The importance of an optimized onboarding funnel

Author: Péter Nagy, Partnerships Specialist

As the food delivery industry grows, how platforms optimize their onboarding process plays a crucial role in the number of couriers onboarded in a given period.

The importance of the onboarding process is inevitable because they are the doors to the platforms and as the applicants have to file their documents and meet various conditions an optimized onboarding funnel can make a huge difference in the applicant’s willingness to join the platform.

What is even more important is communication during the onboarding process. In the food delivery industry, there is a huge race for new couriers. The platforms are aiming to scale up to new cities, new countries or even new regions which require a workforce for operations.

Clear communication about benefits and requirements can be a plus besides flexibility and earnings.

Optimized onboarding funnel

How can the onboarding process be improved? 

Experience and research show that if an onboarding process is as frictionless as possible, the possibility of a courier completing the process is higher.

To make the process smoother, easily and quickly completable, it is important that the applicant is in possession of all important information and requirements and those are well structured and consistent.

Sending continuous communication during the onboarding is a great way to assist them in finishing filing the correct documents and the onboarding as soon as possible.

On the other hand, optimizing and improving the onboarding communication can clearly have an effect on the bag adoption rate and conversion rate.

Experience and many analyzed onboardings and orders showed that the clearly communicated requirements about the delivery bag (size, insulation, etc.) and the possibility of where to purchase it (WYB eshop linked to various stages of the funnel) resulted in quicker activations as the couriers could order their delivery bag even at an earlier stage of the onboarding process.

At Wear Your Brand, we are monitoring and analysing the onboarding processes by mapping the funnel and the communication received so we can provide suggestions for improvement based on industry best practices.

Communicating the possibility of purchasing the backpack on different platforms helps couriers navigate through the onboarding and the webshop. The sooner they can verify their delivery bag the sooner they can start working

Another observation was that if the delivery bags arrived quickly after completing the onboarding (<3 days) the couriers were more likely to start working compared to a slow onboarding process and gear distribution.

The integration with Wear Your Brand facilitates a quicker onboarding and bag-checking process and better tracking of bag distribution. 

As a result, brand visibility can be increased which leads to better brand perception and market advantage in the long run. We already emphasized the importance of the brand visibility in a previous article. You can read it here: Brand awareness - the role of the courier