redesigning a broken onboarding experience

We were challenged by Galp, to reimagine the 3 minutes service in order to improve B2C conversion. The name promised speed and simplicity.

The experience, as we found out, delivered neither.

• research

The research phase combined 220 surveys, 6 interviews and 5 usability tests, which gave us both the scale and the texture we needed to understand what was going wrong.

The surveys revealed something striking right away: 98% of respondents had never heard of the 3 minutes service. And while Galp is a well-known brand, only 29% associated it with energy supply at all — 4 out of 5 people linked it exclusively to fuel. The service was invisible, and the brand wasn't helping it be seen.

But awareness was only part of the problem. Once users actually encountered the platform, things got worse. Every single person who went through the usability tests found the service complex and not intuitive. The average time to complete the onboarding was five times longer than the promised 3 minutes. Two out of five users considered quitting mid-way, and one abandoned the process entirely.

• positioning

The five core insights that emerged were: Knowledge, Complexity, Time, Withdrawal, and Price — with price proving to be a decisive factor, cited by 61% of survey respondents and 5 out of 6 interviewees as the most important variable in choosing a Galp package.

Two perspectives crystallised from this work, one who's tired of complex processes and needs services that are easy to navigate, and another who prioritises physical interaction and finds online processes that feel risky or difficult simply not worth the effort. Both were being failed, just in different ways.

The 3 minutes service is complex and not intuitive. This causes a frustrating experience, which leads users to withdraw from the process entirely. Evidently, something had to change.

Which brought us to the question that drove everything that followed:

The most significant changes came through two core features.

The first was an omnichannel system. One of the clearest sources of friction was the rigidity of the original platform — users were locked into finishing where they started, on whatever device they had to hand. CONNECT removed that constraint entirely, letting users begin the process on one channel and complete it on another, with all information carried seamlessly across devices. For ones who might start online but want to confirm at a physical store, this was the kind of flexibility that makes a process feel trustworthy rather than risky.

The second was a connected simulator, integrated directly into the onboarding flow. Given that price was the single most important factor in users' decisions, surfacing it early — clearly, honestly, before asking for any commitment — was essential.

But the solution didn't stop there.

Knowing that Galp's relationship with its users shouldn't end at the moment of subscription, we also designed a loyalty programme: an ecological challenges section within the existing Mundo Galp app, where users could complete sustainability-driven challenges and earn points convertible into discounts on Galp products. It gave the brand a reason to stay present in users' lives, and users a reason to stay engaged with Galp beyond the bill.

Galp CONNECT represents the concept of a genuine shift in how an energy company can relate to its customers digitally — one built on innovation, sustainability and connection. By stripping back the complexity that was causing users to doubt themselves and walk away, and replacing it with a process that respects their time, their need for clarity, and their right to choose how and where they engage, the redesign turned a broken promise into one the product could actually keep.

You can also find this project in detail on my Behance page.