At bunq, I led design for acquisition, onboarding, and activation during a critical 10x growth phase. Embedded in the growth team, I worked closely with product and engineers to improve the first-time user journey.

Our goal was to reduce drop-offs, simplify onboarding, and drive early activation. The work led to a 15% increase in card activations and helped boost 2-month retention from 45% to 60% among freemium users.

What was the core problem? Bunq's playfulness outplayed itself. The onboarding was unclear. Too much useful information was hidden, and the overly playful tone left users guessing how features worked or what they were signing up for.

A quick experiment using Google Optimize showed that users were just as interested in learning more as they were in downloading the app. We saw a clear increase in unique clicks on 'learn more' links, confirming strong engagement with the content.

After our first experiment, we expanded the work by running 30+ interviews with non-users. We used their feedback to create a customer journey map that revealed where people got confused, what they felt, and where the main pain points were—giving us a solid base for new ideas.

We uncovered three key issues during testing. First, there was cost ambiguity around ordering a bunq card—most respondents were hesitant, as they assumed there would be a fee and weren’t given clear information. Second, the location sharing for the card order felt misleading o many users, which seemed to be more related raud detection. Finally, users often got lost after account approval, unsure of what to do next or how to activate their account effectively.

Alongside these experiments, we looked at ways to improve parts of the onboarding and activation flow. Adjusting logic and combining certain steps resulted in faster account creation and an onboarding sequence with logic.

We believed that if we showed users the value of bunq upfront—before asking for personal details—they’d be more likely to stick around and complete signup.

We released a series of updates that were tested with low-cost experiments before scaling out to full production.

We repositioned the online MasterCard for free trial users. This gave immediate utility to use the app. Secondly, we reduced ambiguity around card pricing, which led to a +6% increase in funded accounts — a key revenue moment.

Clear up loose ends on data. Be more up-front about what bunq uses with location data.

Redesigned the flow to include sequenced banners in order of logical activation goals.

It was also part of my role configure acquisition experiments across ad networks like Snapchat, Google, Facebook, and other sources. I worked with a more technical paid marketing specialist, but also set some up myself. Our ad to landing page retargeting & marketing campaigns were aimed at various cohorts we explored through testing. Cohorts were defined on detailed events recorded from Adjust.