From Curiosity to Confidence: Designing Jar’s Onboarding Journey
Jar is a fintech startup empowering millions of underserved Indians to build savings. Jar is transforming traditional financial barriers into opportunities for those who have historically struggled to build their savings.
Our solution addresses over 200 million Indians - from gig workers and small business owners to farmers and daily wage earners. With $60M+ in funding from Tiger Global, Rocketship, and other marquee investors, building on the vision of scaling financial inclusion across India.
My role in the project
The onboarding experience was key to value creation for business & users alike. My approach was to merge analytical insights with creative direction to shape the project foundation. Guided team excellence in storyboarding, visual design, and motion, while ensuring data-driven design decisions.
This project pioneered two new collaborative frameworks: one optimising design team dynamics, and another enhancing cross-functional partnerships by making it a company-wide effort.
Users & their reasons for saving
Onboarding proved to be a critical driver of business success for multiple reasons
✦ Highest conversion rates for Daily Savings, our primary revenue generator
✦ Week-1 cancellations were primarily due to incomplete feature understanding
✦ Daily Savings users were 3X-6X more likely to use other products
✦ Active Daily Savings users became product advocates
Onboarding that inspires action
Reimagining the onboarding experience
Where the challenge existed…
Our user research revealed a critical insight: Our existing onboarding wasn't sticking! (It was failing its core job)
Users retained minimal information about app features and benefits, leading to poor recall of Jar's core value proposition.
Target #1
D0 Users who created an account but did not start daily saving on Jar.
Objective
Improve the Daily Savings activation conversion rate.
Target #2
D1 to D3 User, who started daily savings
Objective
To reduce the Daily Savings cancellation rate.
Starting with the question
Building & Testing the onboarding narratives
1. Leveraging celebrity partnerships to build influence
User takeaways
✦ Users had a good recall of the celebrity, and many trusted the app because of that factor.
✦ One can start saving with ₹10 on Jar.
Outcome
✦ Ongoing 14% conversion on the Daily Saving setup on D0.
✨ Learning
The initial uptick in conversion was not sustainable as most of the key aspects of savings on Jar were still missing.
2. The growth narrative of saving in gold
Point-of-view
We introduced language selection as the first screen post the splash screen. Offering the regional language as the first option based on the user's location tracking. For example, in the case of Bangalore, the first language option shown was “Kannada”, followed by “English” & “Hindi”, respectively. The experiment also included the introduction of gold as the safest asset class, with historical growth indication.
User takeaways
✦ Users had a good recall of the celebrity, and many trusted the app because of that factor.
✦ One can start saving with ₹10 on Jar.
Outcome
✦ We saw a negative impact; there was a drop of <1.5% in users who chose to start saving on Jar.
✨ Learnings
Users who chose the regional language showed no improvement in conversion or retention.
Recall of gold was still low.
Interestingly, the southern part of India performed poorly; eventually, we realised it was the ₹10 coin which is not accepted in most parts.
The lack of social proof created apprehension amongst users, and ongoing online fraud made the acceptance even tougher.
Narrative that stuck with most users
Defining the micro-savings value propositions that make Jar meaningful to users.
✦ One can start saving with as small as ₹10 in gold.
✦ Saving will be done every day, automatically.
✦ One can withdraw their saving anytime.
✦ Millions of Indians trust Jar to build their saving.
3. Storyboarding the key values of saving daily on Jar
User takeaways
✦ Strong recall that one can start saving with ₹10.
✦ Also one can withdraw the money anytime.
✦ Social proof had a very positive impact, scale gave a sense of security. Paytm & UPI logos also added to the feeling of security.
Outcome
✦ We saw a 3% uptick in the conversion for new users, from 14% to 17% conversion (complete onboarding flow) for the Daily Saving setup on D0.
✨ Learning
(From user calling and in-person interviews)
There was an expectation mismatch among the users who thought they were “Saving” vs those who thought they were “Investing”. People with an investment mindset had lower retention. However, there was mention of saving converting in gold users who made themselves aware of the same displayed higher retention. The facility to get the saved gold can be converted into real gold and delivered home, creating an “aha” moment for many. *
Building an aspirational narrative: Save for your dreams
Point-of-view
Illustrating a story of someone who fulfilled his dream of buying car with his saving on Jar. Building on the proverb “drop by drop fills the ocean”, as this proverb transcends many languages and cultures.
User takeaways
✦ Users who saw this experiment had a good recall of saving for a car, and similarly, “saving for future needs”
✦ Many mentioned the idea of building a considerable amount by starting small.
Outcome
✦ Little or no impact on the conversion or retention of users.
✨ Learning
While financial goals exist, asking or directing users to define them during their first interaction with Jar creates friction. These aspirations are typically fluid early on, suggesting we should focus on building comfort with saving habits before introducing formal goal-setting.
Also, the human figure took much more attention than the explanation of the value propositions.
How might we design Jar's onboarding experience to inspire confidence in small, everyday savings so that Users are motivated to start their savings journey today.
5. Enhancing user comprehension of daily saving
✨ Learning
After account creation, the animated introduction to “Daily Saving” proved instrumental in building user confidence and driving action. Our A/B test revealed its true impact: removing the animation for a shorter onboarding led to a 4% drop in Daily Saving setup rates. This validates that helping users visualise their saving journey is worth the extra onboarding time, as it directly influences their decision to commit.
Building an aspirational narrative: Save for your dreams
We strategically focused on optimising the crucial final step of the onboarding flow - the user's decision to activate 'Daily Saving'. Through multiple A/B testing of various action-driving signifiers and intent-building mechanisms, we identified two highly effective approaches: 'Efficient Saving Method V1.1' and 'Efficient Saving Method V2.
Business impact
These optimisations yielded significant results, improving the “Daily Saving” setup conversion rate by 3% points to reach 23% - a meaningful boost at this critical decision point in the user journey.
Insights that shaped our final onboarding
✨ Learning
✦ Thoughtful onboarding pacing to improved user comprehension, discouraging rapid click-through behaviour
✦ Transformation and motion captured the user’s attention better
✦ Unified visual cues strengthened user understanding
✦ Mentioning India visually and textually creates a sense of security
✦ The user base of Jar enforces the sense of security further
Impact
The average time spent on onboarding stories increased, resulting in better comprehension (based on initial user calling)
Reached 27% activation rate for Daily Saving from onboarding (we started with a 14% conversion rate)
Disclaimer: Research and analysis were not complete at the time of creating this case study.
Shoutout for the team members
Design team members who contributed to the ideations, UX, visual and motion design to bring these ideas to life. Particularly, Nitesh (Product design), Swatishree (Visual design) and Sushant (Motion & visual design).