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Today’s case study focuses on Preply's onboarding flow and its impact on product and marketing. I will also highlight 2 experiments that could help improve the product experience and Preply’s marketing. As usual, feel free to skip to sections that interest you.

Table of Contents

• But First - What is Preply?

• Anti-Duolingo caught my eye

• Come for Anti-Duolingo, Stay from the Onboarding

• Opportunities for improvement and experiments

• Comparing Preply vs Duolingo vs Babbel

• Conclusion: Using onboarding for a better product …

But First - What is Preply?

Preply is a learning app that matches its users to real tutors. While it started off as a language-learning app (and still primarily focuses on that), it has expanded to teach accounting, mathematics, art, science, and, if you can name it, Preply has a tutor. The company, launched in 2012 during the early consumer app wave, has raised over $100 million in capital and hosts over 100,000 tutors from 160 countries.

Anti-Duolingo caught my eye

After writing Why Is Duolingo So Crazy, A friend shared Preply’s ads with me because he found their anti-Duolingo positioning provocative, funny, and interesting. I thought the ads were interesting, too, because they regularly dunk on Duo (the owl) and Duolingo’s product features. In recent times, I haven’t seen many consumer apps go direct and attack their biggest competitor.

Here’s an example of a Preply Instagram post - you’d notice how it immediately goes after Duolingo by mimicking Duo and mocking streaks.

So, I downloaded Preply after seeing its Instagram posts and more ads everywhere. As I signed up, I put on my technology professional hat🧢. I loved the company’s positioning, core messaging and onboarding. So let’s get into it.

Come for Anti-Duolingo, Stay from the Onboarding

Preply highlights its value proposition in the first screen and pushes new users to get started.

After clicking, users are prompted to answer a few questions. These questions are typical when apps want to understand each user and offer the optimal configuration.

Onboarding surveys like this not only help build user profiles, but also help teams learn more about users and further personalise messaging (ads & owned channels), and the user experience.

I liked the questions that Preply asked. Here they are:

After answering all the questions, Preply then presented me with tutor options to choose from. A listing of all the Spanish teachers on the platform, with my exact parameters selected as filters. This works great - I can see the filters selected and can modify them as I wish. The page also narrows the results from nearly 11,000 to only about 400, with the top 10 results on the first page.

That’s not all. Preply uses this data to reach me via email, push notifications, and ads. It offers 50% off with a deadline and communicates my need for a Spanish tutor. This is a perfect way to personalise a product’s offering via CRM and ads.

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Opportunities for improvement and experiments

While Preply’s onboarding and data use are good, there’s an opportunity to improve this experience. Here are 2 tests I’d run to improve this process.

1. A visual indicator of progress during onboarding. Is the user answering 10 questions? 20? I had no idea. A progress bar or an initial message indicating how many questions this survey has or how long it’ll take would be helpful for new users - learning a language & paying teachers is a big commitment.

   

   Note: These are prototypes, so elements might be misplaced. Created with Replit.

   I fed one screenshot into Replit and created a prototype. This is what Preply should look like. Note the progress bar at the bottom. This bar can also be tested at the top or with other elements to improve visibility. The goal here is to see if more users will complete the onboarding survey.

2. Expanded data usage in CRM and ads. This is where the meat and work are. Since Preply knows my intentions and collects data through the onboarding survey, it can customise and further personalise the emails based on the Spanish tutors available (names and prices), my request for English-speaking tutors, and my availability.
   
   An example email subject could be: It’s 12 PM, Julieta is ready to teach you. Such an email could be delivered at exactly 12 PM. Preply could build a similar playbook for ads - personalising them further and displaying them to targeted user segments. With these tests, we would aim to improve open and engagement rates for emails and notifications, click-through rates for ads, and overall sign-ups.

Comparing Preply vs Duolingo vs Babbel

How does Preply’s onboarding stack up against its competitors? In Why Is Duolingo So Crazy, I make a case for Duolingo as a fun learning game. 

Despite this statement, products like Duolingo still have learning outcomes. Their philosophies or theses for achieving that outcome are vastly different, but they’re all trying to get users to the same place through different methods and practices.

I downloaded Duolingo and another learning app, Babbel, to compare onboarding, and while they’re similar to Preply’s, both apps implement the first recommendation.

They communicate the length of the onboarding survey, present a visual indicator as the user progresses through onboarding, and use that data to influence the product itself.

Conclusion: Using onboarding for a better product and marketing experience

For anyone building onboarding experiences, here are some questions to ask.

1. What do we need to know about this user that we can only get during onboarding?

2. How can data from onboarding improve the user experience of the product itself?

3. How can we display visual indicators that situate the user, show progress and guide them through onboarding?

4. Beyond collecting data, how can we use it to influence copy, personalise communications, and further influence the user lifecycle (via CRM or advertising)?

5. Do we need to ask the user all of these questions during onboarding? Can wecollect some data points later in the user journey? In my opinion, Babbel asked too many questions, and I wonder if they could collect some of this data after signing up.

Onboarding experiences and surveys can go beyond data collection and influence how we deliver the product itself. I hope you liked this case study and it made you think about unique ways to use onboarding data at work. Please share with colleagues and friends. If you’ve got 2 minutes, please help take the survey below. See you next time!

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