Designing an effortless Product Evaluation experience

Every Tax season, Tax firms shop around for a better Tax software. The goal of this project is to enable trialers to quickly understand what Proconnect has to offer and determine whether or not this is the right product for their firm.

My role was to research the problem space, identify opportunities and improve the experience for new users.

Meet our customer, Andrew Lawson.

Andrew is a Certified Tax Professional with 12 years of experience. Andrew is the owner of a multi-service Tax firm, Lawson LLC. They offer Tax consulting, Bookkeeping and Payroll services.

His Tax Firm, a small business
4 full-time employees including 2 Tax preparers and 1 office administrator.
They do about 500 Tax returns a year.

Business goals
Grow the client base even more. The firm already grew 20% this year.

Needs
Optimize their process so that employees are more efficient and can serve additional clients.
Finding the best Tax product that works for their firm and employees' needs.

Customer Problem Statement

I am the owner of a multi-service CPA firm exploring professional tax software

Trying to evaluate whether or not Proconnect Tax Online is the best product for my firm

But I am not able to quickly understand how to use Proconnect Tax Online or what it has to offer

Because there is a lack of information and guidance upon signing up

Which makes me feel not confident that Proconnect Tax Online is what my firm needs

Ideal State

In an ideal world, Andrew has all the necessary information to evaluate Proconnect Tax online in less than 30mins.

Success measures

Increase % create a Tax return
Increase product comprehension
Improve lead to opportunity conversion (12%)
Decrease 1st visit abandonment rate (currently 56%) and uninformed abandoners (currently 14%)

Business problem

Proconnect has a high abandonment rate of 56% of our first-time users. Of them, 14% abandon the product right after signing up. The team has been investigating the root cause and see if we can reduce the uninformed abandonment rate. That was the business rationale behind prioritizing solving this customer problem.

What is Proconnect

Proconnect is Intuit's Cloud Professional Tax preparation offering that provides accountants and tax preparers with 3 key benefits.

Smooth data collection and apply
Request client documents, see the status, leave comments within the context of a tax return. Once the data arrives, it also lets them apply to the tax return that reduces manual data entry.

Flexible document management
Manage documents and tax data in a much seamless fashion.

Tax Planner
Help their tax clients prepare for their future with tax plans that compare their tax scenarios across multiple years.

Changing the process

Insights from Customer Research

We learned from research that a trial user that converts does 4 things differently from a non-converter when they evaluate our Cloud Tax offering.

Adds a Client
Explores Client list
Creates a Tax Return
Explores eFile Dashboard

A/B Test

We did not want to disrupt our current customers' workflow during the peak of tax season. At the same time, the Tax season is also the best time to get maximum usage that would increase our learning velocity. So we decided to go with A/B testing.

This test aims to understand if the new experience drives two things.
1. Creation of a return
2. and comprehension for first-time users and how it affects abandonment rates (and lead to opportunities).

50% of prospects directed to current experience, Group A, and 50% directed to the new experience, Group B

Method and Process

We decided to conduct a multifaceted approach, simultaneously, to get a holistic understanding of the customers and the two experiences.

We ran this experiment for 2 weeks during the Tax Season.

Group A Experience

Group B Experience

Experiment Success Measures

37% of Prospects create their first return from the B experience (with 95% confidence)
Greater delight and product comprehension - measured from the survey responses and qualitative feedback

We also added a Feedback survey for both A and B bucket users to collect qualitative feedback.

Design principles

Benefit

I see immediately why I would use Proconnect.
I quickly get the initial benefit of creating a Tax return.

Guidance

Lead accountants through the necessary steps to complete critical tasks.

Flexibility

Enable accountants to figure it out, but be there when they need us.

Scalability

Enable Proconnect team to run contextual widget experiences on the home page.

Details of the B experience

Benefit
Accountants see immediately why they would use PTO
Accountants quickly get an initial benefit

Guidance
Created bite-sized actionable steps grounded on accountants' mental model when evaluating Tax products.

Guidance
Each step provides enough context to decide on whether or not Proconnect is the right Tax product for their firm.

Guidance
We also decided to say upfront what we support and what we do not. Also allowed communicating about upcoming features.

Flexibility
We know our accountant users rely on the left navigation bar a lot. So we decided to keep that and give new users the flexibility to choose.

Scalability
We also made sure to design these components as reusable widgets and the team can add more widgets in the future to scale the experience.

Outcome of the the experiment

We saw improvement in Tax return creation in B experience, which was one of our success criteria. But overall the results weren't statistically significant.

But we learned that having a First Time Use experience (B experience) is signaling a better experience for new users.

79% of B respondents said that the product met or exceeded their product expectations versus 47% of A experience
100% of B respondents said that they are at least somewhat confident at using the product versus 76% of A
100% of B respondents felt they had all they need to evaluate the product versus 70%

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