Appointments Setup Guide

Square Appointments is an all-in-one calandar management and point-of-sale solution serving small businesses in the beauty and personal care industry.

My role

My role included vision, design, and content for Square Appointments onboarding and growth.

Collaborators

I partnered with a product manager, a team of engineers, and a legal consultant.

Timeline

Jan-Jun 2023

User & business problem

New sellers struggled with a fragmented and time-consuming setup process for Square Appointments. After signup, they encountered a lengthy, unclear checklist scattered across Square's ecosystem, often getting lost between different Square apps and browser tabs. This was particularly problematic since 64% of sellers begin setup on mobile devices, where the experience wasn't optimized. The disjointed experience led to lower activation rates, fewer paid subscriptions, and decreased payment processing—all crucial metrics for business success.

Solution at a glance

I proposed a series of improvements to the existing setup guide and collaborated with my team to redesign the setup experience using a product-led growth approach, structured around a two-milestone strategy:

Milestone 1: Unified Setup Experience

Transitioned the setup guide from mobile web to dedicated native app and desktop dashboard experiences.
Developed a flexible, prioritized setup flow that sellers could complete in any order.
Ensured consistent cross-platform functionality for seamless transitions between devices.

Milestone 2: Centralized Dashboard

Integrated key setup tasks directly into the Appointments dashboard
Streamlined location and service creation into essential-only modal flows
Added contextual tooltips to help navigate Square's ecosystem
Introduced personalized steps based on business type (e.g., fitness studios)

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Location Setup

Measuring success

I collaborated with the data science team to create a Setup Completion Metric to help us understand how successful setup correlates with long-term engagement. The metric defines "setup complete" as completing three critical actions within 35 days of signup: verifying identity for payments, adding basic business info like hours and address, and creating at least one service for online booking. Data showed that sellers who met these criteria had significantly higher activation and engagement rates, helping us prioritize which setup steps were truly essential.

Impact

The two-phase rollout demonstrated significant improvements across key metrics:

Milestone 1 Results:

Setup completion increased by 4.3%
First appointment bookings up by 3.1%
Paid subscriptions grew by 1.6%
First payments increased by 1.2%

Milestone 2 Results:

Further 2.8% increase in setup completion
Additional 1.3% growth in first appointments
Paid subscriptions rose another 0.8%

These improvements validated our mobile-first, centralized approach to onboarding and set the foundation for future optimizations, including the AI-assisted Service Library Builder that would later build upon these patterns.