Role: Product Designer
Product: Meta Ads Manager
Focus: Onboarding simplification, activation, growth readiness
Status: Shipped
Product: Meta Ads Manager
Focus: Onboarding simplification, activation, growth readiness
Status: Shipped
Overview
Ads Manager is Meta’s platform for large businesses to create and manage advertising campaigns across Facebook, Instagram, and now WhatsApp.
WhatsApp Marketing Messages allows businesses to send promotional messages to customers who have opted in on WhatsApp.
I worked on simplifying the onboarding experience for businesses getting started with WhatsApp Marketing Messages, reducing unnecessary friction while maintaining compliance and account readiness.
The Problem
To send WhatsApp Marketing Messages, businesses were required to complete a multi-step onboarding experience before they could launch their first campaign.
While some onboarding paths had already been simplified, businesses setting up WhatsApp Marketing Messages for the first time still encountered:
• Fragmented information across screens
• Unclear progress toward readiness
As adoption expanded, this complexity became a barrier to activation and delayed time to first campaign.
Key Insight
Although onboarding supported multiple business configurations, most businesses followed the same primary path when getting started.
This allowed us to focus on simplifying the most common experience, while continuing to support less common paths without introducing additional risk or confusion.
Design Approach
Rather than redesigning onboarding from scratch, the strategy focused on simplification through consolidation:
• Combine multiple setup steps into a clearer, guided experience
• Reuse proven onboarding patterns already familiar to advertisers
• Reduce cognitive load without removing required compliance steps
• Maintain flexibility for different business configurations
The goal was to help businesses understand where they were in the process and what was required to complete setup.
The Solution: A Streamlined Onboarding Flow
The updated onboarding experience consolidated setup into a small number of clear steps, guiding businesses through activation with fewer interruptions and clearer expectations.
Key improvements included:
• Fewer transitions between screens
• Clearer framing of required actions
• Better alignment between setup and readiness to launch campaigns
Advertisers begin setup for WhatsApp marketing messages directly within Ads Manager.
Advertisers are guided through activating WhatsApp marketing messages as part of their account setup.
Advertisers can securely import existing customer contacts to speed up campaign setup.
Clear confirmation signals that setup is complete and the account is ready to use.
What Stayed the Same
Certain parts of onboarding were intentionally left unchanged, including:
• Verification steps required for account safety
• Compliance-driven confirmations
• Downstream campaign creation flows
These elements were constrained by policy and system requirements, and simplifying them further would have introduced risk without meaningful user benefit.
Impact
The streamlined onboarding experience improved business readiness and activation:
• Higher onboarding completion
• Faster progression to first campaign
• Clearer understanding of setup requirements
This work supported broader adoption of WhatsApp Marketing Messages and created a foundation for future onboarding improvements.
Some impact details omitted. Additional context is available upon request.
Reflection
This project reinforced the importance of design judgment and restraint.
The most impactful changes didn’t come from adding new features, but from clarifying and consolidating what already existed and helping businesses move forward with confidence while preserving trust and compliance.
Due to confidentiality, some details are omitted. Additional context is available upon request.