Stratum CMS.
Cut enterprise onboarding from 4 days to 6 hours — by designing for the person who hates reading docs.
What needed to change.
Stratum's enterprise CMS had a 4-day average onboarding time — driven by a complex permission model, an unintuitive content schema builder, and an onboarding flow that assumed users had read the 80-page documentation.
Customer success was spending 60% of their time on onboarding calls. Churn in the first 30 days was 22%. The product had powerful capabilities, but they were hidden behind a UI that rewarded patience over intuition.
How we got there.
Onboarding Audit
Shadowed 8 new customer onboarding sessions. Mapped every moment of confusion, every question asked, every tab opened to find an answer. Built a friction map of the entire first-week experience.
- —Onboarding friction map
- —Session recordings analysis
- —Support ticket taxonomy
Mental Model Research
Ran mental model interviews with 20 content managers across different industries. Discovered that most users thought in terms of "content types" and "who can do what" — not in terms of schemas and permission flags.
- —Mental model diagrams
- —Vocabulary mapping
- —User segment profiles
Progressive Disclosure Design
Designed an onboarding flow that revealed complexity progressively — starting with a 5-minute "quick setup" that got users to their first published piece of content, then layering in advanced features as needed.
- —Onboarding flow map
- —Progressive disclosure framework
- —Contextual help system design
Visual Schema Builder
Replaced the JSON-based schema configuration with a drag-and-drop visual builder. Designed 14 field type components, a relationship visualizer, and a live preview that showed how schema changes would appear in the content editor.
- —Schema builder component library
- —Relationship visualizer
- —Field type specifications
Validation & Rollout
Tested the new onboarding with 12 new customers before full rollout. Average onboarding time dropped from 4 days to 6 hours in testing. Rolled out to all new customers with a 94% task completion rate in the first month.
- —Usability test report
- —Rollout metrics
- —Customer success team training materials
A redesigned onboarding flow with contextual guidance, a visual schema builder that replaced JSON configuration, and a permission model that used plain-language roles instead of technical flags.
Visual Schema Builder
The old schema builder required writing JSON configuration. The new one is a drag-and-drop canvas where content managers can define their content structure visually, with a live preview showing exactly how it will appear in the editor.
Plain-Language Permissions
Replaced 23 technical permission flags with 5 plain-language roles: Viewer, Contributor, Editor, Publisher, and Admin. Each role has a one-sentence description of what that person can do — no documentation required.
