Bulbe Customer Acquisition
Redesign of the institutional website and enrollment flow, guided by user research to increase trust and reduce conversion barriers.
Customer
Bulb
Categories
UX Research; UI/UX Design
Duration
3 months (2023)
My Role
Product Designer
Tools
Figma
Team
Solo design (in a squad with a PM)
The biggest obstacle to conversion wasn’t the usability of the signup flow. It was trust. Before optimizing the signup process, we had to make a business model unfamiliar to most users easier to understand.
Context
Bulbe is a company that operates photovoltaic plants in Minas Gerais and distributes energy credits to residential and commercial consumers through a distributed generation model.
Since the service is contracted entirely through digital channels, the institutional website represents the primary point of contact between the company and its prospective customers. Beyond presenting the service, it needed to explain a business model unfamiliar to most users and guide them toward signing up.
When the project started, Bulbe was looking to improve the efficiency of its acquisition funnel, reduce uncertainty throughout the journey, and build greater trust among prospective customers during the signup process.
The Challenges
Although the signup flow was relatively straightforward, the company noticed that many users reached the end of the journey still uncertain about signing up for the service.
The main source of uncertainty was understanding how the service actually worked.
Users did not clearly understand the roles of Bulbe, Cemig, and the customer within the service. Many believed solar panels would need to be installed, others assumed they would stop receiving utility bills, and some even questioned the legitimacy of the business model.
The challenge, therefore, wasn’t simply to redesign a website or simplify a form. It was to build trust in an innovative service and transform complex information into a clear, accessible narrative for prospective customers.
The Approach
Before proposing any solution, I conducted a Discovery process to understand both the business and users’ perceptions of the product.
The process was structured across three complementary fronts.
Business Understanding
The first step was to deeply understand Bulbe’s operations, strategic objectives, and the challenges faced by the teams involved in customer acquisition.
To do this, I conducted:
Stakeholder research;
Direct and indirect competitor benchmarking;
Heuristic evaluation of the existing website;
Analytics and heatmap analysis;
Interviews with Marketing and Customer Service teams;
Service Blueprint development and validation.
This research revealed not only opportunities to improve the digital experience, but also recurring patterns of questions and objections throughout the sales process.
User Research
With a consolidated understanding of the business, I conducted qualitative research to validate two hypotheses:
the website did not provide enough information to clearly explain the product;
the signup flow was simple, but did not provide users with enough confidence to move forward.
The research combined moderated interviews, usability testing, and questionnaires, allowing me to analyze behavioral patterns alongside quantitative indicators of understanding, interest, and trust.
Participants included both users who were unfamiliar with Bulbe and customers who had already completed the signup process, making it possible to examine the journey from different perspectives.
Synthesis
After the research sessions, I organized all findings in a Rainbow Sheet, classifying recurring issues and their severity.
I then consolidated the findings into a pain points and opportunities map, translating each insight into User Stories and product requirements to guide the ideation phase.
User Research
Objectives
The research sought to answer two central questions:
Does the website clearly explain how Bulbe’s solution works?
Does the signup flow provide users with enough confidence to complete the process?
To answer these questions, participants completed two tasks during the usability testing sessions.
In the first, participants freely explored the institutional website to understand the company’s value proposition and how the service worked.
In the second, participants who were not yet customers completed the entire signup flow while verbalizing their perceptions, questions, and expectations.
At the end of each stage, interviews and questionnaires complemented the observational data, allowing us to triangulate qualitative and quantitative evidence.
Key Findings
The two initial hypotheses were confirmed.
However, the research revealed an even more significant issue: the main source of friction was not navigation, but users’ understanding of and trust in the value proposition.
Among the recurring patterns observed were:
users believed they would need to install solar panels in their homes;
there was confusion about the relationship between Bulbe and Cemig;
many users did not understand why they would continue receiving a utility bill;
the discount offered seemed “too good to be true,” raising concerns about the legitimacy of the service;
several participants did not realize that completing the signup flow would effectively initiate a contract;
after completing the signup process, users were unsure about what would happen next.
These same patterns also appeared in the recurring questions reported by the Support team, reinforcing the research findings across multiple sources of evidence.
From Research to Solution
The research findings were translated into User Stories and prioritized based on their impact on both the user experience and business objectives.
This process guided the key Design decisions.
All of these decisions emerged directly from the evidence gathered during Discovery.
Experience Design
The Solution
The project encompassed a complete redesign of Bulbe’s institutional website and signup flow.
A shared Design System was developed across the entire experience, using tokens, reusable components, and responsive variants for desktop, tablet, and mobile.
The Information Architecture was reorganized to address users’ key questions earlier in the funnel, reducing cognitive load and helping them make more informed decisions before signing up.
The main deliverables included:
Redesign of the Home page, reinforcing the value proposition, key differentiators, and company credibility;
Creation of the How It Works page, dedicated to explaining the distributed generation model;
Development of interactive infographics explaining the roles of Bulbe, Cemig, and the customer throughout the journey;
Restructuring of the About Us page, highlighting the company’s power plants, certifications, and expertise;
Creation of a dedicated Customer Area page, centralizing frequently asked questions and information about the Bulbe Invoice;
Complete redesign of the signup flow, moving it to a dedicated environment and providing greater clarity about what happens after signup.
All flows were prototyped in high fidelity, including interactions, animations, and responsive behaviors across different devices.
Results and Learning
Upon completion of the project, I recommended that Bulbe conduct another round of user research to validate whether the implemented solutions had reduced uncertainty and increased confidence throughout the acquisition journey.
Despite the recommendation, this stage was not prioritized while I remained on the project.
Subsequently, website maintenance was transferred to the company’s internal team, which made changes to the original solution.
This project reinforced a principle that has since become central to my work as a Product Designer: conversion improvements rarely begin at the interface level. Before optimizing flows, it is essential to deeply understand what prevents people from trusting, understanding, and making decisions.
