FRESHBOOKS
Mileage Tracking
Meet FreshBooks
FreshBooks is an accounting platform for Small Business Owners. We pride ourselves on creating experiences that are easy to use and make accounting feel simple so Owners can focus on running their business.
CUSTOMER PROBLEM
Why is Tracking Mileage Important to Business Owners?
Business Trips are Tax Deductible
Owners who drive for work are able to claim a tax deduction for their business trips. Owners must provide their Accountant with a log of their business trips in order to claim a mileage deduction.
Missing a Trip Means Missing a Deduction
Forgetting to record trips can be a costly mistake for Owners especially if they are driving frequently for work. Their potential deduction could be much greater if they never miss a trip.
How are Owners Currently tracking Mileage?
TrACKING APPS
Some Owners use automatic tracking apps to record their mileage. The app records all their driving trips and the Owner will need to come into the app in order to review their trips. When they review their trips they categorize them as business vs personal to avoid claiming trips they took for personal reasons.
Postives
Negatives
EXCEL & GOOGLE MAPS
Some Owners use a combination of Google Maps and Excel to create a log of their trip,
Positives
Negatives
📍 Start Location
Upon joining FreshBooks in 2019 we identified that the iOS and Android apps were both struggling when it came to trial to paid conversion.
At the end of a 30 day free trial we were seeing…
1.77% of iOS users converting
0.85% of Android users converting
It was clear to us that our iOS and Android apps weren’t providing value to Owners who were considering FreshBooks as a mobile accounting solution.
🗺 End Destination
One feature gap FreshBooks had identified was Mileage Tracking.
The Mobile Team saw Mileage Tracking as an opportunity enhance our mobile product!
We believed we would be able to automatically track an Owners driving trips by using their device’s location. We believed that by making Mileage Tracking an important part of the trial experience we would increase engagement and our trial to paid conversion.
🚨 Spoiler alert: It worked!
By 2021, Mileage Tracking has increased our 30 day trial to paid conversion to:
12% - 16% of iOS users converting
8% - 19% of Android users converting
Discover Card
📍 Start Location
Upon joining FreshBooks in 2019 we identified that the iOS and Android apps were both struggling when it came to trial to paid conversion.
At the end of a 30 day free trial we were seeing…
1.77% of iOS users converting
0.85% of Android users converting
It was clear to us that our iOS and Android apps weren’t providing value to Owners who were considering FreshBooks as a mobile accounting solution.
🗺 End Destination
One feature gap FreshBooks had identified was Mileage Tracking.
The Mobile Team saw Mileage Tracking as an opportunity enhance our mobile product!
We believed we would be able to automatically track an Owners driving trips by using their device’s location. We believed that by making Mileage Tracking an important part of the trial experience we would increase engagement and our trial to paid conversion.
🚨 Spoiler alert: It worked!
By 2021, Mileage Tracking has increased our 30 day trial to paid conversion to:
12% - 16% of iOS users converting
8% - 19% of Android users converting
🚙 DRIVING FOR WORK
One feature gap FreshBooks had identified was Mileage Tracking. We interviewed 5 FreshBooks customers who currently track mileage to understand their current challenges and expectations.
WhY IS TRACKING MILEAGE IMPORTANT TO OWNERS?
Business Owners who drive for work purposes are able to claim their business trips as a tax deduction. This means Owners need to record all the kilometres and miles they drive for their business. These trips add up, especially if you are driving frequently.
How is Mileage Calculated?
How are Owners currently tracking mileage?
1. Real Time:
2. Single Entry:
Looking at our trial experience
I collaborated with my Product Manager on interviewing 5 people who were not FreshBooks customers but were people who were interested in evaluating an accounting platform.
Here were some of our findings:
Create Your First Invoice Card is successful. When people came into the app they instinctively knew this was the first task.
Nothing to do after they create an invoice. After creating their first invoice, participants tapped to view the other tabs but didn’t take steps to “create” anything else. They felt there wasn’t much to do.
Onboarding Text isn’t a call to action. When people flipped through the tabs, they rarely created from screens that had this empty state text because it doesn’t feel actionable.
The insights we took away from this was:
Discover Cards could be a way to create engagement for new features.
Adding a discover card to the dashboard after they create their first invoice
Our empty states are not doing enough.
Tracking “Real-Time” Mileage
2.
How are Owners currently tracking mileage?
1. Real Time:
2. Single Entry:
✏️ DeFINE
Based on our goal of increasing trial to paid conversion we believed the users who would need to engage the most with Mileage Tracking would be the Real Time users
☁️ Ideate
I hosted a charette session with the mobile team and the design team
How Have We
How Have Others
The outcome looked like
📱Prototype
We knew that sorting was going to be the top way someone would come in and need to engage with the app so we needed to make it easy, fun, but also necessary
👇 TEST
Hello World 🙋♀️
I'm Caitlin O'Bunny, a Senior Product Designer at FreshBooks! I am responsible for leading the design strategy for our iOS and Android mobile apps. As the only designer working on their mobile products, I am incredibly proud of what our team has been able to achieve.
This was my first project upon joining FreshBooks, so let's dive in!
Meet The Mobile Team
This incredible team is responsible for building
MEet The Mobile Apps
Upon joining FreshBooks we identified that the iOS and Android apps were both struggling when it came to trial to paid conversion.
At the end of a 30 day free trial we were seeing…
1.77% of iOS users converting
0.85% of Android users converting
It was clear to us that our mobile apps were not providing value to business owners who were considering FreshBooks as a potential accounting solution.
the Trial Experience
Mileage
Meet Mileage Tracking
Business owners who use a car for work can claim all the miles or kilometres they drive as a tax deduction. All of these trips can add up