Benenden Health

Product stategy for a digital healthcare service that members would use

Client

Benenden Health

Year

2024

Platform

Service Blueprint

Timeline

4 weeks

THE REAL PROBLEM

Stagecoach came to us with a retention problem and a hypothesis: a slow, confusing first experience was driving users away. The client hypothesis was that if we guide users on how to use the app it would help retain customers. The brief was therefore to redesign the onboarding and increase sign-up rates.

Before designing anything, I pushed to interrogate that hypothesis. If onboarding wasn't the root cause, we'd be solving the wrong problem.

~160k

Monthly downloads

10%

Opt-out for permissions

-15 NPS

Driven by ops, not UX

Critical early decision: The data told us that there was an activation problem and that a meaningful share of churn was driven by the core product experience as opposed to the entry point. We defined the boundary of what onboarding could and couldn't fix before designing anything, and held that line with the client.

Critical early decision: The data told us that there was an activation problem and that a meaningful share of churn was driven by the core product experience as opposed to the entry point. We defined the boundary of what onboarding could and couldn’t fix before designing anything, and held that line with the client.

WHAT SHAPED OUR DIRECTION

Rather than starting from scratch, I drew on discovery research conducted six months earlier. One insight reframed our entire approach: Stagecoach users typically open the app when something needs to happen right now; checking a time, buying a ticket, seeing where the bus is. Often at the bus stop, or walking out the door.

This meant any friction in onboarding was annoying and actively competing with the reason they'd downloaded the app. Speed to value therefore became a critical cornerstone of our solution.

Competitor analysis confirmed that the best-performing travel apps move account creation to post-checkout, not upfront. We adopted this as a design principle early.

Before touching the brief, we pressure-tested it against six months of existing ethnographic research on how people actually use buses and why they download the app in the first place.

A full UX audit of the existing onboarding flow mapped every friction point, dead end, and missed opportunity before we considered a single new direction.

Mapping the eight components of an onboarding experience gave us a common language for evaluating what Stagecoach had, what it was missing, and what it didn't need.

Mapping the eight components of an onboarding experience gave us a common language for evaluating what Stagecoach had, what it was missing, and what it didn’t need.

A review of best-in-class onboarding across travel, transport, and beyond produced five clear principles which became the criteria we used to evaluate every direction we took forward.

DEVELOPING THREE ONBOARDING ROUTES

We developed six onboarding directions and converged on three distinct routes, each grounded in a different hypothesis about what drives retention. We then tested these 3 routes to understand which of our hypothesis wer correct.

ROUTE 1

Life benefits

Instead of listing functional benefits, lead with how the app can improve daily life. Retention through motivation and ego.

ROUTE 2

Hand-holding

Establish a clear mental model upfront and build retention through confidence and orientation.

ROUTE 3

Straight into it

Minimise upfront friction and get users to value immediately. Once in the app, layer guidance contextually.

TESTING OUR THREE ROUTES

Testing across six moderated sessions made it clear: users had no appetite to be talked at. They skipped the benefit screens in Route 1 without reading them. The hand-holding in Route 2 felt patronising for a task they already understood. Every participant just wanted to get into the app.

This aligned directly with what we already knew about user context. When someone opens Stagecoach, they have somewhere to be. Optional, dismissible guidance outperformed structured tours in every session. Route 3 wasn't a surprise as it confirmed a hypothesis we already held, and gave us the evidence to align the client behind it.

THE SOLUTION

A stripped-back onboarding experience built around three principles:

Frame the experience around the core USP signal of accurate bus times being linked to location permissions and lead with value on every permissions request
Move account creation to post-checkout
Replace structured tours with optional in-app guidance users can access when they choose to.

Each permission request was paired with a clear value exchange, not mundane legal information but a reason for saying yes and how critical it is to a good experience. Location permission triggered an immediate payoff: the user's area surfaced alongside live average wait times, grounding the digital in the physical. A recovery screen for declined permissions reframed the choice rather than creating a dead end.

Account creation moved to the end of the optional guided tour; the moment when a user had already experienced the app's value and the ask had the most context of the value exchange behind it.

THE DECISION THAT MATTERED THE MOST

Critical early decision: The data told us that there was an activation problem and that a meaningful share of churn was driven by the core product experience as opposed to the entry point. We defined the boundary of what onboarding could and couldn’t fix before designing anything, and held that line with the client.

My recommendation to the client was to treat this work as a proof of concept; evidence of what the app could feel like and prioritise fixes to the core experience first. Fix journey planning, simplify the purchase flow, reduce the noise. Then reintroduce the onboarding as a genuine reflection of the product behind it.

The client agreed. The designs went into the backlog, sequenced behind improvements to the three core flows: planning, buying, and tracking.

WHAT I'D MEASURE AFTER SHIPPING

WHAT I’D MEASURE AFTER SHIPPING

Permissions opt-in rate (baseline: ~90% incline on iOS)

Account creation conversion at checkout vs. upfront
Day-7 retention cohorts comparing the new entry flow to the old.

The hypothesis that a faster path to value increases early retention remains untested, but the instrumentation plan was defined.

Permissions opt-in rate (baseline: ~90% incline on iOS)

Account creation conversion at checkout vs. upfront
Day-7 retention cohorts comparing the new entry flow to the old.

The hypothesis that a faster path to value increases early retention remains untested, but the instrumentation plan was defined.

WHAT THIS PROJECT SHOWED ME ABOUT PRODUCT

You can't design your way around a product problem. Onboarding is a first impression, but retention is earned by everything that follows. The most valuable thing I did on this project was defining the boundary of what the design could influence, and making the case to pause rather than ship.

Resisting the pressure to ship the visible fix, in favour of fixing what's underneath, is a product call. That's the one I made.

You can’t design your way around a product problem. Onboarding is a first impression, but retention is earned by everything that follows. The most valuable thing I did on this project was defining the boundary of what the design could influence, and making the case to pause rather than ship.

Resisting the pressure to ship the visible fix, in favour of fixing what’s underneath, is a product call. That’s the one I made.

‹ Stagecoach