PROJECT LENGTH
TEAM
COMPANY
Context
Project background
The AdMob onboarding process is challenging due to a complex process with multiple required checkpoints.
Prior the onboarding experience was almost non-existent
This leads to publisher confusion, high drop-off rates (only 8.6% of sign-ups reach $10), and a perception of poor support.
Problem
There are key steps in a set order to onboard successfully onto AdMob and start serving queries, but we don’t make it clear in the front-end.
Example: Completing payment information is critical to ensuring account approval and timely app review to enable ad serving. This causes a lot of publisher frustration (~527 pubvoice reports), as they often expect to monetize quickly, but can’t figure out why they can’t get their apps approved within AdMob.
Goal
The main goal is to reduce uncertainty and enable tail and torso+ unmanaged publishers to monetize as quickly and as frictionlessly as possible through a self-guided journey. This allows AdMob to unblock / unlock retention and growth with these publisher groups.
Project milestones
01
Early design
Goal was to test different info architecture options and different ways to design the component.
02
Concept testing
Partnered with UXR to to understand the ideal onboarding experience and evaluate onboarding design concepts.
03
Finalizing designs
We tackled a lot of edge cases, interaction details and additional requirements.
01 - Early design
Information design & component explorations
In the early explorations, I needed to understand:
What the is right balance in the information hierarchy that will bring focus to the onboarding steps while not distracting too much from other information as they progress through their journey?
What pattern is appropriate for the publisher to access onboarding (eg. separate page or embedded component)?
02 - Concept testing
AdMob / AdSense Publisher Onboarding UXR
I hit a roadblock as parallel workstreams from an AdSense designer (ancillary Sellside product) conflicted. To manage the situation, I recommended we partner with Open Labs (UXR) to understand the ideal onboarding experience and evaluate our conflicting onboarding design concepts. The goal is to understand which concepts resonate best with users of each product.
High level summary of learnings
Publishers want additional transparency in the verification process and non-technical language to explain complex processes.
Publishers regard onboarding as a priority workflow requiring focus and are best supported by a dedicated UI location
Publishers expect linear, sequenced onboarding and appreciate affordances that explain order and priority.
03 - Finalizing designs
Design flow and additional use cases
Based on the user research, we decided to pursue my concept of a timeline and card component.
I had to design the component to work across three different phases and across two different products (AdMob and AdSense), while ensuring I kept the AdSense designer in the loop.
After the designs were established, I worked with AdMob Eng and PM team on QAing the build with many edge and additional cases I had to design for (eg. new extended onboarding requirements such as new CMP details).
Launch
Success metrics
Since launch, we've seen a revenue increase of 301% over a 28D period (pre-launch $273,616 and post-launch $1,096,544). We've seen an increase of 1384% in account review starts (pre-launch 7,190 and post-launch 106,664) and approvals increase of 335% (pre-launch 5,337 and post-launch 23,232).
