Background

SparkCharge, a pioneer in on-demand EV charging services, has been one of our longstanding clients. Over the years, we've supported them through several iterations and go-to-market strategies. One of our most significant achievements was a comprehensive redesign that led to a 36% improvement in their app's conversion rate.

The Challenge

SparkCharge’s service allows EV drivers to schedule a charging session through their mobile app. Initially, the user journey involved several steps:

1. Download the application
2. Enter an address to verify service availability
3. Select car type and enter credit card information
4. Schedule a charge

SparkCharge approached us to overhaul the app’s design and enhance the user experience. For our purposes, we defined conversions as users who downloaded the app and scheduled a charge.

Our Approach

We began by analyzing the essential steps needed to schedule a charge:

1. Determining the user’s location
2. Identifying the user’s vehicle type
3. Sign up and payment

We call this strategy “aligning the requirements with the incentives.”

A Simple Example

Imagine someone on the street asking for your social security number—you’d likely refuse. However, if a hiring manager from a recent interview asked for the same information to finalize your job offer, you'd be more inclined to provide it. The key difference is the context and incentive.

The Changes We Made

We identified that many of our questions were asked too early, before users had a compelling reason to provide information. Here are the key changes we implemented:

1. Deferring Profile Setup and Payment: Users were only asked to set up a profile and provide payment information after scheduling a charge.
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   Design Insight: Users are more willing to provide personal information once they are invested in the process.
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   Technical Insight: We used Firebase’s Anonymous Authentication to create user accounts when they download the app. This enables us to uniquely identify users and maintain their session information without requiring them to sign up (email and password). When users schedule a charge, they are required to create an account. At that point, we upgrade the anonymous account the the email/password authentication account.
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2. Requesting Location Access Early: Instead of asking users to manually enter their address, we requested access to their location and explained that it would help SparkCharge drivers find them.
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   Design Insight: Users are more likely to share their location when they understand its importance for service delivery.
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   Technical Insight: Some users might not allow location access, even after it’s clearly explained. We had to have a work around to catch these cases and force the users to allow access or manually enter their address.
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3. Streamlining the Entry into the App: We allowed users to schedule a charge immediately upon entering the app. Vehicle make and model were selected from visual menus, avoiding text entry or dropdowns.
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   Design Insight: Visual selections are more user-friendly and reduce cognitive load.

Outcomes

We meticulously track conversion rates across all Flywheel Studio applications, which made it easy to measure the impact of our redesign. As a precaution, we always maintain the original process in case we need to revert.

The results were clear and sustained—a 36% increase in conversion rates for new downloads. This improvement has remained consistent over time, validating our approach.

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