The problem
Mercury’s business account onboarding had a 40% drop-off rate. The flow required too many steps, asked for information in a confusing order, and didn’t save progress — meaning users who left had to start over. For a banking product, onboarding friction directly impacts revenue.
Our approach
We started with a data audit of where users were dropping off, then ran five user interviews to understand the friction points qualitatively. The redesign reduced the flow from 12 steps to 5, introduced progressive disclosure for complex fields, and added auto-save so users could resume later. We also added inline validation and contextual help for fields that caused the most confusion.
Results
Drop-off fell from 40% to 26% — a 35% improvement. Time-to-completion was cut in half, from an average of 14 minutes to 7. The auto-save feature alone recovered 18% of previously abandoned applications.