
Ideate &
Design
Final Design
Competitive Analysis
To start the research process, we analysed the onboarding flows of 25 competitors in the website builder industry. These included some of the larger website builders such as Wix and Squarespace, as well as our direct white-label competitors such as Duda.
We learned that
01
02
03
Successful site builders stand out in a competitive market by offering high-quality content sets for their templates, complemented by striking professional photography.
Numerous site builders are adding AI to their onboarding experiences; however, much of it appears to be superficial and has minimal effect on the end result. It appears to be simply enhancing the overall premium perception of their products.
The market is shifting from longer onboarding processes aimed at creating more customised sites to shorter, more inspiring flows that enable users to start building websites quickly.
Event Data Analysis
To assist us with this project, we integrated event tracking into our current onboarding process, enabling us to collect crucial data for informed decision-making. Upon analyzing the data, we uncovered several significant insights:
Business Category Usage
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50% of users will choose 1 of just 20 business categories
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20% of business category searches don't yield a match.
Site Customisation Usage
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Only 33% of users entered a business name.
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31% of users went backwards in the flow to change their selected theme.
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The template selection screen has the highest drop-off rate of 10%
Usability Interviews
We conducted useability interviews of the existing onboarding flow to gather qualitative data about how we could improve the onboarding flow. In total, we conducted interviews with 12 applicants.
What our users are feeling
a. Users were often unable to discover
the skip button for each page.
Do I have to select a theme? At this point, I have not yet decided. I would much rather start adding products to my website and decide this later.
- A user that ran a business selling crystals
b. Users were unsure what impact selecting a business category would have.
It's asking me what type of website I want, but 'yoga website' is not here. I don't really know why this matters.
- A user that ran a yoga class at their local village hall.
Design Requirements
We analyzed our collected data to establish the design requirements for our new flow. This approach allowed us to consistently refer back to our findings, ensuring they guided our decisions throughout the ideation process.
01
Inspire the user
Our competitor analysis highlighted this clearly. We want users to complete our onboarding process and engage with our product. One of the best ways to retain them is by keeping them engaged and inspired with great content.
02
Actions have consequences
Usability studies revealed that users wanted immediate feedback regarding the impact of their choices on their websites. Therefore it is essential to demonstrate this feedback during onboarding.
03
Make it short
Our updated flow should be shorter and less burdensome for our users compared to the current flow. The current flow has too many steps, and we want to keep it concise to sustain user engagement.
04
Move forwards, not backwards
We want to keep the option for users to go back a step in the process, but our goal is to minimize the need for them to do so. Currently, several actions that directly affect one another are spread across multiple screens, which leads to users frequently navigating back and forth to achieve their intended outcomes.
05
User's should not have to onboard
Many users are either skipping or attempting to skip the onboarding process. If users wish to do this, we should make it as easy as possible for them. Currently, the skip buttons are not easily discoverable, and there is no option for users to skip the entire onboarding flow.
06
Make Business Categories easy.
We found that most of our users utilize the same 20 business categories. We should prioritize these categories and make it extremely easy for users to select them quickly.
Review the flow
Based on our research and design requirements, we refined the onboarding flow to make it more concise and user-friendly, with the option to skip steps. We eliminated the name input screen since only 33% of users provided a business name. Additionally, we combined the theme and template selection into a single screen. This change allows users to immediately see how their chosen theme affects the website template.
From
...To
Wireframe's & Lo-fi Prototypes
We brainstormed the possible user experience for the new onboarding flow using quick, low-fidelity drawings. We created 3 prototype versions, discussed them, and decided to run another usability test on the prototypes.
User Testing
We conducted usability tests on the new concept flows with six users, testing two users for each flow. We chose this approach to prevent any user from applying knowledge gained from their experience with the first flow to their test of the second flow.
Our goals for the test
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Test the useability of the new flow.
Understand if users understood the decisions we were asking them to make, and what impact it would have on their site.
Test the effectiveness of the new component suggesting popular business types to the user.
Key Findings
a. Users responded positively to the new category selection component.
This is super handy! The pills make it easy to pick a category quickly, and they also give me ideas for what I can search for—love that!
b. Combining the template and theme selection helped to inspire the user with minimal friction.
Really cool how I can pick a template and instantly see how different themes change the vibe of my site. Makes it so much easier to decide!
Moving to a Hi-Fi Prototype
I used findings from our prototype usability tests to create a high-fidelity Figma prototype based on most well-received elements from each prototype.
Feature Highlights
Popular Category Pills
These pills serve a dual purpose. For 50% of users who typically interact with only one of these categories, the pills provide quick access and reduces the need for additional clicks or searches. For the other 50%, they act as prompts, offering inspiration and guiding users toward relevant terms they can explore in the search box.
Content Set Showcase
Our initial user testing revealed that users struggled to understand how selecting a business category would influence their final website. To address this, we introduced a selection of content sets tailored to each category. These not only clarified the impact of the user’s choice but also provided higher-quality, inspirational content to guide and motivate them during the onboarding process.
Merged Template & Theme
Event tracking data revealed that users in the previous onboarding flow often navigated back and forth between theme and template selection. We combined these steps by allowing users to select a theme and immediately preview how it would look with templates—all within a single screen. This approach made it easier for users to visualize their choices and streamlined the decision-making process.
Theatre Elements
We used micro-interactions and animations to elevate the overall user experience, creating a more premium feel. At the end of the flow, we replaced the basic loading spinner with an animation and progress bar, complemented by text feedback. This enhancement transformed the waiting time into an exciting journey, building anticipation and reinforcing the excitement of seeing their completed site.
Mobile Responsive Designs
A key aspect of the original onboarding flow that we retained was the ability to design websites seamlessly on mobile devices. To honour this tradition, every design was crafted to be fully responsive, ensuring an equally intuitive and high-quality experience for users on mobile, without compromising functionality or ease of use.
Project Impact
93.9%
^11.9%
Onboarding Completion Rate
£170K
Approximate Additional Revenue
What's Next?
Although we did not observe an improvement in the user experience with the integration of AI into the onboarding process of other site builders, we did underestimate the marketing value that the inclusion of AI would bring. We are currently designing an additional AI version of this process for partners who are interested, with the goal of delivering it as part of the 2025 roadmap.
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