Designing Smarter Onboarding for Digital Freight Forwarders

Background

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iContainers is a pioneer in digital freight forwarding, offering end-to-end logistics solutions. Traditionally a manual industry reliant on phone calls and spreadsheets, iContainers revolutionized the field with instant quotes and online bookings, catering to individuals, moving companies, importers, exporters, and freight forwarders.

Objective

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The goal was to streamline iContainers’ onboarding process. User personas—importers, exporters, agents, and individuals relocating—determined critical factors such as pricing, legal terms, sales team assignment, and restrictions on shippable goods, etc. However, the existing registration process used a dropdown field for persona identification, resulting in:

• Incorrect user categorization, with majority of users selecting the random options to complete the form quickly.
• Misplaced leads between teams, resulting in inefficiencies and poor conversion rates.

My Role: Designer & Product Owner

I led the redesign of the onboarding process, ensuring alignment between business goals and user needs. Key responsibilities included:

• Conducting user research to identify pain points and streamline workflows.
• Designing scalable user flows, wireframes, and prototypes.
• Establishing a reusable component-based design system for consistency.
• Collaborating with developers to ensure accurate implementation.
• Validating solutions through usability testing and iterative refinements.

Discovery

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Business Pain Points

• Frequent misclassification of leads, especially between B2B and freight forwarders.
• Marketing teams manually reassigning unassigned or unattended leads.
• Sales teams were overburdened with correcting misclassified leads.

User Pain Points

• Confusion caused by irrelevant rates and workflows.
• Redundant processes forced users to re-register or repeat information during sales calls.

Observations

• 60% of users selected the first dropdown option to complete the form quickly.
• A/B testing of content and dropdown order failed to eliminate selection bias.
• Lack of trust in the system due to poor lead management also impacted other parts of the product.

Key Solutions & Visuals

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Replaced the dropdown field with an interactive questionnaire to accurately segment users based on their specific needs. Created a conversational and visually engaging onboarding flow, ensuring users felt guided and understood.

Personalized the registration screen with persona-based visuals and tailored USPs, making the process more intuitive and relatable for users.

Results

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Design Process

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• Research: Analyzed CRM data and Hotjar insights to study current lead routing processes and user behavior. Conducted surveys on registration exit intent to identify drop-off reasons.
• Definition: Created detailed personas and problem statements to inform and guide the design process.
• Ideation: Explored various onboarding concepts, including sales-driven and self-onboarding approaches, to align with both business and customer needs.
• Implementation: Acted as the Product Owner, collaborating with business and tech teams to deliver the solution. Leveraged the existing design system to streamline implementation.
• Testing: Conducted A/B testing with 20% of users in key regions, refining copy multiple times for clarity before the global rollout.

Learnings

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• Behavior Insights are Critical: Observing user tendencies helped refine the onboarding flow and reduce friction.
• Collaboration Enhances Outcomes: Working closely with sales and marketing teams provided actionable insights to improve efficiency.
• Iterative Testing Matters: Prototyping and usability testing ensured a polished final design.