The Stride app – a new first-time-user experinece

Stride’s mission is to simplify the challenges of being an independent worker by helping them handle the complexities of getting coverage, managing their finances, and taxes – all in one convenient place.

One of the products Stride offers is a free mobile app that helps independent workers save on taxes with a mileage tracker and bookkeeping capabilities. Today, about 2000 workers are downloading the app for their mileage tracker, The vast majority of these users work in the ride-share and gig industries.

Customers downloading the Stride App are looking to save money on their taxes by tracking their mileage, but they might not be aware of other ways they can save money. Furthermore, the app experience was not intuitive, the core functionality was not easy to find, the app didn’t deliver on its value (helping you save money on your taxes), and it didn’t provide the support and guidance a worker might need to navigate all the complexities around taxes and getting coverage. Resulting in poor user engagement, which we can see in their inbound retention rate

Business problem statement:

Users may not fully comprehend the wide range of features offered by the Stride app, including mileage/expense tracking, income tracking, insurance, and deals. This lack of awareness and engagement affects retention and diminishes our ability to establish trust with users so that when they are in need of insurance, they choose Stride.

User problem statements:

Mental model: New independent workers who are unaware of what they should do to maximize their earnings

New independent workers might not be familiar with the things they could do to save money on taxes and effectively manage their earnings. They might know they should track their mileage for tax purposes, which led them to download the Stride app. This situation makes them feel uncertain and occasionally anxious because they might be unsure about what else they should be doing to maximize earnings as a gig worker efficiently.

Mental model: I downloaded a mileage tracker – why am I seeing all these ads?

As a gig worker looking for a mileage tracker app, I feel quite overwhelmed with Stride due to its insurance offerings and other advertisements. This makes me frustrated because they seem very intrusive and disrupt my workflow. Consequently, Stride does not appear to be a trustworthy app. It’s unclear why they’re pushing me to purchase health insurance and other products through them.

After conducting moderated interviews with 20 of our customers, it became very clear that workers who are new to independent work, especially gig work, are unaware of all the things they need to do to maximize their earnings and save on their taxes. They’re downloading the app because we offer a free mileage tracker, and they know they should track their miles to save money on their taxes, but they don’t know what other expenses they need to track or how to go about getting benefits on their own. There is also the issue that Stride might be known as the free mileage tracker app. They don’t see Stride as a holistic tool that can help them manage their earnings, track their deductions, and gain access to benefits.

Based on these findings, it became very clear to me that we should invision an experience that offers the best mileage tracker app there is out there, and delivers on the promise of helping you save money on your taxes right away, the more we do this, the more we would be able to nature users into explore other money savings features like our expense tracker and portable benefits.

Hypothesis 

We believe that the sooner we deliver on our promise of savings through the mileage tracker, the more likely users will explore other money-saving features, resulting in increased long-term engagement with the app. This approach should create a positive cycle where early value demonstration encourages users to stick around and engage more deeply with Stride’s full range of cost-saving functionalities. Will know this is true once we see an increase of 5% or more in both: 1-day and 7-days rotation rates. leading to better overall feature adoption and more qualified users for OEP. 
Based on these findings, it became very clear to me that we should invision an experience that offers the best mileage tracker app there is out there, and delivers on the promise of helping you save money on your taxes right away, the more we do this, the more we would be able to nature users into explori other money savings features like our expense tracker and portable benefits.

We explore many different concepts like

• Exploring a guided tour experience that walks the user through all the things they can do in the app
• The checklist approach
• The mileage tracker focus.

All of them had a nurturing element that provided users with knowledgeable tips and insights in a snackable as a way to inform and educate users on all the ways they can save money on taxes with Stride. Below are some some of the early explorations that illustrate the concepts above.

Ultimately we landed on the concept we call the quick starter, which in lenses focuses on showing users a set of shortcuts to all the money- activities the user can take in the app. This was done. This was done with the goal of honoring the user’s mental model of wanting to use a mileage tracker, but also bringing awareness to other money-saving features Stride offers.

What we found is that the experience resonated with first-time users, but with our existing user base where we saw an engagement increase with other fetures of the app that were not widely used before.

The Quick Starter Feature Set

We’ve managed to increase 1-day retention from ~33% to ~36% thus far and 7-day retention from ~22.5% to ~24%.