Mixpanel's Onramp Methods

Editor's Note: LinkedIn doesn't allow co-authors. This piece is by?Brent Palmer edited as part of series by Molly Norris Walker.

Dear Readers,

I'm Brent, the design manager for the growth team at Mixpanel.

When new users sign up for a free plan, they can either learn the mechanics of using Mixpanel with our demo datasets or get activated with "real work" utilizing out-of-the-box template dashboards.?

In this article, I'll illustrate the evolution of both onramp approaches and how each impacts activation metrics.?

Bonus: Rewatch a YouTube Live chat with Ran Liu, Molly Norris Walker, and I about this topic.

Just keep going, Brent Palmer, Design Manager, Mixpanel

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Demo dashboards designed to inspire

The Goal: Demo dashboards hugely influence the evaluation step of the new user journey. They function as a gallery—demonstrating what's possible in Mixpanel. We're confident new users will respond emotionally to the visual appeal and shorten the time to implement their instance.?

Our data visualizations are gorgeous. Mixpanel’s stunning dashboards "wow" new users and compel them to play around, deconstruct, or reproduce the demo dashboards.?

If a product manager is responsible for performance, they may ask, "What should I be building?" and "What metrics should I care about?" Mixpanel lets new users break apart dummy examples, allowing new users to learn the tool's mechanics safely in a non-destructive way.

The Result: One of the areas where we've seen success in implementation is startup customer segments, where the buyer and champion are typically the same people. There are a couple of hypotheses here.

1. We're seeing a significant percentage decrease in time between the unique view of the demo dashboard and the first connection of a customer's data set. We call this median time to implementation, which measures how long it takes new signups to begin passing data to Mixpanel. It's a decent proxy because it measures a customer's commitment to the platform—and tests our hypothesis that demo dashboards inspire new customers to act. We want them to start replicating what they see in the first one or two sessions.
2. We also monitor the time from signup to the first saved report, for both new users who viewed a demo dashboard against those who did not view a demo dashboard. We believe new users will feel comfortable on the second, actual pass because they're not learning the product mechanic from scratch. They can use live data to get to real value fast because they've dissected a similar report or data visualization.

The problem is getting to reality—how do new users get to the beauty of the demo B2B SaaS dashboard? Enter templates.

Template dashboards designed to activate

The Goal: As a team, we want to lower the lift for less technical product managers and enable teams to use data to make decisions quickly. Templates fit into our onboarding strategy of building new users' confidence in using Mixpanel to make data-informed decisions.?

We introduce new users to sensible defaults, making it easier to get up and running with their product data. Sensible defaults eliminate pauses in thought and get the new user to value in less time.?

Templates reduce the number of choices for the new user and diminish the room for input mistakes.?

Customers want direction around metrics to track, advice on how to structure their data, and building the necessary reports. By providing a bit more structure and guidance, we hypothesize that templates will help users get over the intimidation of a blank canvas and, in the process, learn this new way of thinking. The result? Build confidence in Mixpanel and product analytics more broadly.

The Result: We've seen greater template utilization with existing customers, but new users also successfully leverage template dashboards. We have a couple of hypotheses here.

1. We believe existing customers utilize templates as shortcuts in their ad-hoc dashboard building. Users who engage with templates at least once have a better retention rate than users who don't. Qualitative feedback suggests this, and many existing users wanted an expanded set of templates, even user-generated ones.
2. The conversion rate from signup to saved report with new users improved slightly. We cut the time down by a couple of hours, which suggests new users trust Mixpanel in its rendering of their data. New users are satisfied with their "work" and are confident in the dashboard Mixpanel generated.

What’s next?

We're kicking around the idea of making demo dashboards un-gated and viewable to the users without requiring signup. Turn demo dashboards into a proper lead-generation webpage—make the demo projects truly public from an authorization perspective. We like this design principle because it fits within our brand, #BeOpen.?

At Mixpanel, we strive to help anyone who makes a digital product understand their customer data. The public demo dashboard will meet its goals if a bunch of new users signup and create accounts from a viewed demo dashboard, among other success metrics.

Concluding Thoughts

Templates and demo dashboards fit our activation strategy and are surprisingly complementary. We see a world where demo dashboards are fit for purpose, inspiring and demonstrating the possibility. Templates get new users up and running quickly with live answers to their product data. Being open in our product principles means we provide the customer with choices. Hop right in and implement Mixpanel, or simulate what analysis might be like by viewing beautiful B2B SaaS dashboards. The option is yours!

About the Author

Brent is a product design manager and strategist. Formerly, @fast @zendesk @cision @paypal alumni. University of Texas grad. Data junkie who loves a good dashboard.?

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