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Please, please, please for the love of everything, stop with these 1000 question 10 minute-long onboarding surveys with fake loading screens that lead you to th

by lxe 3y ago

Please, please, please for the love of everything, stop with these 1000 question 10 minute-long onboarding surveys with fake loading screens that lead you to the payment page (or worse, an email form) regardless of your answers. These things are an insult to your users. I don't care if some marketer from noom wrote a pdf about how it "increased conversion". Just stop it. It's a horrible dark pattern.

edreichua 3y ago
We are still in the process of improving the survey, so your feedback is super valuable. So far, we have been over-indexing on helping our users figure out the severity of their insomnia and their sleep habits so we can create a personalized program, so our survey can be quite lengthy. Will definitely look into making it shorter. We do have pricing information in our FAQ (https://stellarsleep.com/faqs https://stellarsleep.com/faqs) but yes, it's easily missed on the page with other information. We'll look into making it clearer to our users.
- spdif899 3y ago
  You're missing the point - sure a long questionnaire is annoying but the real complaint here is the fact your site's primary CTA is to go straight into a survey that does not mention it will require payment afterwards. You're effectively holding users (and especially their data) hostage by exploiting sunk cost fallacy, rather than letting the value of your product stand on its own weight. Here is a recent thread on this exact topic with much more discussion about how user-hostile this is, and how it makes many assume that your primary goal is to collect data to sell rather than to help any individual with any benevolent task. Dear websites, stop asking for ransom sign-ups https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36962502 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36962502
  - edreichua 3y ago
    Thanks for sharing! Will look into how we can make the fact that this is a paid app more apparent from the onset. We do have pricing information on our homepage (https://stellarsleep.com/faqs https://stellarsleep.com/faqs) but I'll be the first to admit that it's not easy to find.
    - wussboy 3y ago
      That is curious, since price is the first thing many people look for. You’d think it would be displayed prominently. The fact it’s not almost makes one wonder if there is something untoward happening.
      - asaddhamani 3y ago
        It costs $63 per month and you need to pay quarterly. I guess that’s why it’s buried.
        TylerE 3y ago
        Nothing shows confidence in your product quite like requiring an extended lock-in, does it?
        robertlagrant 3y ago
        Wow! Is this mostly meant to be prescribed rather than subscribed to?
    - rmbyrro 3y ago
      Your pricing is buried inside a collapsed FAQ? I was charitable to you when reading these comments, since I know sales is hard, but this is as shady as I've never seen before. It's a shame, because it casts a shadow on everything else and makes me question whether I should give you credit and really try this...
    - ekanes 3y ago
      I don't think you're really hearing the feedback here. When someone says "you're being shady" the right answer isn't "we'll look into how we can be less shady." The right answer is "oh snap, you're right. Sorry. We'll fix this asap please check back later today."
      - shellfishgene 3y ago
        They are mostly interested in making money, not helping people with insomnia, so shady is fine for that goal.
- lxe 3y ago
  Be honest, do the survey answers affect the resulting program? I literally put in random numbers and answers each time and it took me to the same exact payment page. There's also a "loading" screen that doesn't do anything except spin. You also throw in random interstitials all over the place making it even slower to onboard. You use savvyy nocode builder and this "onboarding" looks eerily similar to their "sleep app" template: https://trysavvy.com/example/sleep-reset-assessment https://trysavvy.com/example/sleep-reset-assessment. I see this playbook far too often. I'm sorry, but it sucks. Be honest with your users. Just provide them with clear info about what your service does and how it does it, and how much it costs, off the get go.
  - edreichua 3y ago
    Thank you for the feedback! We'll make information regarding pricing and program clearer to our users. Regarding your question, we do send the survey results to our backend, and based on that, we 1. generate a sleep report 2. assign you to one of several tracks we have. We also personalize your specific program within the track (e.g. we'll adjust your sleep restriction window based on your sleep efficiency etc).
confoundcofound 3y ago
Future.co does this too and it was really irritating. 20 screens of questions, interstitial ads for the product I'm signing up for sprinkled throughout, all to funnel me to a payment page for a service experience that isn't commensurately influenced by my inputs. They make you do an introductory call with your coach too, where much of that information could be provided instead, and in a more human way.
- robertlagrant 3y ago
  It does seem basically the same as signing up for a scam success course.
chasebank 3y ago
If the product actually worked, they wouldn't have to do this. People will pay lots of money for solving their sleep problems.
mbesto 3y ago
Please, please, please stop listening to random engineers who aren't marketing people provide advice about marketing. Your business needs paying customers. That being said...the parent comment does make a valid point about this potentially being a dark pattern. I think a reasonable disclosure (small txt on bottom "free trial for 14 days" or something like that) is probably a reasonable way to inform users.
- skupig 3y ago
  GP is explicitly not interested in giving marketing advice. They're objecting to being tricked and manipulated.
- lobsterthief 3y ago
  You know not everyone here is an engineer, right? Many marketers, designers, product people, and even engineers who do all of these things well.
  - mbesto 3y ago
    You know the parent comment is from an engineer right?
lukko 3y ago
I agree, I think it's awful. It's a waste of everyone's time and insulting to people who have a problem and feel slightly vulnerable. People aren't just numbers or conversion rates, and especially in digital health they should be treated respectfully.
gr0wthhack3r 3y ago
(Disclaimer: I joined the Stellar Sleep team after they got into YC, partly because I also had insomnia for many years and went through a full $1000+ in-person CTB-I treatment regimen which helped quite a bit) Hey there! Wanted to chime in and let you know that we hear your concerns! I expressed the same sentiment about long surveys to George and Ed when I was considering joining their team. We're committed to making pricing, user onboarding, etc more transparent and easier for our users. Yes, we do use onboarding survey responses to personalize our program. The programs on the payment page might look the same "regardless of your answers", but behind the scenes, we really are building customized modules based on your responses. For example, if a user mentions in the quiz that they have racing thoughts, we're working to surface relevant content earlier in the program and partnering with our professional sleep psychologists to create more modules that tailor to such needs. Everyone on our team is constantly learning, and we do appreciate your feedback and patience! To get the app off the ground, we needed to make quick decisions in the beginning and just go with what made sense to us, but as we build out our team and incorporate more of your feedback, we're committed to doing better. I wouldn't work here if I didn't believe this was part of our mission.
- Solvency 3y ago
  Why do you ask the same questions twice to build your modules. That's the problem here.
- gabrielsroka 3y ago
  cognitive behavioral therapy for insomnia (CBT-I)
- lxe 3y ago
  Thanks for the transparent response. Even if some or all answers are used to either fully customize the program for the user, or to place the user in a particular track, it's still a bad onboarding experience. The customer wants to see what your product is, what it does, how it does it specifically and succinctly, and how much it costs, front and center. These "onboarding surveys" is a recently hyped dark pattern that uses a huge number of questions along with fake spinners, and random interstitials to trick the user into entering an email at the end, due to the cost sunk into the onboarding experience. In marketing/sales speak, you're actually generating yourself a huge number of dud leads this way, making your true conversion numbers actually worse than what they could have been if you only signed up "serious" customers. If you insist on using an onboarding survey, place it after the signup email, and restrict only to questions, answers to which you actually use to generate the program for the user.
tomcam 3y ago
Oh don’t worry. It’s only about 15 questions or so. Then when you sign up and pay, they make you fill out the same questions again. After that a talking owl takes over.
f6v 3y ago
Reminds me of the “brain training” apps that were fire back in the day. They’d fake-configure the program for you as well.

by lxe 3y ago

edreichua 3y ago

We are still in the process of improving the survey, so your feedback is super valuable. So far, we have been over-indexing on helping our users figure out the severity of their insomnia and their sleep habits so we can create a personalized program, so our survey can be quite lengthy. Will definitely look into making it shorter. We do have pricing information in our FAQ (https://stellarsleep.com/faqs https://stellarsleep.com/faqs) but yes, it's easily missed on the page with other information. We'll look into making it clearer to our users.

spdif899 3y ago
You're missing the point - sure a long questionnaire is annoying but the real complaint here is the fact your site's primary CTA is to go straight into a survey that does not mention it will require payment afterwards. You're effectively holding users (and especially their data) hostage by exploiting sunk cost fallacy, rather than letting the value of your product stand on its own weight. Here is a recent thread on this exact topic with much more discussion about how user-hostile this is, and how it makes many assume that your primary goal is to collect data to sell rather than to help any individual with any benevolent task. Dear websites, stop asking for ransom sign-ups https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36962502 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36962502
- edreichua 3y ago
  Thanks for sharing! Will look into how we can make the fact that this is a paid app more apparent from the onset. We do have pricing information on our homepage (https://stellarsleep.com/faqs https://stellarsleep.com/faqs) but I'll be the first to admit that it's not easy to find.
  - wussboy 3y ago
    That is curious, since price is the first thing many people look for. You’d think it would be displayed prominently. The fact it’s not almost makes one wonder if there is something untoward happening.
    - asaddhamani 3y ago
      It costs $63 per month and you need to pay quarterly. I guess that’s why it’s buried.
      - TylerE 3y ago
        Nothing shows confidence in your product quite like requiring an extended lock-in, does it?
      - robertlagrant 3y ago
        Wow! Is this mostly meant to be prescribed rather than subscribed to?
  - rmbyrro 3y ago
    Your pricing is buried inside a collapsed FAQ? I was charitable to you when reading these comments, since I know sales is hard, but this is as shady as I've never seen before. It's a shame, because it casts a shadow on everything else and makes me question whether I should give you credit and really try this...
  - ekanes 3y ago
    I don't think you're really hearing the feedback here. When someone says "you're being shady" the right answer isn't "we'll look into how we can be less shady." The right answer is "oh snap, you're right. Sorry. We'll fix this asap please check back later today."
    - shellfishgene 3y ago
      They are mostly interested in making money, not helping people with insomnia, so shady is fine for that goal.
lxe 3y ago
Be honest, do the survey answers affect the resulting program? I literally put in random numbers and answers each time and it took me to the same exact payment page. There's also a "loading" screen that doesn't do anything except spin. You also throw in random interstitials all over the place making it even slower to onboard. You use savvyy nocode builder and this "onboarding" looks eerily similar to their "sleep app" template: https://trysavvy.com/example/sleep-reset-assessment https://trysavvy.com/example/sleep-reset-assessment. I see this playbook far too often. I'm sorry, but it sucks. Be honest with your users. Just provide them with clear info about what your service does and how it does it, and how much it costs, off the get go.
- edreichua 3y ago
  Thank you for the feedback! We'll make information regarding pricing and program clearer to our users. Regarding your question, we do send the survey results to our backend, and based on that, we 1. generate a sleep report 2. assign you to one of several tracks we have. We also personalize your specific program within the track (e.g. we'll adjust your sleep restriction window based on your sleep efficiency etc).

confoundcofound 3y ago

Future.co does this too and it was really irritating. 20 screens of questions, interstitial ads for the product I'm signing up for sprinkled throughout, all to funnel me to a payment page for a service experience that isn't commensurately influenced by my inputs. They make you do an introductory call with your coach too, where much of that information could be provided instead, and in a more human way.

robertlagrant 3y ago
It does seem basically the same as signing up for a scam success course.

chasebank 3y ago

If the product actually worked, they wouldn't have to do this. People will pay lots of money for solving their sleep problems.

mbesto 3y ago

Please, please, please stop listening to random engineers who aren't marketing people provide advice about marketing. Your business needs paying customers. That being said...the parent comment does make a valid point about this potentially being a dark pattern. I think a reasonable disclosure (small txt on bottom "free trial for 14 days" or something like that) is probably a reasonable way to inform users.

skupig 3y ago
GP is explicitly not interested in giving marketing advice. They're objecting to being tricked and manipulated.
lobsterthief 3y ago
You know not everyone here is an engineer, right? Many marketers, designers, product people, and even engineers who do all of these things well.
- mbesto 3y ago
  You know the parent comment is from an engineer right?

lukko 3y ago

I agree, I think it's awful. It's a waste of everyone's time and insulting to people who have a problem and feel slightly vulnerable. People aren't just numbers or conversion rates, and especially in digital health they should be treated respectfully.

gr0wthhack3r 3y ago

(Disclaimer: I joined the Stellar Sleep team after they got into YC, partly because I also had insomnia for many years and went through a full $1000+ in-person CTB-I treatment regimen which helped quite a bit) Hey there! Wanted to chime in and let you know that we hear your concerns! I expressed the same sentiment about long surveys to George and Ed when I was considering joining their team. We're committed to making pricing, user onboarding, etc more transparent and easier for our users. Yes, we do use onboarding survey responses to personalize our program. The programs on the payment page might look the same "regardless of your answers", but behind the scenes, we really are building customized modules based on your responses. For example, if a user mentions in the quiz that they have racing thoughts, we're working to surface relevant content earlier in the program and partnering with our professional sleep psychologists to create more modules that tailor to such needs. Everyone on our team is constantly learning, and we do appreciate your feedback and patience! To get the app off the ground, we needed to make quick decisions in the beginning and just go with what made sense to us, but as we build out our team and incorporate more of your feedback, we're committed to doing better. I wouldn't work here if I didn't believe this was part of our mission.

Solvency 3y ago
Why do you ask the same questions twice to build your modules. That's the problem here.
gabrielsroka 3y ago
cognitive behavioral therapy for insomnia (CBT-I)
lxe 3y ago
Thanks for the transparent response. Even if some or all answers are used to either fully customize the program for the user, or to place the user in a particular track, it's still a bad onboarding experience. The customer wants to see what your product is, what it does, how it does it specifically and succinctly, and how much it costs, front and center. These "onboarding surveys" is a recently hyped dark pattern that uses a huge number of questions along with fake spinners, and random interstitials to trick the user into entering an email at the end, due to the cost sunk into the onboarding experience. In marketing/sales speak, you're actually generating yourself a huge number of dud leads this way, making your true conversion numbers actually worse than what they could have been if you only signed up "serious" customers. If you insist on using an onboarding survey, place it after the signup email, and restrict only to questions, answers to which you actually use to generate the program for the user.

tomcam 3y ago

Oh don’t worry. It’s only about 15 questions or so. Then when you sign up and pay, they make you fill out the same questions again. After that a talking owl takes over.

f6v 3y ago

Reminds me of the “brain training” apps that were fire back in the day. They’d fake-configure the program for you as well.