Speechify
The #1 text to speech AI in the world
My Roles: Senior Designer
By nature of a startup, whatever the team needed, that’s what I did. If I had limited experience, I would figure it out. This lead to delving into every part of our design and engineering process.
Analytics
Test Planning
UI / UX
Motion Design
QA
3 Areas of Impact
1. iOS Onboarding
2. Paywall Optimization
3. Activation
3 Areas of Impact
1. iOS Onboarding
2. Paywall Optimization
3. Activation
Context
Business Objectives
With any growth team, revenue is an umbrella metric that is focused on. During the activation process, there are 3 main levers that I was focused on - all of which had a direct impact on company revenue.
📈 Metrics I was in charge of:
Install to trial
Trial to paid
Monitoring refund rate
📈 Metrics I am in charge of:
1. Install to trial
    iOS Onboarding
    Paywall optimization
2. First 500 words listened
     First App Experience
Process
Data Centric Process
When I first started, having a deep understanding of where the weak points of our funnel existed. Where were our user’s dropping off? How were our user’s expectations impacted
1. Data first
When I first started, having a deep understanding of where the weak points of our funnel existed. Where were our user’s
2. Leveraging psychology
When I first started, having a deep understanding of where the weak points of our funnel existed. Where were our user’s
3. To test or ship?
When I first started, having a deep understanding of where the weak points of our funnel existed. Where were our user’s
4. Iterate
When I first started, having a deep understanding of where the weak points of our funnel existed. Where were our user’s
Philosophy
Maximizing testing velocity
As the sole designer I had large influence in the number of tests we were able to ship. We had an extreme bias towards action. Our philosophy was to drop our ego and test our hypothesis. This lead to a high rate of testing, which lead to a high rate of learning.
Area of Impact 1
iOS Onboarding
168% increase in key metric, install to trial
80+ tests launched
Process
Our starting point
A strength of Speechify is the volume of new user’s. Since Speechify was already an established product with over 20 million user’s, we had an onboarding to start and work off from.
Understanding Weak Points
Process
The challenge
Speechify has  multitude of features and personas that the product addresses. The challenge became building trust that Speechify is the right product for the various use cases. We bucketed our user’s into 3 different personas.
Solution: Dynamic Content
Once the user selected what they read the most for, we tailor the onboarding experience to align with their needs.
Process
A Team Disagreement
Though we were able to bucket user’s it started to drastically increase onboarding length. There were two different camps in regards to onboarding length. Minimizing time to “exploring” and maximizing time to exploring.
My proposed solution
Having past experience with long onboarding (70+ screens at Sleep Reset) I was a strong proponent of a longer onboarding experience. To gain confidence in either direction, I proposed doing low coast tests in both directions - making the onboarding shorter and longer and compare performance. If we cut too much, it would be difficult to attribute where the impact was coming from, therefore we focused in scoped areas such as the document.
Before vs. After
Over the next 8 months, we launched over 80+ onboarding tests.
Results
Increase in key metric, install to trial
80+
growth tests launched
163%
increase in trial start
Area of Impact 2
Paywall Optimization
32% increase in key metric, paywall conversion
Paywall Problem
Our paywall, one of the highest impact screens, had a conversion lower than the industry standard. It was unclear as to what the primary value was, didn’t address user needs, what was the cost, and lacked social proof.
Starting Paywall
Building anticipation before the paywall
Our paywall, one of the highest impact screens, had a conversion lower than the industry standard. It was unclear as to what the primary value was, didn’t address user needs, what was the cost, and lacked social proof.
Featured Paywall Solutions
Results of Paywall Optimizations
Massive increase in revenue
30+
growth tests launched
32%
increase in trial start
Area of Impact 3
First App Experience
14% increase in key metric, install to trial
Process
Problem
Once the user signed up, the user was directly asked to sign up. This provides no positive reinforcement for the large commitment that the user just made. Though the user signed up for a trial, we would see drop off on the signup screen. In Robert Cialdini’s theory of persuasion, once user’s commit to something, they are more likely to engage in ways to justify or feel good about their commitment. To help frame their decision in a positive way, we waned to add a celebration and reiterate value.

For those that stuck around, the user was then dropped into the app without direction. A strength of Speechify is the number of different use cases that it can be used for. How could we guide user’s to upload more content?
Solution 1: Positive Reinforcement
Solution 2: Guiding the user to upload their first content
Impact of First App Experience Upload
Successfully increased first 500 words listened
22%
activation increase
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