Finding Product-Market Fit: How Stuart Achieved 20% SMB Growth with Amplitude

As a leader in last-mile delivery, Stuart connects businesses with independent couriers across 140 cities in three countries. While we’ve long served large enterprises, we saw an untapped opportunity: smaller local businesses (SMBs). Unlike enterprise clients, SMBs use our dashboard in a fully self-service model—signing up, creating deliveries, and managing everything independently.

We already had a small but active base of SMB clients, proving that our product could meet their needs. The challenge? Too many potential customers were dropping off before completing their first delivery. We knew the demand was there—market data showed strong growth potential—but we lacked visibility into why conversions stalled. Was it friction in the onboarding process? A confusing dashboard experience? We needed answers, fast.

From tracking activation and conversion metrics to making targeted tweaks to the user journey, Amplitude helped us pinpoint opportunities to improve. What we found set the stage for scalable growth.

Becoming more data-independent with Amplitude

Before integrating Amplitude Analytics, we relied on traditional data visualization tools to track high-level business metrics. While these tools provided a solid overview of trends, they didn’t offer the depth needed to understand user behavior. For deeper analysis, we had to rely on the product analytics team, which slowed down decision-making and experimentation.

Amplitude makes our product managers and designers more self-sufficient by giving them direct access to user behavior insights. Instead of waiting for complex queries or custom dashboards, we can explore funnels, cohorts, and journey paths on our own. With this autonomy, we move faster, validate ideas sooner, and stay aligned on what drives real impact—especially as we fine-tune our product-market fit (PMF).

Understanding the challenges in the PMF journey

Beyond usability issues, we needed a clearer picture of why many SMBs signed up but never became active users. Were they struggling with the interface? Did they lack confidence in using the platform? Or was there a gap in expectations?

Amplitude helped us analyze conversion funnels to pinpoint where users were dropping off. One key insight was that many new sign-ups started the delivery creation process but failed to move past the drop-off address selection step. By analyzing session replays and behavior flows, we saw that users frequently hesitated, scrolled back and forth, or abandoned the process entirely.

To improve activation, we focused on the delivery creation process. By introducing step-by-step guidance and clearer instructions, we reduced confusion and friction. These updates led to a 3% increase in conversion rates at the drop-off address entry step. Additionally, the overall time to complete a first delivery was reduced by 2 minutes, making the onboarding experience significantly smoother for SMBs.

Optimizing acquisition for long-term impact

Acquisition presented its own challenges. We saw a discrepancy in conversion rates between different sign-up forms. New events helped us understand user behavior at each step, leading us to a surprising discovery—a portion of our sign-ups were actually couriers mistakenly registering as SMB clients. This not only impacted our conversion metrics but also skewed the effectiveness of our marketing campaigns and courier experience.

One of our biggest takeaways from Amplitude comparative analysis was that our long-form sign-up process had a 2x lower conversion rate than our shorter, single-step version. The fix was clear: we needed to prioritize the streamlined sign-up process for all users.

After rolling out this change, we saw a 9% increase in sign-up conversions. Furthermore, we introduced a redirection feature that sent couriers attempting to sign up as clients to the correct registration page, ensuring cleaner data and a smoother courier onboarding experience.

Turning insights into action: A data-driven approach

Additionally, we hypothesized that many SMBs simply weren’t aware of the platform’s latest features, leading them to disengage over time. Using cohort analysis, we launched a targeted email campaign highlighting new features. The results? Users who opened the email were 400% more likely to return and place a new delivery compared to those who didn’t.

By continuously monitoring these metrics and iterating based on data, we were able to make high-impact improvements that directly contributed to Stuart’s PMF strategy and its 20% growth.

A clearer path to product-market fit

The journey to product-market fit is rarely a straight path, but with the right tools, it becomes a data-driven process. Amplitude provided us with the insights needed to make strategic, impactful changes that directly improved user engagement and business outcomes. By continuously testing, measuring, and iterating, we have taken significant steps toward optimizing our SMB segment for long-term growth.

Looking ahead, our focus remains on improving repeat rate, refining our pricing model, and further personalizing the user experience. Thanks to Amplitude, we now have a clearer roadmap and a scalable framework for decision-making that will continue to drive our success.