Case Study · Q1 2025 -> Q3 2025 (6 months)
From a shaky MVP to an app users trust with their money
71%
Onboarding completion
34% → 71%
4.6
App store rating
3.4 → 4.6
99.7%
Crash-free sessions
92% → 99.7%
95 / mo
Support tickets
320 / mo → 95 / mo
Industry
FinTech
Stage
Seed startup, 14 employees
Geography
US
Service
Native Mobile App Development
The Challenge
Working concept. Shaky app. Drop-off where it hurt most.
A fintech startup had a validated concept but a shaky app. Users dropped off during the bank-account linking step, the onboarding flow confused first-timers, and crashes were common enough to drag store ratings down. Support tickets piled up — and weak ratings tanked paid-acquisition economics.
Onboarding completion34%
App store rating3.4 stars
Crash-free sessions92%
Support tickets320 / month
“An in-house MVP shipped fast to test the market, but never hardened for reliability or UX.”
Before vs. After
From a confusing MVP that lost users at bank-linking to a polished native app users trust.
What We Did
Rebuild the bank-linking. Guide the onboarding. Harden the core.
Channels
- Native mobile app development
- UX/UI redesign
- Bank-linking flow rebuild
Tools
- Swift (iOS) + Kotlin (Android)
- Plaid (bank linking)
- Firebase (analytics + Crashlytics)
- Figma (UX/UI)
Key Tactics
- 01Rebuilt the Plaid bank-linking flow to reduce drop-off — each permission step gets a clear plain-English explanation and a recoverable error state
- 02Redesigned onboarding into short, guided steps with progress indicators so first-time users always know how far they are from the first 'win'
- 03Hardened both native codebases — fixed top crash paths surfaced in Crashlytics and lifted crash-free sessions to 99.7%
- 04Added contextual in-app help and empty-state guidance to cut the repetitive support tickets that were eating the team's hours
The Results
Every metric moved. Verified in Firebase + App Store Connect + Plaid.
Onboarding completion
34%
→
71%
+109%
App store rating
3.4 stars
→
4.6 stars
+35%
Crash-free sessions
92%
→
99.7%
+8%
Support tickets
320 / mo
→
95 / mo
-70%
Beyond the Numbers
- Smoother onboarding lifted activation and improved paid-acquisition payback
- Higher ratings boosted organic app-store discovery and install conversion
- 70% fewer support tickets freed the team to focus on the product roadmap
“
They turned a shaky MVP into an app people actually trust with their money. Our ratings and retention both jumped.
— CTO, FinTech Startup (anonymized)
Got a working MVP? Make it the app users actually trust.
Book a free 30-minute strategy call. We'll review your onboarding funnel, your crash data, and your ratings — and tell you honestly whether a native hardening pass will pay back or whether a rewrite is the right call.