Solving the high drop-off rate during onboarding with simple steps for a Full Option Trading platfrom. We iterated on the journey and reduced the onboarding time to just 5 mins.

TradeMobi is a full-options trading Platform by Anand Rathi for both First Timers and Active Traders. Despite having the experience of 30+ years of investment advisory and brokerage experience, their onboarding success rate was 8%.  They wanted to improve this and design a seamless experience that would need zero assistance from their agents. The project was to improve the flow over 6 months and achieve the target of 20-25%.

For many users, especially first-time investors, onboarding felt more like a barrier than a guided start. 

Users were required to process multiple concepts early on — KYC, bank linking, permissions, and regulatory disclosures — without enough context or prioritization. Screens were information-dense, and actions were presented with little explanation of 

This resulted in users pausing mid-flow, exiting the app, and often never returning.

Requests for sensitive information such as identity documents, PAN details, and bank accounts appeared early in the journey without sufficient reassurance. The absence of clear value framing or trust signals made users hesitant to proceed, particularly those new to trading.

Instead of feeling protected, users felt exposed.

The onboarding flow lacked a clear sense of progression. Users had no reliable indication of how many steps remained or how close they were to completion. Even small delays — such as document verification — felt longer and more frustrating without status feedback.

This ambiguity amplified drop-offs during KYC and verification stages.

Users were asked to complete the majority of onboarding steps before accessing anything meaningful, such as exploring stocks or understanding the app’s capabilities. There was no early “win” to motivate continuation.

For users already unsure about trading, this made the effort feel disproportionate to the perceived reward.

The same onboarding flow was used for both experienced traders and first-time investors. Experienced users felt slowed down, while new users felt overwhelmed. The lack of flexibility reduced confidence across both groups.

Onboarding was not just a usability issue — it was directly limiting user activation and revenue realization.

Before we made any design changes, we decided to fully understand the problem and its depth. We started with simple research steps: a Heuristic Evaluation of the Onboarding and a Competitor Analysis.

 We conducted the study both on their web as well as mobile platform and measured the performance on each step on various parameters. We derived this result and concluded that along with usability it needed a aesthetic uplift as well

This was the first initiative we decided to undertake. We explored the options to reduce the friction through available partner solution, be it fetching the KRA data for ease of the customer or be it being clear through Micro copy addressing "Why we need the data"

We iterated different solutions and tested out the possibilities what really made our user comfortable and which solution performed better. We made the decision using data parameters rather than just intuitions. 

We decided not to keep any information hidden from our users, but rather guide them and explain why each step is important. We also decided to openly communicate the consequences of each step as they proceeded. This helped gain their trust and thus increased their confidence to move ahead.

Being compliant and intuitive at the same time requires a deep understanding of the business and operations. To make the changes work better, we decided to build one singular journey optimised for mobile and web. This helped to reduce the turnaround time and improve compliance.

These are just few things which we really focused upon in the span of a year and the results started to show in. 

Increasing the Onboarding Rate by 12%