Lari Pancieri

Investigating Churn at Yooga

Product Design

UX Research

UI Design

About Yooga Technology

Yooga is a Brazilian foodtech that offers a complete management platform for bars, restaurants, and foodservice businesses. Focused on micro and small entrepreneurs, Yooga simplifies operations like sales, inventory, delivery, finances, and customer service — all in one accessible and easy-to-use system.

In October 2023, Yooga raised $2.3 million in a seed round led by SaaSholic, with participation from Gilgamesh Ventures, Apex Partners, and Backfuture, reaching an estimated valuation of $20 million. At that time, the company already had over 6,000 active clients, was processing more than 4 million orders per month, and surpassing R$2 billion in annual transactions. The business showed strong revenue growth, high gross margins, and was already EBITDA-positive — a rare achievement at the seed stage. Source: Tech Crunch.

Task: After reviewing the quantitative data, I proposed starting with qualitative research, taking responsibility for conducting interviews, documenting user needs and pain points through personas, mapping user journeys, and creating a Service Blueprint to identify gaps. Afterwards,

I would develop a prototype aimed at achieving the desired outcomes.

User Research steps

This stage involved:

  • Defining the research plan with participant profile, interview script and hypothesis.
  • PO had recruiting users;
  • Interview and analyze data;
  • Synthesizing it into a Persona Document; and presenting the results visually to the team.

Key Learnings: present

UX Impact:

We gathered 6 users — 3 from the Essential plan and 3 from the Complete plan, all of whom had been with us for 4 months. The feedback was positive overall, and the gamification features stood out the most.

Results, Impact, and

Reflections 💡

👉 21 users wanted to cancel because they thought Yooga lacked certain features — but the platform already had them.

👉 22 users feel lost during onboarding

Key Learnings: present

UX Impact:

Initially, the team was unfamiliar with the concept of Personas and their value to the company. To ensure research was prioritized, I presented to the product team explaining its purpose and benefits.

 

Storing research data in repositories like Jira or Dovetail is not enough, as the team often does not access them. A strong UX and Research culture is needed, and a first step can be UX sharing presentations and knowledge bites to engage the rest of the team.

 

We realized that building a new onboarding from scratch would take around 5 months, while the “What's New” page had a shorter timeline of just 2 months. So we decided to prioritize the release of the “What’s New” page with gamification first.

Let’s work together ✨

Investigating Churn at Yooga

Product Design

UX Research

UI Design

Prototype

UX

About Yooga Technology

Yooga is a Brazilian foodtech that offers a complete management platform for bars, restaurants, and foodservice businesses. Focused on micro and small entrepreneurs, Yooga simplifies operations like sales, inventory, delivery, finances, and customer service — all in one accessible and easy-to-use system.

In October 2023, Yooga raised $2.3 million in a seed round led by SaaSholic, with participation from Gilgamesh Ventures, Apex Partners, and Backfuture, reaching an estimated valuation of $20 million. Source: Tech Crunch.

The challenge

Over the last three months, the COO noticed an increase in churn: from 3% to 5%. The highest churn rates were among users on the Essential plan (46%) and the Complete plan (32%), particularly those with a monthly revenue between R$30K and R$60K. Also, NPS detractors also increased. Most cancellations were happening within the first 4 months of usage.

 

Our main goal was to understand why users were churning early.

Task: After reviewing the quantitative data, I proposed starting with qualitative research, taking responsibility for conducting interviews, documenting user needs and pain points through personas, mapping user journeys, and creating a Service Blueprint to identify gaps. Afterwards,

I would develop a prototype aimed at achieving the desired outcomes.

User Research steps 🔍

This stage involved:

  • Defining the research plan with participant profile, interview script and hypothesis.
  • PO had recruiting users;
  • Interview and analyze data;
  • Synthesizing it into a Persona Document; and presenting the results visually to the team.

Research Results:

👉 21 users wanted to cancel because they thought Yooga lacked certain features — but the platform already had them.

👉 22 users feel lost during onboarding

Action: let’s create a "What's New" page to increase upsell and Gamification in onboarding to boost retention

I led a focus group to validate our assumptions.

We gathered 6 users — 3 from the Essential plan and 3 from the Complete plan, all of whom had been with us for 4 months. The feedback was positive overall, and the gamification features stood out the most.

Results of What’s New Page:

In 3 months, upsell grew 25%, adding R$ 56.850.

 

Gamification: One month after the feature launch,

churn dropped from 5% to 4.5%.

Key Learnings:

Initially, the team was unfamiliar with the concept of Personas and their value to the company. To ensure research was prioritized, I presented to the product team explaining its purpose and benefits.

 

Storing research data in repositories like Jira or Dovetail is not enough, as the team often does not access them. A strong UX and Research culture is needed, and a first step can be UX sharing presentations and knowledge bites to engage the rest of the team.

 

We realized that building a new onboarding from scratch would take around 5 months, while the “What's New” page had a shorter timeline of just 2 months. So we decided to prioritize the release of the “What’s New” page with gamification first.

Thank you for your time here. 💜

Back to Home

Investigating Churn at Yooga

Product Design

UX Research

UI Design

Prototype

UX

About Yooga Technology

Yooga is a Brazilian foodtech that offers a complete management platform for bars, restaurants, and foodservice businesses. Focused on micro and small entrepreneurs, Yooga simplifies operations like sales, inventory, delivery, finances, and customer service — all in one accessible and easy-to-use system.

In October 2023, Yooga raised $2.3 million in a seed round led by SaaSholic, with participation from Gilgamesh Ventures, Apex Partners, and Backfuture, reaching an estimated valuation of $20 million. At that time, the company already had over 6,000 active clients, was processing more than 4 million orders per month, and surpassing R$2 billion in annual transactions. The business showed strong revenue growth, high gross margins, and was already EBITDA-positive — a rare achievement at the seed stage. Source: Tech Crunch.

The challenge

Over the last three months, the COO noticed an increase in churn: from 3% to 5%. The highest churn rates were among users on the Essential plan (46%) and the Complete plan (32%), particularly those with a monthly revenue between R$30K and R$60K. Also, NPS detractors also increased. Most cancellations were happening within the first 4 months of usage.

 

Our main goal was to understand why users were churning early.

Task: After reviewing the quantitative data, I proposed starting with qualitative research, taking responsibility for conducting interviews, documenting user needs and pain points through personas, mapping user journeys, and creating a Service Blueprint to identify gaps. Afterwards,

I would develop a prototype aimed at achieving the desired outcomes.

User Research steps 🔍

This stage involved:

  • Defining the research plan with participant profile, interview script and hypothesis.
  • PO had recruiting users;
  • Interview and analyze data;
  • Synthesizing it into a Persona Document; and presenting the results visually to the team.

Research Results:

👉 21 users wanted to cancel because they thought Yooga lacked certain features — but the platform already had them.

👉 22 users feel lost during onboarding

Action: let’s create a "What's New" page to increase upsell and Gamification in onboarding to boost retention

I led a focus group to validate our assumptions.

We gathered 6 users — 3 from the Essential plan and 3 from the Complete plan, all of whom had been with us for 4 months. The feedback was positive overall, and the gamification features stood out the most.

Results of What’s New Page:

In 3 months, upsell grew 25%, adding R$ 56.850.

 

Gamification: One month after the feature launch,

churn dropped from 5% to 4.5%.

Key Learnings:

Initially, the team was unfamiliar with the concept of Personas and their value to the company. To ensure research was prioritized, I presented to the product team explaining its purpose and benefits.

 

Storing research data in repositories like Jira or Dovetail is not enough, as the team often does not access them. A strong UX and Research culture is needed, and a first step can be UX sharing presentations and knowledge bites to engage the rest of the team.

 

We realized that building a new onboarding from scratch would take around 5 months, while the “What's New” page had a shorter timeline of just 2 months. So we decided to prioritize the release of the “What’s New” page with gamification first.

Thank you for your time here. 💜

Back to Home