increasing Flexibility with placeholders 🧘

Defining the problem

To better understand the template engagement problem, I turned to quantitative analysis of usage data. I learned that more customers were clicking on templates than ever before—suggesting the new use-cases were resonating—but the overall conversion rate from users clicking a template to enabling that template had decreased from 44% (legacy templates) to 13% (new templates). Yikes! Digging further, I found 65% of customers were abandoning or canceling from the guided setup without ever getting to see their selected template.

Template users weren’t the only ones suffering from inflexibility. Requiring assets to build workflows led to:

• More manual work for customers

• Difficulty scaling automation processes

• Time wasted

• Decision fatigue

Devising a Solution

Brainstorming with product and engineering, we determined empty “placeholder actions” would allow users to create an action without setting up any required fields. This would provide flexibility for ALL workflow customers, enabling them to build out their workflow framework and finalize details on their own timelines.

To supplement this feature, we introduced validation alerts—warnings for actions that still needed configuration to use the workflow—and a resolution flow for those errors. I used this opportunity to audit and improve error validation messaging for consistency and clarity. And best of all, with the launch of placeholder actions, we were able to add the option for template users to skip setup steps—or even skip setup altogether.

Results & Next Steps

Since launch, placeholder actions now make up 10% of all workflow actions. More importantly, customers now have the flexibility to build workflows in the way that works best for them. Using placeholder actions, we shipped the skip setup feature in December 2021, which led to:

• 38% of template users choosing to skip setup ⏭

• Decreased setup cancellation rate from 43% to 36% 📉

• Increased rate of users reaching template builder from 31% to 56% 🎉

• Increased overall template turn-on rate from 16% to 26% 📈

These results validated our hypothesis that the setup wizard wasn’t providing value and was instead blocking users from getting to templates. But while these were positive signals, the skip options wouldn’t scale well as we grew our library of templates — it’d require us to maintain skippable setup wizards for each template, which would essentially duplicate the existing configuration process within the workflow builder. We considered:

• How might we leverage placeholder actions to decrease time-to-value and provide contextual setup guidance for new and experienced users without overwhelming them?

• How might we create a setup experience that scales long-term, reduces internal maintenance, and eliminates tech debt?

Solving for long-term success 🌟

Hypothesis

I hypothesized that moving template setup into the workflow builder would pair guidance with context 📖 — leading to more long-term adoption, increased turn-on rates, and decreased support calls.

Validating with users

Collaborating with my product manager and tech lead, I designed two new setup flows within the workflow builder — one with lighter guidance that would take less time to complete (Concept 1), and one with more explicit step-by-step hand-holding (Concept 2). Feedback from fellow product and content designers helped strengthen both concepts.

I designed a research plan and set up an unmoderated concept test in UserZoom that randomized the order in which the concepts were shown to reduce bias. I recruited 8 participants from a range of regions, age groups, and socio-economic backgrounds to ensure diverse perspectives and inclusive feedback. Key takeaways included:

• Concept 1: Quick and easy with fewer overall steps. Configuring the workflow trigger without context led to confusion and a lower perception of accuracy, similar to the existing wizard experience.

• Concept 2: Boosted confidence throughout setup through ongoing reassurance. Resulted in delight and deeper understanding of the tool for better long-term learnability.

• Overall: Users universally found their second setup experience easier than the first. Focus on creating a positive first experience and encouraging a follow-up experience to help truly overcome the learning curve.

We agreed to continue iterating on Concept 2 due to the long-term benefits and increased confidence.

final Solution

After investigating implementation, engineering surfaced technical concerns around scalability and complexity that would take a substantial amount of time to build. We brainstormed together and sought feedback from teams who owned overlapping product areas to develop a more scalable solution that still provided contextual, directional guidance while reducing tech debt.

Next Steps

We agreed to ship the new setup experience iteratively to move faster, mitigate risk, and learn as we go. We’ll validate these improvements with customers via an in-app survey and user interviews 🧪️

Our long-term vision is to enable customers to create and save their own templates. We’ve built the new setup guidance to support customer editing so they can write their own instructions to enable their teammates and set their clients up for success.