Block Party, acquired by DeleteMe
The mobile playbooks
Experiment design for growth: skimmable explainers that let mobile users understand a desktop only product before they ever install it.
- Role
- Product designer, end to end
- Timeline
- 8 weeks, 2024
- Team
- Head of Design, CEO, Engineering
- Surface
- Mobile web, ads and marketing site
Background
A one click privacy cleanup
Block Party is a browser extension tool that helps you clean up and lock down your social media presence. It reads your settings across platforms like X, LinkedIn and Facebook, then fixes the risky ones for you in a single click.
Problem
The funnel leaked on mobile
Mobile users could not try a desktop only app on their browser.
This exacerbated the conversion problem on mobile vs desktop. People discovered Block Party through mobile ads, arrived ready to try it, and hit a wall that asked them to come back later on a computer.
Approach
End to end design in 8 weeks
Strategy
Problem diagnosis, option exploration, scoping
Design
UX, information architecture, visual, content
Validation
Prototype testing, heuristic critique, iteration
Delivery
Engineering collaboration, launch specs
How might we
Help mobile users see and understand what Block Party can do for them?
I explored three options and scoped down to the one we could ship, measure and repeat. A native app was cut on engineering constraints. A demo video was cut because it could not travel into ads. Web playbooks won: highly shareable, and buildable inside the timeline.
The solution
The mobile playbooks
Skimmable, shareable explainers that teach users to lock down their socials by hand, then surface Block Party as the one click version. Below the hero, each playbook stacks one recommendation card per fix, the same fixes the extension automates in a click.
A playbook opens with what you will learn, then stacks one recommendation card per fix.
Two playbooks launched, for X and for LinkedIn.
Tradeoffs
Three tradeoffs shaped the work
- 01Engineering vs UX
- 02Interface complexity vs user fatigue
- 03False urgency vs building user trust
01 Engineering vs UX
Adapting the extension UI to mobile
I worked with engineering to adapt the web extension UI to the mobile format, balancing feasibility and UX. The playbooks were designed to resemble the live extension, which kept brand consistency and let the team reuse components.
The mobile playbooks were designed to resemble the live extension, ensuring brand consistency and engineering feasibility.
Where the direct port broke down on a phone, I refined it: the automation button became an honest install CTA, since the playbook cannot actually perform the fix, and the tag row came off to cut scroll depth.
The card if we made no changes (left), next to the shipped design refinements (right)
02 Complexity vs fatigue
Ordering for time to value
Organizing so many recommendation cards was a challenge, so I took steps to minimize user fatigue.
Every fix is its own card, so a playbook runs long.
I ordered the cards from most to least popular, using engagement data from the live extension, so the fixes people actually want surface first.
Cards ordered most popular at the top to least popular at the bottom
CTAs capture install intent at peak
Because users could drop off at any point, an install CTA repeats after each card to catch intent whenever it peaks. The card CTAs use a muted, secondary treatment in contrast to the bright purple CTA on the hero, so the page keeps one clear primary action.
The primary hero CTA, and the muted secondary CTA repeated on each card
03 False urgency vs user trust
User tests broke the copy tie
When subjective hero copy debates stalled the team, I ran a user study to get signal and finalize the design. The verdict: our copy was inadvertently sparking trust issues. Testers read the urgent header as a dark pattern, skimmed past the subheader entirely, and could not parse the clicks comparison graphic.
What testing surfaced: eyes glazing over the subheader, false urgency in the header, and a confusing graphic
A header that balances trust and activation
I collapsed the subheader, rewrote the header so it balances trust and activation, and replaced the confusing graphic with a concrete introduction to Block Party. Deep clean your LinkedIn account promises the same value without manufacturing urgency.
The tested prototype (left) and the final hero copy edit (right)
Impact
What shipped
Lifted installs
Increased app installs in a two week period as measured by Install CTA click through rate on each playbook.
Launched across surfaces
The playbooks ran as ads and live embedded on the marketing site.
Shipped a scalable system
Two playbooks shipped, plus a repeatable format the team can extend to other platforms.
Final spec
I took an ambiguous growth problem and turned it around with a simple, testable design that positively impacted mobile conversion.
Takeaway
The best ads are ones that teach. And teaching earns trust.