Designing for Conversion: Behavioral Psychology in Fintech Onboarding

Background

Onramp Funds is a fintech startup offering cash advance loans to small and midsize ecommerce sellers. As a new entrant in a competitive space, onboarding needed to be seamless and intuitive to reduce dropoff and improve conversion. I partnered with Onramp stakeholders to reimagine the end-to-end onboarding workflow.

The result was a redesigned registration experience that reduces friction, improves clarity, and uses behavioral design techniques to guide users through a complex legal and financial process.

Before

The original flow was form-heavy, lacked clear progress indication, and failed to communicate information requirements upfront, often asking for duplicate info from one screen to the next.

Form-heavy page from the legacy onboarding experience — Example screen from the legacy onboarding experience.

After

Video walkthrough of a Figma prototype showing progressive steps in the new onboarding flow.

The redesigned experience clarified the process, reduced cognitive load, and introduced friendly, conversational UI patterns while accommodating complex legal and business requirements.

Approach

I collaborated with stakeholders to redesign the onboarding experience by balancing friction reduction with psychological incentives for completion.

Discovery & Stakeholder Alignment

Met with stakeholders to understand business needs, legal constraints, and technical limitations
Audited the legacy onboarding experience and supporting documentation

UX Strategy

Identified redundant or high-friction fields
Proposed a dynamic, branching flow tailored to business type and user inputs
Rewrote prompts in a conversational tone to create a more human, less transactional experience

Figma screenshot showing early UX work for the revised onboarding experience, along with the legacy flow and “Lean UX”-style problem and hypothesis statements — The initial flow was cumbersome and lacked a modern look and feel. I worked with Onramp to rethink this signup flow from start to finish.

Design Execution

Updated the design system, introducing scalable components and clearer page hierarchy
Created mobile-first flows with simplified input selectors and larger tap targets

Solution

Behavioral Design & Completion Incentives

Rather than only reducing form fields, I focused on two complementary approaches:

Reducing cognitive friction through streamlined task flows and consolidated information collection
Creating completion incentives using behavioral psychology principles

Information Architecture Improvements

Consolidated duplicate data collection across screens
Implemented dynamic flows based on business type and verification requirements
Chunked complex processes into digestible steps with clear progress indication

Another Figma screenshot showing a current and proposed systems diagram along with recommendations to reduce or mitigation friction in the onboarding experience — Another example Figma deliverable showing a systems diagram of the legacy and proposed onboarding flows along with potential completion incentives for new users. ORF stands for “Onboarding to requesting funds.”

Psychological Design Patterns

Applied a principle known as the endowed progress effect (opens in new tab) through an indeterminate progress indicator that advances incrementally
Redesigned UI with conversational, question-based prompts inspired by chatbot interactions
Used “oversized” components to reduce visual intimidation and cognitive load

Mockups of responsive mobile views for the revised onboarding flow — Mobile views highlighting some “friendlier” components along with input requirements rewritten to sound more conversational.

Design System Evolution

I simultaneously updated the product’s design system, establishing patterns for navigation, modals, and progressive information disclosure that supported both immediate needs and future scalability.

Figma screenshot showing foundational documentation for the revised Onramp design system — Work-in-progress design system documentation I put together for Onramp.

Impact

The redesigned onboarding launched in September 2021 with positive early feedback. The accompanying design system enabled the development team to execute efficiently through multiple product cycles, supporting the company’s growth trajectory toward securing over $45 million in funding (opens in new tab).