Onboarding Funnel

The Adaptation & Action Explorer now has a lightweight onboarding funnel based on a single visitor selection: “What best describes you?” The selection is not a hard gate. It is a way to understand the audience, attach a user type to later analytics, and give the product a foundation for future customization.

The current experience is intentionally small:

1. First-time visitors see the welcome modal on the homepage.
2. Visitors can select a role such as government discloser, government not currently disclosing, NGO/nonprofit/academic, financial institution/investor, business, or other.
3. Confirming a role stores the role and reports user_role_selected.
4. Skipping the modal stores a dismissed state so the modal does not keep reappearing.
5. The Help menu includes “Customize experience” so visitors can reopen the same role-selection flow later.

Current Modal Snapshot

The modal uses one question to capture the visitor’s role before they start exploring, while still allowing them to skip and return later from the Help menu.

Why The Selection Exists

The role selection should answer a practical question: which audience is trying to use the Explorer, and what are they trying to do next?

Selected audience	Likely intent	Product implication
Government - CDP Discloser	Understand local hazards, compare actions, and communicate progress.	Prioritize local profile clarity, disclosed action evidence, report links, and peer examples.
Government - Not Currently Disclosing	Learn what CDP has inferred or surfaced publicly and understand reporting value.	Explain data provenance, show reporting benefits, and provide a clear route to CDP disclosure information.
NGO / Nonprofit / Academic	Research local climate risks, vulnerable groups, and adaptation examples.	Emphasize methodology, source transparency, citations, and downloadable/open-data paths.
Financial Institution / Investor	Find resilience needs, project signals, and adaptation finance opportunities.	Surface projects seeking funding, sector exposure, hazard context, and commercial landing-page routes.
Business	Understand operational, supply-chain, or market exposure across places.	Emphasize location search, hazard summaries, sector impacts, and repeatable comparison workflows.
Other	Preserve access for users who do not fit the taxonomy.	Keep the main product path neutral and use open feedback to discover missing segments.

The selection should not change the factual data shown on a location page. It can change emphasis, default guidance, calls to action, saved preferences, and analytics segmentation.

Current Funnel

flowchart TD
  A["Visitor lands on homepage"] --> B["Welcome modal"]
  B --> C["Select role and start exploring"]
  B --> D["Skip for now"]
  C --> E["Role stored locally and sent to analytics/backend"]
  D --> F["Dismissed state stored locally"]
  E --> G["Search, map, or location detail"]
  F --> G
  G --> H["Help menu: Customize experience"]
  H --> B

This is a low-friction funnel. It collects a single explicit preference without blocking access to the map or search experience.

What Good Looks Like

The onboarding flow is working when:

• First-time visitors can dismiss the modal once and it stays dismissed.
• Visitors who choose a role can change or revisit that selection from the Help menu.
• Analytics can break down core actions by user type: search, map pin selection, location views, hazard expansion, solution opens, project opens, AI usage, and export/data-link intent.
• The role selection creates better product decisions without creating multiple divergent product surfaces too early.

Near-Term Customization Ideas

These ideas can be layered onto the existing role selection without turning onboarding into a long form.

Idea	Description	Role fit
Role-specific next step	After selecting a role, show one short suggested action near the search/map area.	All roles
Contextual help copy	Adjust helper text for government, investor, researcher, or business language.	All roles
Default dashboard emphasis	Emphasize actions, funding projects, hazards, methodology, or open data based on role.	Government, finance, NGO/research
Remembered comparison intent	Let visitors indicate whether they are looking at one place or comparing many places.	Business, finance, research
Funding-interest prompt	For finance/investor users, offer a path into projects seeking funding and adaptation pipeline pages.	Financial institution / investor
Reporting-interest prompt	For non-disclosing governments, offer a route to learn about CDP reporting and disclosure benefits.	Government not currently disclosing
Research mode	Offer easier citation, methodology, raw-data, and source-path links.	NGO / nonprofit / academic

Future Funnel Questions

Before adding more fields, decide which questions would materially improve the experience or reporting:

1. Are visitors exploring one jurisdiction, comparing multiple places, or looking for sector-wide signals?
2. Are visitors trying to learn, report, fund, advise, partner, or export data?
3. Should the product remember a preferred geography, hazard type, or organization type?
4. Should users be able to opt into a “research mode” or “finance mode” without selecting a formal role?
5. Which customization choices should affect only UI emphasis, and which should become analytics properties?

Measurement Plan

The role-selection funnel should be evaluated alongside core Explorer activity, not as a standalone conversion goal.

Funnel signal	Interpretation
user_role_selected count	How many visitors are willing to self-identify.
Skip rate	Whether the modal is too early, unclear, or not valuable enough.
Role distribution	Which audience segments are showing demand.
Role-to-location-view rate	Whether each audience reaches useful location content.
Role-to-project-open rate	Whether funder/commercial audiences reach adaptation finance signals.
Role-to-methodology/open-data rate	Whether research audiences reach source and evidence material.
Reopen from Help menu	Whether users understand customization is available later.

PostHog should continue to attach user_type to later events so the dashboard can segment behavior after the first selection.

Product Guardrails

• Do not make role selection mandatory unless there is a clear stakeholder requirement.
• Do not hide public data based on role.
• Do not promise personalized recommendations until the rules and data quality are explicit.
• Do not ask for organization names, emails, or precise personal details in the lightweight onboarding modal.
• Keep “Customize experience” available from Help so users can recover from a skipped or incorrect selection.

Open Questions

• Should skipped visitors be periodically invited to customize later, or should the Help menu be the only re-entry point?
• Which role labels should be shown in stakeholder reporting: the current product labels, shorter analytics labels, or both?
• Should commercial landing-page traffic preselect or suggest a role when visitors enter from finance, insurance, infrastructure, or consultant routes?
• Should future customization be role-only, task-based, geography-based, or a combination?