Don't reinvent the wheel: 4 best growth design patterns.

From Slack, Asana, Miro, and Notion.

As much as we love to reinvent the wheel, there is really no need to. At least when it comes to growth designs.

Companies like Slack, Asana, Miro, and Notion have done the homework for us, creating intuitive and highly optimized designs that yield performance. So let’s break down their work and use it as a starting point.

Note I’m not suggesting copying the following examples. Only to use them as foundational concepts to shortcut the internal design ideation process.

4 growth design patterns:

• Home page

• Marketing site use cases

• Profiling in onboarding

• Invitation emails

Home page

Notion’s home is full of best practices.

Above the fold, we have:

• Clear Call To Action (CTA) in the main header and navigation.

• Supporting Sales CTA for enterprise buyers: Request a demo. This is a must for companies with dual product and sales-led motions.

  • Suggestion: I’d add ‘Enterprise’ as another tile next to the pricing in the navigation.

• An outlet for sign-in for existing customers.

• Short and on-point copy that is unique to Notion.

• Transparent pricing.

• Non-distracting imagery, unique and recognizable to the Notion’s brand, creating a love mark user experience.

Below the fold, we immediately face a screenshot of the product in desktop and mobile view. Very helpful for validation.

And, of course, followed by social proof to create trust.

Bravo Notion. Clear home page achievement unlocked.

Marketing site: use case

Asana gives us a masterclass in marketing.
Under 'Why Asana?', they address all levels of prospecting customer intent: from low intent discovery to core use cases to customers with specific jobs to be done.

1. Low intent: departmental view
Is Asana right for me? I'm still formulating my problem, and the departmental view allows me to explore how Asana can help my [marketing] team.

2. Sweet spot: core use cases (workflows in Asana's case)
I have well understood [project management] problem and am looking to evaluate how Asana can help me solve it.

3. Jobs to be done: template view
I come with a very specific job [of project planning], and task-focused templates resonate with me.

And let's not forget an opportunity to create landing pages behind each link with highly actionable content that will do SEO wonders.

Simply brilliant!

Profiling in onboarding

Miro’s got their sign-up profiling down to an art.
Take notes, folks. With completion rates of >85%, it enables the company to have all the needed data to do segmentation and personalization.

Design note: each additional field should only reveal itself after the previous one is.

Some will say, "Elena, onboarding is about simplification! Asking questions will cause drop-off rates."
I say, "Not profiling your newcomers and neglecting to segment your metrics leads to wasteful, nonsensical, and quick-to-disappoint growth efforts."

Miro’s profiling hits:

1. Psych: name your baby.. err, I mean team.

   1. Allow peeps from the same work domain to join the team!

   2. Note the step before asked me to join any existing teams created on my domain. Never, ever skip this!

2. Segment: Use case, department, seniority, company size, intent

3. Company size is the most crucial information to ask of your B2B users. You cannot rely on 3rd party tools to fill in this information as they are incorrect 70% of the time for company sizes <1000.

This information should provide:
1. Meaningful data point in our segmentation of activation, engagement, and monetization efforts. Used company-wide.
2. Lead to quick personalized emails and in-app messaging.
3. Eventually, escalate to platform personalization.

And if anyone gets spooked by a question or two and scurries off, let them go. They wouldn't have activated anyway.

Next, Miro showcases all of its platform capabilities in a visually appealing card format, which will help customers become more aware of the business offerings. The information collected will be utilized to segment activation rates, paid conversion rates, and revenue, enabling personalized email and in-app communications.

Simply excellent. I miss working there 😊.

Invitation emails

Slack is undoubtfully the poster child of collaboration, and their invitation emails are top-notch. I heard they drive an astounding 80% acceptance rate.

Big note on how much attention is placed on building trust:

• Including the full name of the inviter in the email subject

• Picture of both inviter and team members

• Social proof of the number of people already in the workspace

• Full email of inviter to dispel any spam concerns

• Strong CTA to not just ‘accept’, but psychological trigger ‘join now’ creating FOMO.

• Tribal psychological subject copy: ‘work with them’, not just ‘invited’

• Four reinforcements of workspace name.

• Ability to learn more about Slack if the user is unfamiliar.

Slack - I’ll forever be your fan. Even if you are with Salesforce now.

What’s next?

I’ll unpack best practices for pricing pages, welcome emails, and empty state dashboards.

Stay tuned!