A sign-up funnel redesign across four international markets — framed not as friction reduction, but as a funnel quality vs. volume tradeoff.
The initial framing was: the sign-up funnel has too much friction, let's reduce it. But pulling on that thread led somewhere more interesting.
Invoice Simple was replacing a freemium model with a free trial. That's not a UI change — it's a fundamental shift in who you want entering the funnel and what they need to believe before they do. Reducing friction alone would increase volume but not necessarily activation or retention. The real goal was attracting users with intent.
Without a dedicated research team, I synthesized signals from multiple existing sources: funnel drop-off data by step and market, app store reviews across four countries, support ticket themes, and prior qualitative research. Some findings differed by market — what caused friction in the UK wasn't identical to the US — so market-specific nuances made it into the design decisions.
The redesign was mobile-first, built around a few key principles:
I also mapped the full onboarding journey across devices, since users sometimes started on mobile and continued on web. Handoff moments between platforms were a drop-off point that the previous design hadn't accounted for.
After launch, I ran unmoderated research on one specific feature within the new onboarding — the AI note refiner. The study surfaced three actionable findings that fed directly into the next iteration cycle, and gave the team a repeatable format for post-launch validation on a lean timeline.