New submission experience

Overview

The existing submission flow had a 62% drop-off rate. Users struggled with unclear form labels, inconsistent validation, and a lack of progress indication. The goal was to reduce friction and create an experience that felt intuitive from the first interaction.

Challenge

Users reported feeling overwhelmed by the number of fields presented at once. Error messages appeared only after submission, leading to frustration. The flow lacked any sense of progress or accomplishment.

Process

Research began with 12 moderated usability sessions, revealing three core pain points: cognitive overload, unclear expectations, and poor error recovery. Card sorting exercises helped restructure the information architecture into logical, digestible steps.

Solution

The redesigned flow breaks the submission into four clear steps with a persistent progress indicator. Each step focuses on a single task. Inline validation provides immediate feedback, and smart defaults reduce the number of required interactions.

Results

After launch, the drop-off rate decreased from 62% to 28%. Average completion time dropped by 40%. User satisfaction scores increased from 3.2 to 4.6 out of 5. The new flow also achieved WCAG 2.2 AA compliance.