Seven became one.
7 minutes of database hosts, FTP keys, and DNS A-records compressed into one click and 20 seconds.
Spicom's legacy install flow asked merchants to configure their own database, server, theme, domain, plugins, content, and activation — seven separate steps with 21 form fields and a 60% drop-off rate. We rebuilt the entire flow as one button. The work didn't disappear; the system just runs it. The simulator below replays the compression.
- Role
- UI/UX Designer · Research → prototype → ship
- Scope
- Onboarding · Activation · Workflow simplification
- Timeline
- Apr 2024 – Jun 2024 (7 weeks)
- Team
- 1 PM · 2 eng · 1 designer (me)
Six in ten merchants quit before they finished their first site.
The legacy installation flow was a 7-step technical configuration wizard. Database setup, server config, theme picker, domain DNS, plugin chooser, content seeding, final activation — each its own modal, each its own jargon. 60% of trial users abandoned before reaching their first live site.
Trial-user friction
60%“What's an A-record? Why do I need an FTP key? I just wanted to launch a store.”
Setup time
7 min“The first time I tried it took me about 7 minutes — half of which was reading documentation.”
The form was asking the user to do the system's job.
Three diagnoses surfaced from the research, each pointing to the same root cause — the system had been designed around what was easy to expose, not what merchants wanted to do.
01
Each step felt like a separate product.
Database, server, domain, plugins — each step had its own UI patterns, terminology, and validation logic. Merchants had to context-switch seven times to finish one task.
02
The form fields asked for the wrong things.
Merchants don't have an opinion on MySQL ports or DNS A-records. They have an opinion on whether their site is live. The form was asking the user to do work the system should do.
03
Drop-off compounded across steps.
Each step lost ~12% of users. Compounded across seven steps, that's 60% drop-off — even when each individual step seemed 'simple enough' in isolation.
Move the work, don't hide it. Default the choice. Show the outcome.
One screen. One button. Three product rules, each with a specific stakeholder concern behind it.
01
for merchants
Move the work — don't hide it.
The system provisions the database, sets DNS, deploys the theme. Merchants don't see jargon disappear behind a black box; they see a progress bar and a working site at the end.
02
for engineering
Default the choice.
Every step had a 'most-merchants-want-this' answer. We picked it. Merchants who wanted custom settings could opt in via a 'Customize' link, but 92% never opened it.
03
for growth
Show the outcome.
The end-state — a live site at yoursite.com — is visible from the first screen. Merchants see what they're getting before they click. Trial-to-paid lifted +20% from this alone.
The work didn't disappear. The system runs it.
One click on the user side. Seven backend tasks on the system side, running in sequence — Postgres provisioning, nginx + SSL, theme cloning, DNS, plugin install, content seeding, activation. Click below to watch both layers happen at once.
User view · what they see
Install your site
yoursite.com · ~20 seconds
Same merchants. Different flow. Variant B won by 4.2σ.
We split-tested the old wizard against the one-click install for 60 days, sampling ~3,800 trial merchants. Variant B (the redesign) won across every single tracked metric.
Completion rate
60% drop-off → none
Time to first live site
median across cohort
SUS score
System Usability Scale
Trial-to-paid
downstream conversion lift
Completion went from 40 to 100.
Measured over 60 days of A/B testing on ~3,800 trial merchants. Tracked through completion analytics, time-to-first-site logs, SUS questionnaires, and revenue dashboards.
Hero metric
Installation completion rate
Same trial pool, same product, different flow. The 60% drop-off vanished — every merchant who started the install finished it. The downstream lift to trial-to-paid followed naturally.
+20%
Trial-to-paid
downstream conversion
−30%
Support tickets
install-related
20s
Median time to live
was 7 minutes
100%
Task success rate
post-launch sample
SUS 87
System Usability Scale
was 58
Trial user · post-launch interview
“This is the cleanest install flow I've used. It feels like I clicked a button and a website appeared.”
Four lessons that traveled with me.
- 01
When the user has to do work the system could do, the system is broken — not the user. Move the work; don't simplify the wording.
- 02
Defaults aren't a fallback — they're the design. Choose the right answer for 90% of users; let the other 10% opt into customisation.
- 03
Compounding drop-off is the silent killer of multi-step flows. Every step is a coin flip; seven coin flips lose 60% of users even if each one is 'easy'.
- 04
Show the outcome before the work. Merchants who saw a live yoursite.com preview converted 20% better — even before they'd configured anything.