Raj Rao – Bulk Invites

TEAM

Nextdoor – Growth Team

ROLE

Senior Product Designer

DELIVERABLE

iOS, Android, Web, mWeb

SUMMARY

Designed a series of A/B tests to increase the number of invites sent on behalf of new users.

Overview + Goals

The growth team’s overall goal was to increase the number of verified neighbors (VNs), or users on the platform. For this project, the team sought to increase the number of invites sent to new users by bulk inviting contacts on their behalf. We hypothesized that a vastly increased number of invites sent via bulk invite would convert into many more new VNs.

Product Strategy

At Nextdoor, our growth strategy consisted of getting existing users to sync their contacts and then invite new users to sign up to Nextdoor. We expected every new user to invite at least two more people, creating a viral growth loop to build towards our overall goal of increasing VNs.

User Goals + Research

By inviting others, the user can feel more invested in the Nextdoor community they’re about to join and also, they can share this experience with others they trust.

Our research team found that most users are hesitant to sync their contacts and invite others to the platform because they don’t have a compelling enough reason to do so. The main insight here is that users do not see a clear value proposition to why they’d sync contacts and invite others — the team kept this strongly in mind while devising our solutions.

Flow

While onboarding dealt with a larger process of fifteen steps, the team focused on the screens concerning contact sync, connections, and invites. Once users sync their contacts, they’re encouraged to connect with neighbors they may already know on Nextdoor, and then asked to invite users who are off-platform via text (iOS) or email (Android + web).

Design

To begin, the product manager, UX writer, and I came up with a plethora of ideas on how to improve the current state while also incorporating bulk invites. Our explorations also solved for communicating clearer value props on why to send out invites, as mentioned earlier from our research.

During my competitive analysis, I found Zenly’s onboarding to have a very informal yet engaging approach to asking users to sync contacts and invite new users. The team agreed and we made another variation that combined our approach with theirs.

During our first stakeholder feedback session, we were asked to create another design that was a bit less aggressive and felt less weighty. The first iteration featured two selections with quite a bit of fine print so I focused on finding an easier way to break some of this up. The Zenly-like exploration was well-received for its friendly approach but admittedly a bit too large of an overhaul from our current experience.

Also, our stakeholders were open to testing our current contact sync page with one of the designs presented. Since key value props were being shown in the image carousel design, it made sense to test it against our current design that users found lacking.

During our first stakeholder feedback session, we were asked to create another design that was a bit less aggressive and felt less weighty. The first iteration featured two selections with quite a bit of fine print so I focused on finding an easier way to break some of this up. The Zenly-like exploration was well-received for its friendly approach but admittedly a bit too large of an overhaul from our current experience.

Also, our stakeholders were open to testing our current contact sync page with one of the designs presented. Since key value props were being shown in the image carousel design, it made sense to test it against our current design that users found lacking.

A bit more exploration led to a design where we asked to bulk invite after users sent their own invitations. This option broke up the ask in a more natural way and users could have more trust with this ask since they already felt comfortable sending out invites.

Also, the team decided to still test a more aggressive version of bulk invites. Having tests with a range of aggression would allow us to gauge users’ comfortability with this new feature and make tradeoffs based on the potential for growth.

To complete the experience, we also designed an email template for the invitation received by users, focusing on key value props for why it’s a good idea to join Nextdoor.

After presenting these designs to key stakeholders, the team got the go-ahead to ship. I made small changes from feedback while prepping necessary designs and documentation for handoff. With the flow and designs finalized, desktop designs were also completed at this time.

Data Analysis

After running the two bulk invite tests for 25% of new users, we reached statistical significance for our data and found both tests to drastically lower the overall invites being sent when compared to the control. However, the contact sync test performed much better than our existing design.

Retrospective + Next Steps

Our two bulk invite tests did not perform well and the team reasoned that both tests may have been too aggressive. Presenting users with an option to accept an open black box for Nextdoor to invite their contacts was clearly something users did not like. If we had the opportunity to do user testing before shipping, we may have gotten clearer answers as to why. The big positive we got out of these tests was finding a better way to get users to sync contacts. It’s clear that following our research and solving for user pain points made a clear impact to increase the very first step of our growth funnel.

Next steps would be to continue iterating stronger value props and concurrently user test designs based on our hypotheses.