Adobe Express, Smart Re-entry

Adobe Express is a browser-based and mobile creative platform designed to lower the barrier to content creation. It supports quick iteration through templates, media libraries, and lightweight editing tools—making it especially important that users can re-enter their work seamlessly and maintain creative momentum.

Defining the problem

Research revealed two key issues:

1. Most users take several days to finish
a project

2. Many struggle to return to their projects due to usability challenges and varying tech familiarity

User Problem

Users typically take multiple days to finish a project, but have difficulty returning to their recent work due to usability challenges.

Hypothesis

We believe that bringing users back to their most recent file will result in users finalizing and downloading their projects, because users are reminded of their recent file and do not need to struggle to find it. We will know we have been successful when we see an increase in project exports.

Designing the solution

Taking the user to their last project

We proposed taking users back into the their last project on their return visit to Adobe Express.

Copywriting considerations

Taking users to their most recent file rather than the homepage as expected can risk frustrating the user, so the messaging and the form in which the message came across was important. We needed to explain why the user is taken somewhere else on the website or app, and offer users the ability to return to the intended experience.

Three test variants

Results & findings

Project downloads grew substantially across all variants, with variant C leading at +10% overall increase!

• 2.7M increased project downloads

• 11.1K increase in returning monthly active users

• $461K increase in new subscription plans

Takeaways

Small navigational decisions can unlock confidence

Automatically routing users to their most recent project reduced friction and increased completion, while transparent toast messaging built user understanding and trust.

Contingencies while we build version 2

Users who repeatedly return home may feel frustrated, so if they do so more than once, we’ll end the experience as if it were dismissed. With version 2 underway, we want to give users the ability to choose this experience in their account preferences.

Give and take

Subscription plans decreased, because our solution bypassed the paywall users normally would see on their 2nd visit to the homepage.

Other works →