Case study

GuestyMobile onboarding: from 70% drop-off to 38% trial conversion

SaaS · Property management

Redesigned Guesty mobile onboarding by splitting Lite and Pro users into separate flows instead of a single flow with conditional logic. Based on 5,000+ session analysis and user interviews per tier. Trial-to-paid: 23% to 38%, support tickets: ~500 to ~150/month, onboarding completion: 62% to 89%.

Context

Guesty serves professional hosts from a single listing to thousands across Airbnb, Booking.com, and VRBO. Two distinct user types: Lite (1-3 listings) and Pro (scaling to thousands). 70% of users abandoned onboarding before completing setup. About 500 support tickets per month came from post-signup confusion. The product was genuinely useful once people got past setup — 7 in 10 never got there.

Challenge

One onboarding flow for two fundamentally different user types with different mental models. A single flow with conditional show/hide logic is slightly wrong for everyone. The problem wasn't that the flow was too long — it presented the wrong complexity to the wrong user.

My role

I owned the research, IA strategy, flow redesign, A/B testing programme, and the Figma design system for Lite and Pro variants.

What I changed

  • Analysed 5,000+ onboarding sessions to locate exact abandonment points. Interviewed Lite and Pro users separately — what did they expect onboarding to feel like, and what did they encounter instead.
  • Split Lite and Pro into separate flows from first login. Two flows that speak directly to each user type are correct for everyone. Separating the flows also removed the conditional content logic from engineering.
  • Lite: simplified, linear, fast to value. Pro: more controls, guided walkthroughs for complex multi-listing configuration, inline tooltips.
  • Ensured onboarding showed value before asking for effort. A/B tested multiple versions iteratively throughout — not one redesign but continuous improvement.

Outcome

Trial-to-paid: 23% to 38%. Onboarding completion: 62% to 89%. Setup time: 3:45 to 2:10. Support tickets: ~500 to ~150/month.

All work