Guide Creator

As Service Hub acquisition costs plateaued, our cross-functional team explored a viral product that could reach new audiences through a job they already needed to complete. Process-documentation products such as Tango and Scribe were gaining traction, but the market still had space for a fast freemium tool with flexible sharing.

I framed the opportunity through jobs-to-be-done, sized the experience with product and defined success metrics tied to useful guides as well as Service Hub sign-ups.

I led the complete design lifecycle: competitor teardowns, positioning, twelve discovery interviews, three moderated usability tests, two unmoderated Maze studies, the extension interface, web viewer, empty states, branding controls and design-to-development handoff.

I also partnered with marketing on the sharing loop, launch messaging and measurement plan so product and acquisition decisions stayed connected.

Users consistently prioritised speed over polish: a useful rough guide in five minutes beat a perfect document that took forty. PDF and an embedded viewer were expected, while GIF export created delight after the core job was complete.

We reduced the experience to three moments: record a workflow while the extension captures screens and cursor positions; tidy the result by reordering, deleting and editing steps; then publish a hosted guide or copy a link.

A visible recording state increased task completion by 18%. Drag-to-reorder made editing feel immediate, multiline captions were added during beta, and ‘Copy link’ became the primary sharing action after every participant in one test round chose it first.

The free viewer carried the viral loop, but the guide still had to be useful on its own. Acquisition prompts appeared after a guide existed instead of gating creation before value.

Guide Creator reached more than 7,000 extension installs, converted over 14% of installs into HubSpot sign-ups and recorded a beta NPS of 56.

The launch exceeded acquisition and satisfaction goals, but deeper conversion into Service Hub lagged. I would involve Service Hub PMs earlier to define where a newly published guide should live inside the wider product, and instrument post-publish behaviour from day one rather than treating that integration as a later bridge.