TLDR: WATCH THE VIDEO (click above)
We’ve all used Loom. I used it to record this teardown—of Loom. 🤔 So obviously they are doing something right. But are they also nailing user onboarding and upgrade flows? Let’s find out.
3 things you’ll learn from watching this:
Why viral marketing exposure lets Loom get away with taking you straight to account creation in their onboarding flow
Which order to put your drop-down menus in to get accurate data
What Loom’s key behavior is and how they get you to do it
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If I’m talking a little faster than usual in this teardown, it’s because Loom only gives me 5 minutes.
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👂 Transcript:
This is super meta. We're about to record a teardown of Loom using... Loom! So I've already signed up once, but I'm going to sign up again. So this is Loom. Now the number one observation on this homepage is that the button is really big, and that's good. So basically, if you think about directing the user to what you want them to do, they're making it very clear that that's the button to click.
So let's click it. Okay. So they're throwing me right to a signup page. I would say that normally I'd be worried about this. You basically are messaging somebody on Bumble or Hinge once and saying, "Hey, do you want to go out for dinner and drinks?" It's like, "No, let's get to know each other first!"
And in fact, Twilio came out and said that they had a nice onboarding experiment where when you add questions, you normally want to reduce friction.
But when you add questions to an onboarding that makes people feel like you're getting to know them, they increased conversion. And this could be just, "Hey, look, we are going to tailor this experience to you," or "hey, look, here's a little bit more about us before you continue." And this is just dropping me right into account creation. Now, the reason I'm not worried about this is because Loom is different. The likelihood that I found out about Loom through watching a Loom means that I probably understand what Loom is.
So they have the benefit of having more viral marketing exposure, by which the mental model has already been created for me. So maybe people are already ready. They're coming to the site ready to create an account. If people were not coming to the site ready to create an account and already sold on Loom, I'd be nervous.
Okay, I already have some accounts here, obviously, but we'll try another one.
Okay, let's try it again. Interesting. We'll pause. Okay, we'll try another way to do this. We'll say "Sign up through Google."
Okay. Here we go. Here are the questions. Wonderful. "How are you planning on using Loom?" I'm planning to use it for work. "What type of work do you do?" I'm feeling seen, understood. We'll say "Product." By the way, for drop-down menus like that, the majority of the time people are picking the first one. So Loom may think that everyone's coming here from a sales perspective, but in reality we're just taking the path of least resistance, quickly answering the question. And so the best practice for these is to randomize the order. So not just sales is always in the front. Okay. "Get ready to do my first Loom."
They're basically giving me directions here. I love that. This is kind of a list. I think if we were to redo it, we may do things like error messages. So you can't use Loom unless these things are done. And it's not really a marketing thing - it's not trying to convince you to download the app. It actually just doesn't work unless you do it. I think people tend to be skeptical of marketing emails. In fact, there has been some nice research around how, if you're the government, would you get people to do things. And you can imagine some consultants came in and said "Make your marketing emails more pretty, government." And they did this. They made them have more visuals and more HTML design. And they found that decreased conversion. You're trying to sell people too much on something and people expect and had a mental model of the government that this is just about a transactional arrangement that you're trying to tell me what to do.
And so there is generally a skepticism to a marketing language and the consideration here could be, could this just be more transactional? This is literally the first thing you're doing. So I'm going to click, and I love this key behavior. Start recording, try it out. Wonder what it's going to do, because we're already recording a Loom. Oh my gosh. There's two Looms going on. There's two Looms going on! But this is really nice because it immediately says, "Start recording," and that's our key behavior. So I think we're not going to hit it, and the whole world could collapse as we do that. So we got through the first step and we'll continue.
Okay. In this Loom Teardown video, we're going to cover onboarding for new users, and we are going to cover the upgrade flow. So first, onboarding for new users. The goal for onboarding is to get me time to value, to be the fastest possible. So for Loom, what do they want me to do?
They want me to record a video because that's going to give me value from what I think I'm getting from the product. And so they are doing okay. One great clear call to action, to send an invite, would probably replace that. And I've seen other versions of this homepage where they do replace it with a big button to say "Record a video."
That's the number one thing you want me to do as a new user. I've obviously already recorded 18 videos, so. It's possible that they have that recorded video for other new users. And that's really their goal. How quickly can they get me to do that? The second thing about this homepage is that it's anchoring me in different types of ways I could use Loom. That's called a mental model. They're giving me a mental model and trying to expand my mental model of how I can use it. Introduction, sales, demos, feedback. Very nice. This is great. If I were to improve it, there's two things I would focus on. Number one is measuring me on this. If you imagine you could say, "Check, you've done introductions," "Check you've done a sales demo – oh, not complete, haven't done a sales demo." And this calls my attention to ways I could further use Loom and gets me to think I'm under-utilizing the product and that it could be used for more. The second thing I would do is really put this in line with the calls to action. So you can imagine having a thing that says "Create a sales demo." "Record video." And this is a carousel, it's education. You want to pair education with the action. So even if you have the same links that say "record video," "record sales demo," "record intro," you're really giving people the idea that there is still something left for them to do and they are clicking right from the education into the action that you're trying to drive.
So that's the onboarding. For the upgrading, I'm going from 18 to 25 videos. At 25, I get kicked out. I can't do it anymore, except, the funny thing is I got to 25 and Loom gave me the idea to say, look, you could upgrade, or you can just go delete videos. And so I got back to 18 by deleting videos. And so imagine not to self-sabotage yourself, Loom. Don't give people the idea to go back and delete videos. They wouldn't have thought of that themselves. When I do click to upgrade, I see that there's another way to get me to upgrade and that's the limited recording. So I'm talking really quickly right now cause I have to get under the five minutes.
If you're in the free version, you get 25 videos in five minutes. And so that is going to probably push people to upgrade. I really like the five-minute limit. For people who are taking this seriously, you will likely want to upgrade. Okay? Another way that they could do upgrades is something that Tinder has done a lot, something that Gas has done a lot is curiosity. So, I don't know who likes me at Gas and I'm going to pay Gas money. Gas is the social app that asks you questions and then it reveals who likes you. Tinder, same thing. The number one way to get people to pay for Tinder Premium is to give them curiosity.
They pay for who actually likes them, to see that information. So here it could be the same thing. Right now it seems like they're giving away insights for free. You could imagine a world where they say, if you want to see how many people viewed it, if you want to see who viewed it, you have to pay to get to the premium model.
And that is for, again, people who are taking it seriously, using it for their business, probably a very interesting value. So for this lineup, I really like this thing. You've got three options, the free or current plan. And then the thing that they do really well is say "Most popular." And we've seen lineups where people don't actually kind of point, they recommended their most popular. And this actually does help people make a decision.
They're also leveraging compromise effect. It's the one in the middle. Um, we can click contact sales. You know, I'm kind of torn on some of this. It's nice that you could submit to contact sales. The reality is people may be ready to buy today, and if they have to contact sales and wait for somebody to respond to them, you may lose their motivation.
So I would also test out a phone number during business hours and see if you can catch more people in the conversion flow. To do this is obviously an ops challenge as well. So I'll now click "Upgrade now." Wonderful. Okay, so sticker shock. Oh my gosh, $150. I thought it was going to be $12 a month.
Obviously that's correct. It's billing annual, but the sticker shock on payment pages usually increases drop off. We'd really try to figure out one test if, you know, you can get more conversion by just defaulting to bill monthly. Obviously not great for their revenue lock-in, but could actually drive more conversion on this page.
And then probably would increase the social proof on this page because you're really pushing people into a high cost. Yes, this is a payment page. It should be streamlined, but you've got to tell me that other people like Loom to make sure that I'm not making a bad decision by spending $150 on this recording software.
Questions about your product? Email kristen@irrationallabs.com.
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