• Customer Experience

Behavioural research finds pain points in software trial to boost adoption

Young african man working with analitycs sitting at the beautiful working place with computer, laptop and documents

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The Client

Qlik is a multinational enterprise providing tools for data integration, analytics and business intelligence. It has more than 38,000 active customers globally and has consistently been recognized as a leader in the field. The company has an in-house UX team but turned to DFFRNT for insight on how to increase the adoption of its SaaS offering: Qlik Sense. 

Qlik Sense is a cloud analytics platform. A 30-day free trial is available to potential users. Qlik was unsatisfied with the conversion rate for participants in the trial. Not enough of these prospects completed the trial and signed up to buy the product. DFFRNT was engaged to perform research and suggest solutions to increase the adoption of Qlik Sense. 

The Challenge

Qlik believes all the data anyone needs should be available to them in a single platform, where they can explore it, use it to make decisions, and share it. The company has developed one-of-a-kind associative technology to connect and combine data from hundreds of data sources. Qlik Sense also offers best-in-class data visualization. So why weren’t trial participants becoming customers?   

Since Qlik was a well-established company with an internal UX team, DFFRNT began its research project with a discovery phase. This included an examination of the following: 

  • Qlik’s onboarding process for the software trial 
  • Conversion data from the trials 
  • Existing customer research. 

The goal was to ensure DFFRNT’s research activities would build upon existing knowledge. 

DFFRNT also performed interviews with sales support, tech support and client-facing teams to identify specific aspects of the participant experience that should be investigated. The company already had buyer personas and a substantial amount of customer research. In this case, they needed support from external experts in customer experience. 

“Discovery is an important step to ensure this research project furthers our understanding of the user and builds upon existing knowledge, rather than simply replicating what’s already been done. The discovery phase is a focused, deep exploration of existing Qlik research, analytics and understanding.” 

The Solution

The project then moved to the research phase, where DFFRNT interviewed Qlik Sense trial participants to assess how the platform worked for them. The researchers could see where participants were struggling and what tasks they hoped to accomplish with Qlik Sense. 

DFFRNT created a journey map to characterize the problems and opportunities. Two primary use cases were observed: potential buyers shopping the Qlik products, and potential clients using the trial to self-train. DFFRNT’s experience with human-centred design suggests that Qlik should develop different experiences for buyers and learners.  

The Outcome

During the discovery stage, DFFRNT found silos within the organization, a lack of shared vocabulary regarding the company’s value proposition, and little agreement on sales journey personas. 

After analysis of the data collected from trial users, DFFRNT reported that the trial did not guide the users to the value proposition. They found no obvious path for the participant to follow, and there was a lack of success indicators. 

“Discovery is an important step to ensure this research project furthers our understanding of the user and builds upon existing knowledge, rather than simply replicating what’s already been done. The discovery phase is a focused, deep exploration of existing Qlik research, analytics and understanding.” 

One pain point for some participants was finding the information and features they wanted. Some reached out to Qlik to find out the complete feature set. DFFRNT views this as an opportunity to make the relevant information easier to find on the Qlik website, which is most participants’ first point of contact with the company. 

DFFRNT also suggested alternatives to the tutorials offered to new users and trial participants. One possibility is task-focused instructions that take the user through each process step-by-step. The design of the trial should anticipate what users will need to do. 

The Results

Qlik now has a clearer picture of what users hope to achieve from the trial period. With this knowledge, the company can tailor the experience to meet those needs better. DFFRNT identified opportunities and pain points based on its behavioural research. It then worked with the Qlik team to develop solution concepts. DFFRNT conceptualized the solutions and delivered them to Qlik to evaluate and implement 

“In a case like this, we generally know what the product is supposed to do. We don’t need to know how it does it. The user doesn’t know how, either. What we do know is where the user gets confused; we are a champion of the user.”

The Tools

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To discuss how our strategic design services can benefit your organization, contact DFFRNT. 

For more insight about personas, read about our work with Canada Revenue Agency. 

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