Funnel Vision: How Xapo Bank Saw 2x Growth in Onboarding

One vital part of the onboarding journey that Razvan and his colleague Joe Eppel, Product Owner of Customer Acquisition and Onboarding, wanted to investigate was the KYC (know your customer) process. This crucial step ensures applicants are who they claim to be, which is particularly important in a digital onboarding environment.

The product team knew from their old analytics dashboards that users were dropping off during this process, but they needed help figuring out why. However, the custom-made system built by data scientists was complex, cumbersome, and not deep enough to explain that. "Any tweak meant relying on a data scientist or engineer, which wasn’t scalable going forward," admits Razvan.

Determined to explore the user experience in depth in a self-service manner, the product team switched to Amplitude Analytics. Using the funnel charts, they broke down the user journey into detailed events to understand the applicant behavior at each stage during the onboarding process. ”Only then we started to understand which steps of the journey are the most problematic," Razvan says.

For example, one of the challenges in the onboarding process was the applicant identity verification step. Even before the team adopted Amplitude Analytics, significant drop-offs were noticed at this stage. The working hypothesis was that the issue stemmed from applicants submitting invalid identity documents.

However, with more detailed insights from Amplitude events, the team discovered that in some regions, applicants weren't even attempting to submit an identity document." By building and analyzing user cohorts, for instance, those based on the applicant country, we understood that many applicants often didn't have the specific type of identity document that we would require in their region,” explains Razvan. “For example, passports are not commonly used as a proof of identity in all regions of the world."

Seeing regional differences, Xapo Bank teamed up with identity authentication partners specializing in different areas and document types to increase the variety of documents supported as proof of identity. This decision boosted conversion rates and grew their user base. "Overall, the number of applicants starting the identity verification step increased by 50%, resulting in more approved customers." reveals Razvan.

But identity checks were just one example. By diving into data, Xapo Bank improved growth in many ways. Expanding cohorts and analyzing users helped them develop and test numerous hypotheses with Amplitude Experiment. "Understanding these nuances between different customer groups through cohorting was a pivotal moment," shares Joe. "We started listing hypotheses on why users behave in this or that way to prove or disprove them and stop acting blindly."

In just a year, the bank ran about 30 experiments on conversion points, in some cases achieving a 2X increase in conversion rates and ultimately more Xapo Bank members. One key test involved rearranging onboarding questions to minimize friction and smooth the process. Sometimes, just changing the order of steps boosted user engagement significantly. “Before Amplitude, we could only see the start and end of a user’s journey, but the rest of the journey remained a mystery,” remarks Razvan. “Now, we can dive into each user's actions and understand their timing. Amplitude lets us discover product details like never before.”

Xapo Bank, always innovating, found other creative uses for Amplitude analyses and experiments beyond tracking user experience. “We realized we could also integrate back office processes and trigger events to track how we work,” shares Joe. “This dispelled a common myth that Amplitude is only for analyzing user behavior and flows.”

Now, Xapo Bank uses Amplitude internally to track operational KPIs and performance metrics. For example, whenever a user is stuck at a step, we now have visibility and understand whether the user needs to take action or someone in our operations team needs to perform a manual task in our back office.

Everyone at the bank now uses Amplitude for analytics—from product managers and designers to engineers and customer support. Every day, dashboards are automatically shared in the company's general Slack channel, keeping everyone updated on the product, users, and data.

"What I am proud of the most is that 100% of my engineers check Amplitude daily to see the impact of their work," says Joe. "Amplitude makes product data super accessible. Now, our whole company thinks about metrics, not just the product team. It's changed how we work and approach data."

With everyone having access to the same information, efficiency has improved. Data-driven discussions replace subjective debates, saving time. If there's a problem, teams can form hypotheses and run experiments to check them. "Data doesn't lie," Joe says.

While they continue investigating onboarding, Joe and Razvan are gearing up for the next phase. They want to examine cohorts more closely to understand subtle nuances between users better and are eager to promote experiments among other teams.

For those just starting with Amplitude and data, both offer this advice: "Although the principle of 'less is more' often holds true, I believe it doesn't apply to Amplitude events. In this case, the more events you create, the richer the insights you'll gain," Razvan says. Feeling overwhelmed by all the data? "Create a roadmap and take it step by step through each process,” Joe recommends. "Make data tracking second nature for your teams. If they can't measure their work, it won't make an impact."