Sign-up presents a high psychological barrier for users, and encouraging it is a difficult task from the service’s perspective. Guiding users beyond sign-up to make an actual purchase is an even more complex challenge. At 29CM, only 44% of users who install the app complete the sign-up process, and among them, 18% churn within 7 days without making a first purchase. In other words, approximately 74% of total installers drop off naturally, highlighting a significant opportunity to improve the onboarding process and its potential impact.

The process from sign-up to first purchase is not a separate experience for users, but a continuous, connected journey. Users install e-commerce apps with the ultimate goal of purchasing products, and the service plays a crucial role in helping them quickly and easily find and buy the right items. Therefore, rather than treating sign-up and purchase as isolated steps, it is essential to approach them as a single, seamless experience and develop strategies that improve the overall conversion funnel.

At 29CM, users with a higher volume of behavioral signals showed significantly higher repurchase rates. These signals include actions such as search history, browsing behavior, likes, and purchases. However, at the point of first entry after sign-up, data such as search or purchase history is not yet available, making it difficult to personalize the experience. Therefore, 29CM focuses on collecting “like” data during onboarding and considers using it to recommend personalized products from the very beginning.

Instead of directing users to the home screen immediately after app installation, 29CM first introduces an onboarding program to capture behavioral signals. This onboarding program is built around lookbooks that concisely represent various categories and styles. Users select the lookbook that best matches their taste and then proceed with sign-up. Based on their selections, personalized product recommendations are provided. Since 29CM users tend to respond well to signal-based recommendations, the hypothesis is that if the onboarding experience successfully captures user interest and leads to sign-up, it can naturally drive the first purchase as well.

This is the first screen users see immediately after installing the app, where they can choose from three categories: Women, Men, and Lifestyle. Given the importance of first impressions, careful attention was paid to visual details. The background image subtly reveals a silhouette rather than a direct depiction, allowing users to intuitively associate it with each category. When a category is selected, the image button expands to reveal more of the background image, providing a visual feedback interaction instead of simply moving to the next screen.

Each category includes a total of eight styles, and users are given four opportunities to make a selection. On each page, only one style can be selected at a time. For example, the Women category features styles such as Feminine, Modern, Casual, Sporty, Street, Athleisure, Office, and Chic, with each style occupying a single slot on the page. The lookbooks for each style are curated based on user data and the expertise of merchandisers (MDs), and a rotation system is implemented to regularly refresh the content. Additionally, to prevent bias toward styles that appear in the top position, the layout is designed so that the styles shift one slot clockwise on each page, distributing exposure more evenly.

After selecting four preferred styles, the user is taken to the engagement page, which consists of two main sections. The top section uses images and text to explain the benefits of signing up, highlighting features such as "Receive brand updates in your home feed," "Get alerts from your favorite brands," and "Stay notified anytime, anywhere." These messages emphasize that personalized curation will be provided based on the user’s 'Like' signals. The bottom section displays a list of brands and products included in the selected lookbooks, all shown as already 'liked' by the user. This indicates that once the user completes sign-up, personalized recommendations will be immediately applied. Finally, clicking the “Sign up and get tailored recommendations” button leads to the sign-up page.

Some users may feel hesitant about or simply not prefer the lookbook onboarding program. To address this, if a user clicks the “Skip to Home” button either before or during the onboarding process, a modal appears to encourage them to complete it. The modal title highlights the most compelling reason to continue—that all 'Like' data based on previously selected lookbooks will be lost. To make this message more tangible, the modal also displays the lookbook images, brand names, and 'liked' status the user has chosen so far, helping them visually understand what they would be giving up.

After completing sign-up, users are directed to the home screen, where personalized curation begins in full. In the home feed, content from brands the user has liked is displayed sequentially from the top, accompanied by a “Liked Brand” badge, offering a tailored content experience. Additionally, in the bottom navigation bar, the “Likes” tab allows users to instantly access the brands and products they’ve liked, which are automatically saved under separate brand and product tabs. Beyond this, personalized information based on user signals is continuously delivered through notifications and other touchpoints, further enhancing the personalized experience.

In the experiment, the variant group with the style onboarding showed a 3.3% higher sign-up conversion rate and a 1.2% higher first-purchase conversion rate compared to the control group, with both differences being statistically significant. This demonstrates that even if the onboarding process is relatively long, it can positively impact conversions when the experience is engaging and immersive—indicating that the style onboarding was successful. The experiment also confirmed that 29CM users show strong interest in lookbook-style visual content, find value in exploring styles through this format, and both expect and prefer personalized curation for the brands and products they like.