Buildertrend
New User Setup Experience
Challenge
Create a new setup experience to new users of Buildertrend so that it feels like home when a new builder logs in for the first time.
Solution
Provide a gated setup experience for new builders to land on when they first sign up. Our customer support team will set up and import existing data for new accounts, reviewing with the user that their data is accurate and allowing the user to log in once their account is setup.
Methodology
• Observational Research
• Secondary and Evaluative Research
• Prototyping
• Wireframing
• Customer Journey Map
• Usability Testing
Tools
• Sketchpad & Pen
• Figma
• EnjoyHQ
• Appcues
• Mixpanel
• Data Dog
• Hotjar
Client deliverables
• New setup experience for new builders
• Improved cost code setup management and feature experience
About Buildertrend
Buildertrend is the leading residential construction management platform. Since 2006, we’ve empowered contractors to take control of projects and bring efficiency, organization and seamless communication to every aspect of their businesses. Builders can stay on top of costs, supplies, staff and more in one convenient place – and take on more projects without adding paperwork and stress. For over 1 million users across 100 countries, Buildertrend has made it easy to run successful projects and deliver a five-star experience to homeowners.
Users
Primary user:
Residential general contractors ($1M+ annual revenue)
Secondary users:
Clients of general contractors (homeowners, property owners, etc.)
Subcontractors and vendors
Project impact at a glance
+15% increase in customer retention after launch
88% completion rate of the new setup experience
Addressed approximately 25% of churn tied to failed early adoption
Overview
For new Buildertrend customers, the setup experience and process is a critical moment for long-term retention. However, the existing setup flow was fragmented, overwhelming, and exhaustive, lacking a simple and straightforward experience to make setup easy, not another project to manage.
I led the redesign of a new user setup experience that aimed to reduce early churn by creating a clearer, more progressive onboarding journey that balanced flexibility with guidance from the start.
The problem
A significant portion of customer churn was happening early, before users ever realized Buildertrend’s value.
~25% of our churn comes from new customers failing to adopt Buildertrend.
Key issues included:
A dense, lengthy setup process that felt like “work” instead of progress
No true sense of what mattered most to learn first vs. what should wait
Confusing process for importing existing project data with longstanding impact on future usage
Instead of building confidence, setup was creating friction at the most vulnerable moment for builders who sought the solution to ease this friction, not create more of it.
Hypothesis
Our hypothesis is that by providing this new experience to new users, we will see an increase in logo retention from 68% to 70% in 2024, while simultaneously not decreasing NPS. Additionally we aim to get the initial setup time to under 5 business days from signup, which was already taking 90 days or more for most new users.
Design strategy
Rather than starting by optimizing or designing UI or screens, I focused on how confidence builds over time for new Buildertrend customers by following a builder during setup in real time.
We shadowed a new customer, True Way Homes, in real time during account setup to identify onboarding pain points. Over two months we attended their training calls, evaluated topics, and observed issues with imports (cost codes, financial data, etc.). We took notes, organized and synthesized them to identify themes, and held a takeaway call with True Way Homes to confirm what we heard and hear firsthand about their experience.
From our observations, I created a customer journey map of the setup experience to identify where we could provide the most value to new builders and proceeded to build from there.
The solution and strategy centered on:
Guiding users through setup with customer setup managers in a “gated” experience
Clearly signaling what data was required to provide during this setup experience vs. optional
Designing the experience to adapt with the maturity and tech knowledge of all builders
This allowed us to meet users where they were, without overwhelming them or blocking their progress.
“If we were told this initially, like step one, get your cost codes together and here's how those will look to the end user or to the client and here's how it'll look to us, we would've made those decisions earlier and not have been so confused…
I felt like we just kept trying to figure out the next thing to do instead of having a map of just do cost codes or something first, and then try out estimates and oh, if you're gonna make a bid, click on those three dots from your estimate to make a bid.”
- Owner, True Way Homes
Key decisions
Progress over completeness: We prioritized helping users get started quickly, even if some configuration happened later
Mental models over internal structure: Steps were organized around how builders think, not how the system was built
Scalable foundation: The setup flow was designed to evolve as the product and customer needs changed
These decisions traded short-term simplicity for long-term clarity and retention.
Additionally, we prioritized this work in milestones that we aligned on as a team, ensuring we delivered value quickly and often and with a shared understanding of what we were building but more importantly why.
Outcome
We created an entirely new “gated” setup experience for new builders, where they were provided a temporary setup process with our designated setup managers.
Before they ever log in for the first time, they first create a login and land on a setup page with clear guidance and actions to take, with this experience already communicated by their setup manager before they create credentials.
We provided the with the ability to import and upload data in this setup experience, which would be imported to their new Buildertrend account by their setup manager. After data is imported the manager and builder meet and review it, go over questions, and then the builder gets started using the product, with everything imported already so it feels like “home” to them.
The redesigned setup experience led to measurable improvements in both behavior and business outcomes:
Higher completion rates without forcing users through unnecessary steps while also balancing using the product for their day-to-day business
Early retention increase and saw strong early engagement (~2 weeks in, avg. time to complete setup dropped from 90+ days to around 14 days)
Clearer product alignment on what “successful setup” means once a customer proceeds through this experience
Most importantly, new customers entered the product feeling oriented and confident, rather than overwhelmed.
How I design
This project reflects how I approach high-impact, early-lifecycle problems:
I designed this experience as part of a system, not a single workflow or set of screens
I used data (both qualitative and quantitative) to prioritize where design effort creates the highest impact and delivers the most value
I focus on outcomes like retention, confidence, and long-term success, not just usability and validation of a solution
By reframing setup as an experience that builds trust over time, we turned a major churn driver into a measurable growth lever that is still driving an ongoing increase in customer retention month over month.