Convincing users to trust Spacebox with their belongings
Platform
iOS & Android
team
Engineering, QA, Localization, Product
TIMELINE
November 2025 – January 2026
⚡️ the 30-second version
Spacebox is an award-winning Hong Kong storage service: they pick up your belongings, store them, and bring them back when you need them. The whole thing only works if you trust them with your stuff. I redesigned the app's onboarding, plan selection and payment so first-time users felt safe enough to keep going, and confident enough to pick a plan.
Conversion
33%
increase in sign-ups
Continuation
85.7%
of users continued past onboarding
Acquisition
37.6%
went on to select a storage plan
Purchase intent
400+
users entered the payment flow within 3 months
The context
Storage is a purchase built entirely on trust
Spacebox is one of Hong Kong's most established storage companies - winner of the Best Valet Storage in Asia award.
They offer door-to-door storage, where movers collect your belongings and keep them in a warehouse until you want them back. The app is how users book boxes, manage their inventory, and schedule pickups.
My job was the part that decides everything: onboarding and choosing a plan. And here's the catch - unlike most apps, storage asks the user to hand over their physical possessions to people they've never met. No feature matters until someone believes their stuff is safe. If that belief doesn't form early, they close the app and book nothing.
Phase 1: Discovery
How it started
The digital journey was losing users at every stage
Spacebox offers door-to-door box storage, a service that requires trust before it requires a payment. But the existing app pushed users toward commitment before they had built that trust. Research across the product, competitor apps, and UX patterns surfaced four consistent friction points:
Users were asked to act before they understood the service
Too many decisions appeared at once during ordering
Pricing and next steps felt unpredictable throughout
Checkout required manual sales support to complete
research
Before focusing on individual screens, the product was reviewed more broadly to understand where the experience was helping and where it was creating friction. The work combined design analysis, competitor review, and pattern research to identify the moments that most affected clarity, trust, and ease of use across the app.
Design analysis
Competitive scan
Pattern search
User archetypes
Phase 2: Design
Key design decisions
Three flows. One through-line: earn trust before asking for commitment.
Onboarding
The problem
Plans and pricing appeared on screen two. First-time users couldn't evaluate a price for a service they hadn't yet understood.
the trade-offs
Delaying sign-up to educate first risks losing impatient users. The call: informed users convert better and drop off less further down.
The outcome
Users arrived at sign-up already oriented, with fewer drop-offs before the CTA and a clearer path into the order flow.
33% conversion
+131% first app opens
Tools: Figma Make (for wireframing), Claude (for PRD refinement)
After conducting rounds of A/B tests we finalised on these designs:
II. Order
The problem
Box type, plan, quantity, transport, and fees appeared together. Users stalled because there was too much to process at once.
the trade-offs
More screens means more steps. The call: lower cognitive load per screen outweighs the cost of an extra tap for a high-consideration purchase.
The outcome
The flow felt lighter and more navigable. Users progressed with less hesitation and fewer return-to-previous-step behaviours.
37.6% plan selection rate
III. Checkout
The problem
No in-product payment path existed. After a full digital journey, users were handed off to sales or WhatsApp to complete the order.
the trade-offs
Removing the human touchpoint risks feeling cold for a trust-dependent service. The call: keep the enquiry path as a secondary route, not remove it entirely.
The outcome
Users could complete a full order without leaving the product. Sales-assisted completions decreased as digital payment adoption grew.
400+ users entered payment flow within 3 months
Phase 3: Impact
What the data revealed
The friction was not at the end of the funnel. It was at the moment of upfront commitment.
Mixpanel funnel analysis tracked user progression through the payment flow and surfaced a critical pattern: drop-off was concentrated at the point of payment entry, not at later confirmation steps.
414
Users entered the payment flow
13.2%
Continued past payment entry
85.7%
Progressed through the summary step
18
Completed full order submissions
What worked
The checkout flow performed well once users committed. 85.7% progressed through the summary step, a strong signal the experience itself was sound.
The order flow was building genuine comprehension. 37.6% selected a plan, showing users understood the offering enough to move past the first major decision.
Acquisition was strong. First app opens up 131% month-over-month confirmed the onboarding redesign was working.
What needed rethinking
The drop-off happened before the flow, not inside it. Only 13.2% continued past payment entry, pointing to upfront commitment anxiety as the real barrier.
The barrier was not the checkout design itself. Users needed a lower-pressure path into commitment.
This directly informed the shift to an enquiry-first model and deferred payment in phase two, currently in progress.
Reflection
Simplifying a journey is not always about removing steps. It is about introducing the right information at the moment it becomes useful
The three flows were not separate problems. They were one continuous experience where each stage either prepared users for the next, or did not
The most valuable design output was not the screens. It was the precision with which the data revealed where confidence broke down
Shipping this taught me that designing for high-stakes, first-time experiences means designing for the trust level users actually have, not the one you assumed. That distinction is driving phase two, currently in progress
Other Work at Spacebox
Audited the app to identify usability gaps and define opportunities for a clearer, more seamless digital experience
