Attio's guilt-trip modal is secretly a conversion tool

All right guys, welcome to another teardown.

This time we're going to be taking a look at Attio.

So Attio is a CRM platform, although I think it does a lot more than that these days.

we've got tasks, notes, I think managing emails, calls, reports, creating sequences and workflows.

So it's a fairly comprehensive tool.

What I'm going to do is I'm going to review the sign up, the onboarding and that first use experience.

So it's going to be the good, the bad, the ugly and I'm just going to give you my raw, honest thoughts of the user experience design.

All right, so let's dive in.

So we've got start for free at the top up here so we'll click that to begin.

So this is fairly understated.

Not too much going on here.

Welcome to Adeo.

they are a new type of CRM, at least that's what they claim to be.

and they talk about being able to pull through records of every interaction in your network within a few minutes.

And this is updated in real time as well so sounds very promising.

they're clearly doing what they can at this point to help differentiate them from other CRMs on the market.

A couple of different options when we sign up here, we've got sign in with Google, so sign in with social, which is fairly common these days.

And then we've got an email address as well.

I feel like for whatever reason but we've just kind of switched dark mode here.

I don't know, it feels a bit odd coming from that light, very clean homepage Okay, so to save us some time here I'm just going to sign in with Google, Okay, so we signed up with Google and we've immediately hit a page, that tells us to create a workspace here.

so this is a nice easy first step.

that should help get users invested into the product.

We can begin to kind of understand how it works.

but I would like to understand a little bit more about the benefits I guess of creating a workspace at this point.

Maybe it's obvious to some which is why they haven't explained why we need to create a workspace right now.

I mean I know it's really common but I do think it would help.

so this layout works really well.

we've got company name in here, so let's add in our name in here.

So as you can see this is super cool.

the graphic on the right is dynamic.

So as we're typing the company name it highlights what change will happen in the product and then it shows me the name in the product on the right.

So that's really nice and I think it just kind of helps reinforce what we're going to see when we're in there.

So put the company name in there and then we got like work space handle.

Now you can see it's pulled through a suggested workspace handle based on my name.

So that's going to save users a bit of time.

I'm just going to remove the dash between the two Cs belling country.

I'm assuming it's kind of pulled that through from my Google account.

Either way it is accurate.

and then company logo here.

So would it be nice if I guess if they pulled that through from my Google account.

either way I like the fact that they talk about what images they support at this point.

So we've got PNGs, JPEGs and GIFs under a specific size.

and it needs to be 400 by 400.

So let's upload a company logo.

Okay, cool.

So that was pretty straightforward.

so I guess when we get into the product this is what we can expect.

we got company logo, we got name in there, we've got a workspace handle and we've got our billing country as well.

Right, let's click continue.

Okay, so we see this like really subtle white bar at the top.

I'm guessing that's a stepper.

Looks like we are maybe two steps through, maybe a four or five step sequence.

it's really subtle though.

Easily missed And I'm always a little bit skeptical about questions like this especially as the second question in the floor here.

Like I've signed up and as a user I'm clearly invested in seeing whether this product is going to be a really good solution and I've spent some time setting up my workspace and now it kind of feels quite self serving to me to Ask how I heard about Atoll.

I'm sure it's great for the marketing team.

but I guess as a new user most people might just click anything on here just so they can skip it.

Obviously they have the option to skip at the bottom as well.

This is the kind of thing I'd leave towards the end of the process.

So I'm just gonna skip this.

let's see where we go next.

Okay, so they're talking about building relationships and how important that is.

so we can connect the calendar and we can connect the email and then we'll be able to see the contacts in my network.

So I really like this illustration on the right.

It's obviously animated.

It helps me visually understand what's going on and how it can pull through information from emails and calendar events, then enrich the data, take any call recordings and then it populates the CRM.

So this is a nice visual that just explains what's going on, without me needing to spend too much time to figure it all out.

I like the privacy first over here on the left.

So I think that might just help alleviate any concerns users have around privacy.

and it looks like they're trusted by 10,000 companies, including some big names in here as well.

so for the purpose of this then, I mean this is somewhat hidden but I'm going to click I'll manually create contacts down here.

So if I was to connect and continue with Google, like I might have a completely different experience.

I'm not sure at this point but I do want to get into the product, see what it's all about.

so I'm just going to click.

I'll manually create my contacts for this.

Interesting.

Okay, so I've done that and then it pops up with a warning, clearly adding a little bit of four more here.

so if I continue down this route I'm going to miss out on some really powerful productivity features, such as the automatic contact creation, communication insights, email sequences, etc etc.

Like this is nice because it just makes sure users are confident in the choice they've made.

Now I'd hope that I can probably reverse this later.

So if I'm in the product, if I've selected create my contacts manually and I'm in the product and then I decide I want to go back and connect Google, that would be useful.

If I can do that, then I Think it would be a good idea to just warn users before we continue.

But anyway, I'm going to click yes, I'm sure for now.

and then we get taken to a screen where we're talking about setting up call recording.

So I think, I think we're beginning to understand why ATTO is more than just like a really basic CRM.

And as we're kind of going through this sequence that's becoming more and more clear and they're obviously talking about the benefits of setting that up here.

And we also have some illustrations on the right, where they've highlighted some of the calls which is nice.

I like the personalization.

for now I'm going to click don't auto record my meetings.

I'm guessing it's going to give me another warning.

Let's have a look.

No.

Okay, cool.

So we're past that step now we are into customizing our workspace.

So again you can see at the top.

we're almost there.

So this is nice, because I'm guessing it's going to personalize the experience depending on what I'm going to use Otto for.

So if it's sales, recruiting, investing, whatever it might be, hopefully we get in there and then they can personalize the experience around that.

let's click sales for now.

Okay, so this is nice.

Instead of just taking me through then they want to learn a little bit more about my use case here.

So let's go with product LED and you can see it's setting it up and personalizing it with this illustration on the right.

So let's click continue again.

All right, so now I think it looks like maybe it's the last step in the process here.

team.

So they want us to obviously, add our teammates to the product.

I'm never totally sure why products add this, especially at this stage.

I think most people want to get in there, experience some value, understand how it works and whether it would work for them and then maybe add their team that way.

So I'm guessing the vast majority of people, including me, just kind of skip this step.

Okay, so we're in the product, we've gone through the sign up, the onboarding.

We've got a welcome message here.

again they're doing a really good job of setting expectations.

So they've upgraded us to a free 14 day trial on their pro plan, which means we can explore all of the features that ATO has to offer, and then decide what works best for me.

And then this small text here, which is important, it basically says that if we continue, after the trial ends, we can either choose the plus plan or the free plan.

So I think it's like, reassuring to know that, you know, we'll kind of be dropped down to another plan after the trial has ended.

Okay, so we're on the homepage here.

I'm just going to share some kind of observations.

firstly, I like the fact that we've got this banner that sits at the top, right.

We can get rid of it if we need to.

but it says that if we need any help we can book a demo.

Now, I've not seen that before.

normally that space is dedicated towards telling users how many days of the trial they've got left, but this may be, a much better use case for it.

Now, on the left we've obviously got navigation.

lots of different kind of items in here.

I'm not going to go through them all, but at a glance I can start to understand that, like, there's a lot more to this than just a CRM system.

as I mentioned at the top of the teardown there, they've obviously got tasks in here.

We've got notes you could pull through my emails and calls.

So it's slowly starting to introduce me to other features in the product, that I think I might find useful.

And then under that you've kind of got your other kind of typical, CRM stuff.

So you've got companies and peoples and deals and things.

Interestingly, they've decided to use different color icons for these, presumably, so they stand out, because this is quite a long list of items in the navigation Below that we've got lists and charts and then they've got this really helpful started onboarding checklist.

Now, these are pretty standard these days.

I think they do a really good job of kind of guiding users through that first experience.

you don't often see them, in the nav like this, but I think it works really well.

And it also means it doesn't matter where you are in the product, you have access to it.

You can come down here, anywhere in the product and you can see what it's suggesting.

The next step is that I sync, my email account, which it obviously wanted me to do, as part of that onboarding process.

Now, I'm guessing depending on how we set the account up, this may change and, the suggestions in this list will probably be dynamic, which is nice.

Even hovering over these, you can see it's given me additional information.

So it's talking about, installing the Chrome extension.

I think it's a really nice, design, well thought out.

Actually, let's start here.

so home is kind of just taken over completely, by this chat feature.

There are obviously no meetings in here and no tasks right now.

Now, obviously, if I had the Google account connected, then the meetings would appear in here.

But it isn't just blank, right?

They have added a really clear cta.

So if I need or want to connect my Google account immediately, presumably I can do so simply by clicking this button.

So I think, that acts as a really nice reminder.

tasks are under here.

We're all pretty familiar with tasks, so I'm not going to go into that.

What I will do, is see if we can add somebody to the CRM.

Now I've not done this before, but let's come up here.

It says ask anything.

So let's try it then.

add Peter to my CRM.

So I'm not going to concern myself with, choosing specific models or any of these prompts here.

I'm, literally going to ask Pete, add Peter to my CRM.

Let's see if he can do that for us.

Okay, so it's taken us to a new screen now.

It's renamed the conversation top left up here, which is nice.

Gives us an option to add it to Favorites, presumably so we can find it much easier.

And it said it's happy to add Peter to CRM.

can you provide a little bit more information so it's understood the context really well?

There are obviously options here to copy its response, give it some feedback, or just ask it to try again.

Now what I like down here because it understands what we're trying to do is it's given me some prompts.

So we can just create the person record for Peter, or we can search for him in the CRM.

This is really cool.

so I'm just going to click Create the Person record.

Let's see what it does.

Okay, so it's clearly insisting for a little bit more information name and email address.

But again, it has come up with some suggestions.

I mean, obviously they're unlikely to be correct.

so let's give it a first name and surname.

and then let's give it an email address as well.

So I'm going to add those in there into the conversation.

Let's see if it picks up on it, and then can create that record.

Okay, so firstly, it's checking if it already exists and it doesn't.

I like the fact it's giving me feedback on what's happening here.

It's not just leaving me stranded.

So it hasn't found a record and now it's suggested that we create one.

So let's click on what it's given us.

Okay, so it's filled in the name, the email address, and presumably if there's anything else we wanted to add, we could just kind of do that via the chat as well.

and then it's given us this option to click Create.

Okay, so we've done that.

Nothing's happened, but I assume if we come in here and we go to people.

There we go.

So we found Peter in here and it's done.

Right, that was really simple.

Now, I, wouldn't say I've got a huge deal of value from this just yet.

It's certainly going to take me a little bit more time, to kind of go through the product, and understand its capabilities, but, from what I've seen so far, really impressed with what the team have built here.

The design is really robust, and generally speaking, I think they do a really good job.

All right, guys, I'm going to leave it there anyway.

Let me know what you think of Ato.

All right, cheers.