SavvyCal's onboarding rewards patience but most users won't wait

Hello.

All right guys, today I'm going to tear down Savical.

So if you don't know, SavvyCal has been around for a while now.

It's a competitor to something like Calendly or tidycal.

So I'm gonna sign up for the product, go through the onboarding and that first use experience and just share my thoughts on what I think can improve, where I think they're doing things that really good.

and then maybe some missed opportunities as well.

I have a feeling this is gonna be a really good one and there's going to be quite a lot for us to unpack here.

Alright, and let's dive into it then.

So I'm going to go up here.

Click, sign up.

Okay, so pretty simple, really straightforward here.

On one hand I like how kind of elegant and minimal this signup page is.

On the other hand I do think there might be a missed opportunity to showcase some of the features or maybe add some more social proof on here.

I like the social sign up for Google, Microsoft, and Fast Mail.

It's not very often you see that one.

and then we've got a very short form here to fill in to sign up with our email address.

Now for whatever reason when I've landed on this page, this has already been checked so that isn't something I've had to do.

just to make this kind of super simple, I'm just going to sign up with my Google email.

Okay, so we've gone through that and it's pulled through.

It's taken us now to a welcome screen.

Again really simple.

welcome to Savical.

So it looks like it's generated a username for us, based on my email address.

Although it does say here that you might want to change it to something a little savvier.

you can always edit these later.

So I like the copy here.

It's quite playful.

and I like the fact that they're putting users at ease by basically telling them that they can change the settings now or they can also change them later if they need to.

top right we have a progress bar.

Looks like there's quite a bit for us to do here or at least there's quite a few steps in this process.

Now I don't know exactly how many steps because it isn't very clear but I do think having that progress bar top right just does a really good job of just setting users expectations.

now we've got a fairly simple form here as you can imagine.

And what I really like about this is they've pre filled quite a lot of it in for me.

So first name they've pulled through.

As I said the, the URL they haven't pulled through my avatar that might have been quite good.

So if I'd use my Google or Microsoft account, be quite useful for them to just pull through that avatar just to save me the hassle of like updating or uploading a new one myself.

So time zone they've got right time format is fine.

Start of the week, my preference would be Monday and then I'm in dark mode right now.

So it's going to match my system preferences here.

which is fine.

I mean it kind of feels a little bit unnecessary at this stage to ask this question.

but it's already chosen a relevant option for me so that's good.

So I am going to accept the terms and conditions and then I'm going to click next step and let's see where we go.

Aha.

Uh-huh.

Okay, so we've hit our first kind of snag here.

last name needs to be filled in or it is required.

But again that isn't just not clear from the form itself.

So they definitely need to make that a bit more obvious I think.

Okay, so put our second name in there.

Let's click next step.

Okay, so I do think, it's probably a little bit premature to ask this question at this stage.

I'd be tempted to kind of get me into the product and then maybe follow up with this question or at least put this step in the process towards the end of the onboarding.

I do like the way it's framed so you know they talk about reading every response and this is optional.

and it is super helpful.

But right now it's helpful to them and it isn't helpful to me to getting some value from the product, getting in there, getting, using it, and understanding whether this is something that I could switch to from one of their competitors.

So, yeah, I feel like this is a bit premature at this stage.

I do like the fact we go back, which I presume is this one here.

Yeah.

But this probably.

It's probably not ideal for a second step in the process here.

Anyway, I'm going to leave it blank.

Let's, click next step.

Okay.

So how are we going to plan on using SavvyCal?

So I think now we're getting into the crux of things.

So they talk about how it works great for a team and it works if, an individual as well.

And I like the fact that they're talking about why as well.

So they talk about like, round robin links, which is useful for teams.

Like, I think that's really helpful.

It's very sparse the design right now though.

Like, I think you could have made a little bit more of this, like, visually, just to make it a little bit more engaging, a little bit more interesting.

Maybe we could have used some cards or something with some imagery or some illustrations.

We've got two really simple options here.

So we're going to use it on our own.

Are we going to use it with a team now?

I'm just going to check whether these are keyboard, shortcuts.

So if I press A, it's doing nothing.

I thought A and B were keyboard shortcuts, but I guess not.

so I'm going to use it on my own and we'll click next step.

Okay.

what best describes your role?

so I think, yeah, I mean, I think you get these kind of questions quite a lot during an onboarding process.

But again, I do like the framing of this.

They're telling us that we're going to learn about features that are most relevant to me.

So it kind of feels like I'm.

I'm going to be rewarded for my effort here.

Instead of just clicking one of these random options, I wonder why there is not an other option or maybe a custom option, because you might not, put yourself into one of these six options here.

I'm going to click consultant and we'll click next.

You can see as we go, we've got our progress bar top right here, which is moving us along this process.

Okay, so what do we want to accomplish first then?

so hopefully, depending on which option we choose here, it might guide us through that experience and help us set things up once we get into the product.

So we got, book meetings for myself, my team send, a poll to some group members or basically start charging for my time.

So I'm just going to go and book meetings for myself again.

I'm going to test it.

These look like keyboard shortcuts, but they're not.

Right.

Let's click on this one.

Click next.

Okay, so this is where it's asking to connect my calendar.

So we can basically block out times when I'm busy to make sure nobody double books me.

let's have a look what we've got here then.

So it's pulled through the Google Calendar.

We got like a couple of different options.

we got the ability to resync, so assuming you've created other additional calendars, you can resync it there to make sure it pulls them all through.

we can disconnect it which I don't know why we would do that at this point.

Feels kind of redundant to me.

especially because I've just signed up with my Google, email address.

let's figure out what these are.

Okay, so click to check for conflicts.

I think by default if you've got quite a few of these calendars, you probably want to check them all by default and then uncheck the ones that are relevant.

otherwise if I have quite a few of these then you increase the chances of me being double booked.

And then we've got click to hide the calendar.

not quite sure what that does at this stage.

Maybe they could add a tooltip, tell me what's going on, what that means.

and then I've also got an option to add another calendar account here as well.

So a little bit like the options we had when we first signed up.

We've got Google, Microsoft, icloud, I don't think that was there before and Fast Mail Calendar as well.

Now I think if I've signed up with one of those accounts, it's kind of probably redundant to ask me whether I want to connect another one at this point.

Maybe later, maybe when I get into the product, and I'm seeing some value from it then that might be a better approach.

Anyway, let's click next step.

I think we're nearly there now.

You can see top right.

We keep moving along the path.

So we need to now figure out whether we're going to be using any video conferencing tools.

So it looks like it supports Zoom, Squadcast and whereby and they do mention Google Meet and Microsoft Teams as well.

but if they're not on the list, I've no idea right now how we configure those.

Okay, so it looks like these take us to documentation to figure out how to connect, or use our API key that's in squadcast to get this thing up and running.

Which, which, yeah, I think is pretty useful.

so at this point I kind of wanted to connect Google Meet and I don't really know how to do that.

maybe that's something we can do in the product.

So at this point, I'm just going to stick with Google Meet, which I presume works because I've used my Google account to sign up for SavvyCal, but again, I don't think that's very clear.

I wouldn't feel confident that that is the case without double checking it.

when we get into the product anyway, I think we're nearly there.

So let's click Next step.

Okay, so I think this is the last step in the process now.

so now we've got to set our working hours.

So this is going to be our default schedule and again we can change it later or we can add more presets if we need to.

So as we've gone through this process, we've seen that SavvyCal have made really good use of pulling in our data from the Google account.

and their default preset here is probably ideal for 80% of their users.

So really all I'm doing is just confirming that I'm happy with Monday to Friday, 9 till 5.

That works for me as my working hours and if I want to add any more then I can do it here and then we can remove them here as well.

So that works really well.

It's quick, it's simple.

doesn't require a lot of effort at all.

Right, let's click Next step.

Okay, so looks like we're in the product now and we've almost finished setting up our account.

First thing we need to do is create a scheduling link.

and then we need to test it obviously.

and then we can upgrade to activate the link as well.

So we've got a really simple checklist here, which I presume is accessed from this, guided Setup tab in the nav on the left.

So if I need to come back to this at any stage, super easy for me to do.

now.

I'm not going to go too Deep into each of these features in the nav here.

But what I will do is I'll create a first scheduling link and we'll go through that process as well.

So I really like the fact that we get in there and they're still guiding us through this experience.

So it's not like we've just been dropped into a homepage or a dashboard and expected to just figure it out ourselves.

We've got a clear process here.

Firstly, let's create our scheduling link, then we can test it and then if we want to use it we can upgrade and then we can activate that link so others can use it.

Okay, so let's create I mean there is, there is quite a bit of setting up to do here.

Like I wondered whether they might be able to take ownership of some of this themselves because whilst it is useful to have a lot of this guidance here, creating your first scheduling link, I wondered whether having some default options in here might be useful.

So something that's already set up give users a 15 minute, 30 minute, maybe 60 minute option and then we can just go ahead and test those straight away.

But now as a new user, I've got to kind of go through this process.

I'm sure it's, it's fairly simple and straightforward but it's just takes a little bit more time and effort.

So let's create this link here then.

So we're creating a new link so others can book some time with me.

we've got a link title again.

They're kind of clever with pre filling these forms so they filled this in chat assignment as the default title which I think again for most people like that's going to be fine.

And we've got the link URL in here and then we've got chat with Simon.

So if we wanted to edit the URL, we just come in here, make some changes.

the only thing I would say is I like the fact that we're using a modal because it just keeps us in context of what we're doing here.

But the link URL like this form is so small.

Making changes to this is really cumbersome and I've got to be really precise with where I'm clicking and if I have a long URL I can't really read it so I think that could be improved as well.

And then it looks like we've got, well we've got two names, we've got a title and then we got a private name as well which allows Me to kind of just keep track of the purpose of this probably quite useful if you're going to create quite a lot few of these links.

so I'm going to type in here, just going to put general meeting and then let's create new scheduling link.

Okay.

Okay so we're taken to a screen so okay so we're taken to a screen here where this is the link editor, this is where we could adjust things and it's inviting us to take a quick look around here and then we can click Preview if we want to see what the schedules will look like.

So let's carry on.

I think that's the link created.

we got the settings down here on the left which we can configure by clicking on this settings cog and then we can change things like the link type.

The duration by default looks like it's 30 our working hours.

It's pulled through from the onboarding.

Now what it hasn't done is pull through the Google meet for the conferencing and it looks like that hasn't been set up so that is a bit odd.

let me click add location.

Okay so now it looks like we can select Google Meet and we can click save and we can click close and we can see here the Google Meet.

it's been added as the conferencing option.

Like if I'm using my Google account I'd kind of expect Savvy to just do that for me to be honest.

What else have we got down here then?

So we talked about calendars, we've done that as part of the onboarding and then we've got a booking page options as well.

Wow.

So there's quite a bit and then we've got some automations as well for like power users here.

So lots of kind of configurable options down here on the left but most of them aren't needed at the point in which you create your first scheduling link.

So they're using a bit of kind of progressive disclosure there and it works quite well.

And then over here on the right we have got our calendar which is our overlay.

So we can see any events that are coming up and we can see what our availability is as well.

At the top we've got this banner which just makes it clear that the link is pending and it will not be activated until we upgrade my account.

Now I'm assuming this activate this link will take us to a screen.

Yep.

To upgrade to the basic plan or the premium plan.

I'm, not going to do that right now, but I will test, in the preview.

So let's click this one.

So this is going through the process now of kind of booking a testing meeting, which I think is something everyone's going to do.

Like, they want to get a sense of whether.

Like, I don't think anybody's going to share their meeting link without testing it first.

and I think most users just kind of want to get a feel for what that experience might be for those that do book a meeting.

So it says here, we can click on a slot on the booking page and then we can schedule a meeting with myself.

And yes, this will give me a feel of what the scheduling experience is like.

So let's click continue.

And, it's now got some hotspots that are going to walk us through this process.

So we can select an open slot on the calendar.

That's for us to do right now.

So as we hover over the calendar, this is quite nice, shows us where that meeting is going to be.

So let's go for 12:00 clock on, Friday, and then we're going to confirm our details here.

We've got first name, we've got our email address in here.

And then we can click schedule.

And it's done.

meeting scheduled.

All confirmed.

And presumably, the confirmation will come through in a couple of minutes.

All right, guys, I'm gonna leave it there.

let me know what your thoughts are on Savical.

Cheers.