Avocademy Design Masterclass
How Avocademy lost a $10K deal, then I built a B2B feature that hit 35% conversion
Avocademy's self-paced courses thrived with individual learners, but the platform couldn't serve businesses at all. No team purchasing. No admin tools.
I led the design of their first seat subscription feature, creating a scalable B2B experience that unlocked an entirely new revenue stream.
My role
UX/Product Designer (led seat subscription feature)
Team
4 UX Designers, 2 Developers, 1 Product Manager
Timeline
6 weeks
Outcomes
THE PROBLEM
They could only sell to one person at a time
Avocademy's self-paced UX courses were killing it with solo learners. $997 per year. Happy students. Great reviews.
But businesses kept asking the same question: "Can we buy this for our whole team?"
They had no way to sell to them.
No bulk checkout
No admin tools
No team management
The platform was built for one person at a time. Full stop.
Every time a company wanted to train 5, 10, 15 designers? Thousands of dollars walking out the door.
THE BREAKING POINT
The day they lost $10K in 5 minutes
A Fortune 500 company wanted to train 10 designers with $10,000 in annual seats, but since Avocademy had no team seat option, they went with Coursera instead.
Leadership said enough. We need an enterprise solution like now!
That's where I came in:
Build Avocademy's first B2B feature from scratch
Make it actually work
No existing flows. No data. Just a blank Figma file and six weeks. No pressure!
my approach
Starting from zero with three big unknowns
Here's the problem with designing something that's never existed before: you have no idea what you're doing.
I remember staring at that blank Figma file at 2 AM, thinking how the hell do you design for buyers you've never met? These three questions kept me up at night...
How do businesses buy?
Credit card in 2 minutes works for individuals. But a $10K team
purchase? Do they want quotes? Trials? Purchase orders?
What do admins need?
Never designed for team managers. What makes them trust us with company money? How much visibility is enough?
Simple or powerful?
Avocademy = simplicity. Enterprise tools = complex beasts. Where's the sweet spot?
COMPETITIVE INSIGHTS
What the competition knew that we didn't
I had zero data. So I became a spy.
Spent days tearing apart coursera and these two additional competitors:
My Figma looked like a digital crime board with red lines connecting Coursera's checkout to ACloudGuru's pricing page. Here's what kept showing up:
The lightbulb moment:
At 3 AM, surrounded by competitor screenshots, it hit me. I'd been asking the wrong question. Not 'What features do they need? ' but 'What makes them trust us with company money?'
USER TESTING
Testing my theories (and watching them fail)
I sketched out different approaches and watched 24 people try to give us money and fail.
The first test was painful. This VP clicks 'modify plan' six times, getting more frustrated with each loop. I wanted to crawl under the table.
Solution 1: Price front and center
Reveal transparent pricing early and simplify decisions
Screw the mystery. I put pricing right in their face.
Here's what I did:
Why: Admins could screenshot pricing and get pre-approval. No surprises. No abandoned carts.
Result: 35% conversion rate. Beat two other approaches in A/B testing.
Solution 2: A path you can't miss
Three steps. Dead simple. No confusion.
I designed checkout as three simple steps. Each one had one job.
Here's what I learned: Each extra form field = 8% drop in completion. So I got ruthless. "Company size?" Cut. "How'd you hear about us?" Moved to Post-purchase survey.
Result: Teams bought in under 7 minutes. Zero abandoned carts after launch.
Solution 3: Dashboard that just makes sense
Admins shouldn't need us holding their hand
The final piece was giving admins the tools to manage their teams without needing our help. Here's what I came up with:
The magic: Admins had complete visibility and control. View their plan, track billing, even cancel if needed all without opening a support ticket.
The result: 95% customer satisfaction. Support tickets for basic admin stuff basically disappeared.
Retrospective
This project was a great learning experience in enterprise UX. By simplifying checkout and empowering admins, we made business onboarding feel intuitive, transparent, and scalable. That trust is what drives retention, referrals, and long-term profitability for businesses.
But honestly? The real win was watching companies that had been waiting months to buy from Avocademy finally get what they needed. They went from "Sorry, we can't help you" to "Here's how you onboard your entire team." That first enterprise purchase came through at 11 PM on a Thursday. $8,970. Nine seats. I may have done a small victory dance in my apartment.
