Onboarding project | Urban Company

Urban Company (UC) is India's largest online personal & home care service.

It lets customers book reliable & high-quality services — beauty treatments, massages, haircuts, home cleaning, appliance repair & servicing, house painting, pest control, and more — delivered by trained professionals conveniently at home.

It gives customers complete flexibility in choosing a date and time, a feature highly valued by busy professionals. A published rate card ensures complete transparency in the pricing.

Define the ideal customer profile (ICP)?

The below ICPs have been created based on ~32 conversations with existing UC users

Criteria	ICP 1	ICP 2	ICP 3
Name
Age	25 - 35	30 - 40	22 - 30
Gender	Female	Male	Male / Female
Location	Mumbai	Bengaluru / Gurgaon
Living Status	Staying with Spouse	Staying with Spouse	Single or with Flatmates
Income levels	15 - 20 LPA	20 - 30 LPA	8 - 15 LPA
Most used apps	1. Social - FB, Linkedin, Instagram 2. Finance - Groww, PayTM 3. OTTs - Netflix / Hotstar / Prime	1. Social - Instagram, LinkedIn, Twitter, GrapeVine 2. Fin - Zerodha / Groww / GPay, PhonePe 3. OTTs - Netflix / Hotstar / JioCinema	1. Social - Instagram / X / Snap 2. Finance - PhonePe / Cred 3. Entertainment - Netflix
Time Spent On	1. Primarily at/with work 2. Then with family & friends 3. Barely any free time for self	1. Primarily at work 2. Then leisure / spouse 3. Movies, night outings	1. Primarily at work 2. Hangout with friend, outings, movies, sports
Money Spent On	1. House expenses (incl. of EMIs) 2. Travel (outstation) for Leisure In-city weekly outings 5. Savings / Investing	1. House expenses (incl. of EMIs), 2. Leisure Travel 3. Savings / Investing / Trading Towards Parents	1. House/Rent expenses 2. Leisure activties EMIs (2W, Mobile, Edu Loan) Savings (SIPs)
Content Consumption	General News, Instagram Feeds on Health, YouTube Shorts/Reels	1. Financial - ETMoney, Finshots 2. General - from social or Podcasts 3. Social - Feed from Instagram / Twitter / LinkedIn1	General news (inshorts, youtube, podcasts) Social Feed - Insta / Snap Music - YouTube, JioSaavn
Primary Use of UC	Beauty Services	Cleaning Services	Home Cleaning
Secondary Use of UC	Cleaning Services	Split btwn Repairs/Installations & Beauty Services (for themselves or spouses)	Beauty Services (hair, massage)
Frequency of use case	Monthly	Monthly	Once in 2 Months
Avg Spend per Booking	1100 - 1300	700 - 1100	800 - 1000
Primary Driver of UC	Quality of Work Done by professionals	Ease of Booking & Scheduling ; Quality of Work with UC Guarantee	Quality of Work done by the professionals, Ease of Booking & Scheduling a service
Other Options Explored	Explored salons, but stuck with UC for "at-home" factor	Explored through MyGate, Adda, but stuck with UC due to trust on work done by UC professionals	No
Problem statement	Dependable self-care services at home, without paying exorbitantly high charges	Reliable home services, with minimal need of supervision at convenient (not cheaper) pricing	Easy-to-Book & Reliable services without pinching pocket

Define user goals and JTBD

		ICP 1	ICP 2	ICP 3
Primary	Functional	Want to feel refreshed	Keep home (elements) in functioning condition	Wants to keep clean living conditions, avoid self-cleaning
Secondary	Personal	Obtain self-care at home	Obtain flexible solutions without researching a lot	Obtain flexible, pocket-friendly services
Least priority	Social	Look Good	N.A.	N.A.

For ICP 1 & ICP 2, they use both the services - Home & Beauty, just at different frequencies. The goals therefore are the same, just in a different order.

Do user research to validate or invalidate these goals

ICPs above have 3 requirements / pain points - flexibility, reliability & value-for-money, irrespective of the services they choose to use on Urban Company.

Most of them have explored other places to avail the services, but have stuck with UC - for reasons mentioned under each ICP.

Onboarding Teardown

I have done a Teardown on the Urban Company App, since 85% of the Traffic comes from mobile app. Also, I have initiated the onboarding from discovery via Play Store, which brings in close to 70% of the app traffic.

I have taken the booking journey of AC Repair, since it is one of the first use cases that ICPs have used Urban Company for.

Urban Company - Onboarding.pdf

Defining your Activation Metric

Activation Metric Definition	Explanation
User Books & Avails 1 service within {7} days of App dwnld	UC value prop is flexibility & quality, which is resonated by its loyal user base. Hence booking & experiencing a service is pivotal. Therefore, availing a service (without cancellation) within a Time Frame is important.
User Books 2nd service within 30 days of 1st Booking	Most ICPs above have stipulated a monthly usage pattern of UC. Hence, I would like users to book a 2nd service within 30 days of the first.
User buying UC+ Subscription	A UC+ subscription, with an upfront payment, is a commitment form user' end. This action can be done only if the users sees him/herself using UC in the near future, only then the 10% savings makes sense.
User books a home service AND a beauty service within 15 days of each other	Most of the ICPs have indicated living with spouses & frequency of 'Monthly'. For men & women, the primary use case has been Beauty & Home care, respectively. Bundling these two services in 15 days means more wallet share of the household for UC.

Metric	Explanation	Rationale
Avg. Time User Takes from Exploring a Service to Booking	This is essentially Time-to-Value for UC. The longer this time, the higher the drop-off by new users.	For news users with a higher than normal Time here, I would nudge them with a small discount or reward
Ratio of Bookings to Cancellation	A high/increasing cancellation rate indicates indecision in new users' minds (even post booking)	While cancellation is free, UC wants to avoid this.
Avg Time to Experience first Service	Typical users explore UC on weekends, sometimes where slots are not available. This might lead to drop-off & delay their first booking.	On the supply side, I would indicate to the 'PRO's that this booking is from a new user. Hence, requesting them to provide services at the earliest slot possible.
Purchases made from 'Frequently Added Together' segment	This metrics indicates that UC has earned users' trust in its first interaction.	Depending on services that see highest purchases from this segment, UC can create campaigns in its acquisition efforts

The End

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Hi there! We'll take this one step at a time

Projects and assignments are crucial for learning at GrowthX and we're here to support you with anything you need. If you struggle with a blank canvas, use this boilerplate to start. Remember, this is a flexible resource—tweak it as needed. Some sections might not apply to your product and you might come up with great ideas not listed here, don't let be restricted.

Go wild and dive deep—we love well-researched documents that cover all bases with depth and understanding.

Define the ideal customer profile (ICP)?

Do user calls to understand the customer for your product and come up with two ICP's.

(there are separate tables for both B2C and B2B products, put down your your ICP’s in a Table Format, use this as a reference.
This table makes it super clear for anyone to understand who your users are and what differentiates them. It also helps bring out the various details you have gone into understanding your users better)

B2C Table

Criteria	User 1	User 2
Name
Age
Demographics
(refer the table below)
Need
Pain Point
Solution
Behaviour
(refer the table below)
Perceived Value of Brand
Marketing Pitch
Goals
Frequency of use case
Average Spend on the product
Value Accessibility to product
Value Experience of the product
Notes

B2B Table:

Criteria	ICP1	ICP2
Name
Company Size
Location
Funding Raised
Industry Domain
Stage of the company
Organization Structure
Decision Maker
Decision Blocker
Frequency of use case
Products used
in workplace
Organisational
Goals
Preferred Outreach Channels
Conversion Time
GMV
Growth of company
Motivation
Organization Influence
Tools Utilized in workspace
Decision Time

Define user goals and JTBD

Understand user goals and their JTBD on the platform. When looking at user goals, look at 4 themes, user goals will always be within one of the four.

Personal Goals
Social Goals
Functional Goals
Financial Goals

For Cult:

Personal Goals —I want to lose weight for my upcoming vacation
Social Goals —I want to look good in all photos

For RazorpayX:

Functional Goals—I want to automate and track 50+ vendor payouts in a week
Financial Goals —I want to be tax compliant so I’m not fined later

Do user research to validate or invalidate these goals.

You want to talk to users and understand why they're signing up. What's the end goal for them and for what job are they "hiring" your product for.

Onboarding Teardown

What should the teardown include?

The entire onboarding process. Just like we did in the deep dive session —

Start right from your homepage or App listing page
Take screenshots of every single page and interaction throughout the onboarding right till activation.
Start by putting yourself in your customer's shoes. Have empathy for their pain points and then analyze the page/screen.

Here’s a list of things we’d recommend you evaluate your onboarding on:

Does this page/screen help get my job done?
How am I feeling while being on boarded for this product?
What part of the onboarding experience is giving me that aha moment?
What screens would you change/add and why?

Also, evaluate your onboarding on the cognitive biases.

Don't worry, you don't have to include biases but it's a good practice to start tagging things to their respective biases.
(We identify issues when we are able to tag/name them, yes another bias)