Designing a More Intuitive Canva Experience (PRD)

Redesigned Canva’s onboarding and early user experience to improve conversion and engagement by introducing interactive previews, simplified user flows, and personalised entry points. The work focused on reducing drop-offs across the acquisition funnel and helping users quickly realise product value within their first session.

Adding ‘Smart Preview’ and smoothening the walkthrough

To improve the onboarding process, the users need to be sold upon the ease, variety and strength of tools at their disposal on Canva.

Contributors	Product team, Design Team, Engineering team, Analytics team.
Status	Draft
Submitted on	Friday, September 6, 2024
Version	1.0

1.    Problem Alignment

The current new user conversion rate on Canva is below expectations, impacting overall user acquisition goals. Improving this rate is critical to boosting platform growth and engagement.

a.     High Level Approach

There are two conversion funnels being focused on in this solution.

      i.         The user clicked on an ad, then came to the landing page and then signed-up as a new user.

     ii.         The new user post sign-up used the platform to create and engage with the community.

Proposed solution is: -

·      Incorporate Canva’s latest “Love Your Work” (Canva, 2024) campaign to target users through ads tailored for different kind of individuals on different platforms like YouTube, Instagram, Snapchat, LinkedIn, job boards etc.

·      Add a ‘Smart Preview’ feature on the landing page, where the new user can hover over the various options to get a preview of the template or what the option does.

·      Along with the pre-sign-up preview sandbox, showcase the enhanced version of the same design (that the user just made) which can be achieved using Canva pro.

·      Instead of having a detailed question list (which should be given as a preference selection later on) have most of the common options readily available on the drop-down menu so that tailored templates can be suggested right from the get-go.

·      Post sign-up offer few of the Canva pro features for free for 24 hours (without the need to upload credit card details) for them to try out a new design for their projects.

b.    Narrative

Today, a new potential user has found an ad of Canva on their most frequented choice of social media website, have landed on the front page and is now browsing through the various options, doesn’t quite grasp the gamut of tools available to them and then leaves.

Canva currently has a total of 175 million users, and 53% of those are aged between 18 and 34 (Walsh, 2023), and due to no fault of their own, they have a shorter attention span and need to be sold on the capabilities of Canva within the first few minutes. Hence, it’s a considerable issue which needs to be addressed immediately.

A new user can be someone who uses a different tool for their design purposes and has arrived on Canva to see how it’s any different from their current choice of software. Another user can be who is completely new to the design world and is scoping out options to start their journey and to see how Canva stacks up against the rest as an intuitive and beginner friendly design studio option.

Currently, we are short on our user acquisition goal for both these kinds of customers. Some of the most common user personas we are targeting are: -

·      Small Business Owners: As a small business owner, I need easy branding and marketing tools so I can create professional content without hiring designers.

·      Educators and Students: As an educator/student, I need simple tools for creating presentations and materials so I can produce engaging content with limited design skills.

·      Social Media Managers: As a social media manager, I need customizable templates and scheduling tools so I can efficiently create on-brand content across platforms.

·      Marketing Professionals: As a marketing professional, I need customizable graphics for campaigns so I can create compelling materials under tight deadlines.

·      Content Creators/Influencers: As a content creator, I need templates for various platforms so I can quickly produce engaging visuals that maintain my brand identity.

c.     Goals

      i.         Meet and improve the user acquisition goals.

     ii.         Boost platform growth, customer engagement rate and customer satisfaction.

    iii.         Metrics

·      North Star Metric – [Number of successful onboarded users (who saved a project)/Total number of newly onboarded users] x 100

·      Other Metrics – User Acquisition rate, Engagement rate, Feature Adoption rate, Churn rate, CAC, DAU, MAU, CSAT, NPS.

d.    Non-Goals

      i.         We’re not focusing on upselling Canva pro subscriptions at the moment.

     ii.         As that is beyond the scope of this particular PRD.

    iii.         Hence, we won’t be tracking CLTV and Conversion Rate (for paid users).

2.    Solution Alignment

a.     Key Features

      i.         Smart Preview – a small preview window on the various options on the main landing page showcasing the template possibilities.

     ii.         Including a ‘Profile’ tab on the overhead bar, which’ll be segmented according to various user personas, instead of having an exhaustive questionnaire.

    iii.         Having a section where to adjust preferences according to the needs and requirements of the user.

b.    Future considerations

      i.         We can gamify the experience for free users. When they save and launch a template for the community if they cross a certain number of ‘follows’ and ‘bookmarks’ they can be given access to a certain set of Canva Pro features, in order to pitch an up-sell.

c.     Key flows

User Interaction and design (solution): -

      i.         The new user clicks on a targeted ad on a social media platform and reaches on the Canva landing Page.

     ii.         Now, the user has the option of either signing up via the ‘Sign up’ button or ‘Start designing today’ button or browsing through the offerings on the overhead tab with the options ‘Design Spotlight’, ‘Business’ and ‘Education’.

    iii.         Now, in these dropdown lists, as you hover over the options, a small preview window with a gif will play to showcase the option being browsed.

    iv.         Now, on the overhead tab we’ll keep a ‘Profiles’ dropdown menu which’ll have curated tools and templates ready-to-go for the various user personas (instead of having to go through an exhaustive questionnaire, which might lead to user drop off).

     v.         Once an option is selected, it takes you to a preview sandbox with a simple walkthrough, with limited yet commonly required tools for the user to play around and see their results.

    vi.         Then, once the user creates a certain design, Canva will detect it and then suggest an enhanced (using its ai capabilities) template just to showcase how much the user can achieve using the Canva Pro tools compared to the free version.

  vii.         Now, to save the design the user will have to sign-up and create their account using their preferred choice of email id or social media profile.

 viii.         Once they’ve signed-up, they’ll be going through the first stage of questionnaire (which will be transferred to the User preferences section, which the user can edit and choose later on).

    ix.         Now, as soon as the user is in, they’ll have a saved project and now can explore the entire gamut of tools and templates at their disposal.

     x.         Post sign-up and saved project, the user will be given access to few Canva Pro tools for 24 hours for them to play around with.

3.    Launch plan

Various phases (with suggestive and tentative time frames) that will get this feature list from ideation to end users:

·      Phase 1: Research & Requirements Gathering - 3 weeks

·      Phase 2: Design & Prototype - 3 weeks

·      Phase 3: Development - 4 weeks

·      Phase 4: Testing & Iteration - 3 weeks

·      Phase 5: Rollout - 1 week

a.     Release Criteria

      i.         Functionality – All ‘must-have’ requirements must be met and tested.

     ii.         Usability – All new pages and workflows must match the visual aesthetics and design of the existing features.

    iii.         Reliability/Performance – Implementation of the new features must not slow down the experience of browsing through the platform.

b.    Key Milestones

Target Date	Milestone	Description	Exit Criteria
YYYY-MM-DD	Pilot	Internal testing with employees only	No P0 or P1 bugs on a rolling 7-day basis
YYYY-MM-DD	Beta	Early cohort of 100 customers	At least 70 customers would be disappointed if we took it away
YYYY-MM-DD	Early Access	Invite-only customers from sales	At least 1 win from every major competitor
YYYY-MM-DD	Launch	All customers in current markets	Measure and monitor

c.     Operations Checklist

Team	Prompt	Y/N	Action (If yes)
Analytics	Do you need additional tracking?		Work with [person] on logging
Sales	Do you need sales enablement materials?		Work with [person]
Marketing	Does this impact shared KPI?		Work with [person] on goal adjustment
Customer Success	Do you need to update support content or training?		Work with [person] on updates
Product Marketing	Do you need a GTM plan? (e.g. pricing, packaging, positioning,		Work with [person] with at least [x] weeks’ notice to kick-off workstreams
Partners	Will this impact any external partners?		Work with [person] on communication plan
Globalization	Are you launching in multiple countries?		Work with [person]
Risk	Does this expose a risk vector?		Work with [person]
Legal	Are there potential legal ramifications?		Work with [person]

d.    Questions

Below is a list of questions to be addressed as a result of this requirements document:

      i.         How will we communicate the features to customers?

     ii.         Will we have to support the social media platform ad issues (if the link of the ad on various websites isn’t functioning properly)?

    iii.         How many users do we intend to support initially?

    iv.         What kind of UX testing will be done?

4.    Reference list

Canva (2024). Canva | Love your work | Extended. [online] YouTube. Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_MPlx02K39o [Accessed 6 Sep. 2024].

Walsh, M. (2023). Canva Statistics (2023) — The Essential Facts and Figures. [online] Style Factory. Available at: https://www.stylefactoryproductions.com/blog/canva-statistics.