Orion Ed · EdTech · UX Audit + Website
Halving onboarding drop-off for an EdTech.
Orion Ed had a strong learning product. Students were signing up and immediately leaving. A systematic audit revealed exactly why.
Orion Ed had a strong learning product. Students were signing up and immediately leaving. A systematic audit revealed exactly why.
Left: Heuristic audit mapping 31 violations across the original onboarding flow. Right: Wireframes for the redesigned progressive disclosure journey.
Orion Ed offered a structured online learning platform for adult professionals looking to upskill in data and analytics. Sign-up rates were healthy. Completion of the onboarding flow was not. Roughly half of new users who created an account never got past the initial setup steps. They left before choosing their first course or setting a learning goal.
The team had iterated on the onboarding multiple times without measurable improvement. They needed an outside perspective with a systematic methodology.
Our heuristics audit surfaced 31 violations across the onboarding flow, ranging from critical (users couldn't tell what they were expected to do next) to minor (inconsistent terminology between the marketing site and the platform itself). The single biggest issue was cognitive overload at the goal-setting step: users were asked to make complex decisions about their learning path before they had any context for what the platform offered.
Secondary research with 12 existing users who had successfully onboarded revealed that almost all of them had skipped the goal-setting step entirely on first use and returned to it later. The platform wasn't designed for that. There was no easy way back.
"Users weren't failing the onboarding. The onboarding was failing users — by asking them to commit before they had any reason to."
We redesigned the onboarding as a progressive disclosure flow. Each step revealed only what was needed to make the next decision. The goal-setting step was moved to after a user's first meaningful interaction with the platform content, not before. We added a persistent "set up your goals" prompt that appeared in the dashboard until completed, removing the now-or-never pressure.
The marketing site was also brought into alignment with the platform language. The dissonance between "what we promised" and "what you found" was a meaningful source of early exit. Post-redesign, onboarding completion improved by 50% within six weeks of launch.
The redesigned onboarding: progressive, low-pressure, with goal-setting deferred until after first content engagement.