What is onboarding?

Onboarding is the process of guiding the user through all necessary steps for them to open an account. Since Revolut is a bank, we need to meet several legal requirements which, depending on the market, can mean up to 25 different steps. Still, we make the experience as seamless as possible by focusing on each step at a time and optimizing the journey for each market. This way the user can fully enjoy Revolut in just a few minutes.

My role

For most of my time working at Revolut (2022-2024) I was the owner of the design of the retail onboarding. I worked with the POs Mariya Ollin and Alexander Grishchenko.

Onboarding journey

Types of improvements

There are five main types of onboarding improvements I've worked on. Here I'll present one example for each category.

FIX KNOWN ISSUES

Reducing phone input errors

Key problem

Inputting the wrong phone number results in a dead end in both sign-up and log in
Sending and OTP (one time password) costs us money
Revolut chat agents get around 1.000 anonymous chats a day, part of them because of this issue.

Solution

Add a confirmation pop up to reduce typing errors, wrong numbers and wrong number codes

OPTIMISE JOURNEY

Adapt to local regulations

Key problem

Italy has strict regulations regarding Tax Identification Number (TIN) collection, including submitting a document as proof
Compared to other markets where Revolut is present, Italy has lower success sign up rates

Solution

A reorganized list of documents, prioritizing the ones that already include TIN
Expand the list of allowed documents
Remove the manual input completely, since we can fetch it and avoid mismatches

ADD VALUE

Global accounts

Key problem

When an existing Revolut user moves to another country and wants to open an account there, they are forced to close their original account first.
The "moving countries" issue generates around 5.000 chats each month.
Many users give up after the first contact with Revolut agents and end up opening an account with another bank.
Revolut presents itself as a global bank, but it doesn't support users who move or live in two countries, which is poor UX and bad for the brand's image.

Solution

Support multiple country profiles for a single user

Why?

User want local accounts to get a local IBAN, receive their salary, provide proof when renting an apartment and get access to local benefits

Areas covered

This project was highly complex because it affects most areas of the app, including:

Account creation
Paid plan management
Log in
Personal profile
Local products
(insurance, investing, joint accounts, savings and more)

Sending and receiving money
Comms, notifications & suggested for you
Campaigns & Inbox
To-dos
Cards
Closing account

MONETIZE

Introducing the @Revtag

Key problem

The Revtag is a unique identifier for users to send and receive money easily. While the its use is one of the main indicative of an active, profitable user, many of them don't know about it
The logic to assign a Revtag is random and results in handles that are hard to memorize
Introducing the Revtag during the onboarding was tested in the past, and while there was a positive impact on the two month retention, there was a 1% off drop off in that screen

Solution

Reintroducing the Revtag with an improved design, where we make sure it won't cause users to drop off.
Improving the Revtag assign logic

Improved assign logic

@nikoaw9f

NEW

The top 3 still available options will be visible for the user to choose from

@nikola
@nikbabic92
@nikola.b
@nikolababic
@n.babic
@nikola00
@nikola2000
@nikolababic2000
@nikola.us
@nikola.aw9f

BEFORE

Non-skippable screen, the main cause of drop-offs
The available Revtag disappears once the user starts editing, leaving the use helpless fo find an available one with no suggestions

AFTER

Two easy and highly visible ways to proceed right away, "Continue" and "Not now"
Three personalised Revtag options to choose from
If a user edits the Revtag and their choice is already taken, they can always reset the screen by selecting one of the three options and easily proceed

OPTIMISE WORKFLOW

Unifying terms to reuse

Key problem

There are two separate screens in the sign-up including terms
There are no guidelines for creating terms for new countries. Additional terms screens are created in a case-by-case basis, causing a lot of additional work
In some cases, terms aren't clear and transparent for the user
The process of updating terms is complex, creating potential risk incidents

Solution

A master terms screen to be used in all cases, flexible enought to accomodate all of them
Transparent and user friendly, no hidden links

Other initiatives

I took initiative to optimise the team's workflow with other projects that made collaboration easier and new projects easier to tackle

🩹
Standardized remediation flow

Around 50% of the Onboarding team's efforts go towards designing and developing flows to collect input from the user post sign-up. This is what we call remediation flows. The information collected in these flows is critical, since it's needed to fully onboard a user. Both design and development is treated case-by-case, resulting in a lot of additional work that could be streamlined.

I created a standardized formula to be used in all current and future cases, reducing the workload of the whole team significantly.

🧩
Figma library

Many of the 25 onboarding steps are used by other teams. For example, when a user edits their phone number they see the same flow as when they inputted it for the first time. This edit flow is owned by another team. Reusing onboarding steps across the company makes it difficult to keep up to date.

This is why I created an onboarding steps library. Designers across the company can take a whole block, consisting of all parts of a step (like collecting phone number) and all its variations (local variant, errors and success). This library was a big task, but it resulted in guaranteed up-to-date onbaording steps in all Figmas and improved team collaboration.