About 40% of new users start on mobile, and a third begin creating a Collection there. But the experience performed substantially worse than desktop: 62.5% reached Gallery creation on mobile compared with 83.6% on desktop.

The biggest drop happened almost immediately. 70% of mobile users who started a Collection never uploaded their first photo, meaning most never reached the part of the product CloudSpot is built around: turning their work into a Gallery they can deliver to clients.

That made this more than a mobile usability cleanup. Internal cohort research showed that publishing a Gallery more than triples the upgrade rate, making the Collection-to-Gallery flow an important activation point for both users and the business.

Initial research had surfaced a mix of bugs, mobile usability issues, and competitor observations. I narrowed the scope to Collection creation, where the largest drop-off occurred, and used the existing flow to distinguish isolated defects from broader product problems.

Four failure patterns emerged:

• No clear happy path: upload, folders, and Gallery creation competed for attention, with little guidance about what to do next.
• Desktop patterns on mobile: drag-and-drop language, dense controls, and unlabeled actions carried over to a touch experience.
• Power-user complexity on first run: dates, tags, folders, analytics, captions, and other tools appeared before a new user had experienced the core value.
• A missing step: there was no way to set a Collection cover, even though Gallery creation required one later.

The result was a flow that asked users to understand CloudSpot’s structure before giving them a clear path through it.

The existing flow treated first-time mobile users like established photographers ready to complete the full workflow. I redesigned the experience around a different goal: help users reach CloudSpot’s core value quickly, while preserving the full mobile tools they would need as they continued using the product.

For many professional photographers, deliverable images still live on SD cards, computers, or external drives. That meant a first-time user exploring CloudSpot on their phone could understand the product’s value, but still be unable to complete the very first step the existing flow required.

I added Use Sample Images as a first-class path alongside uploading their own photos. This lets someone move through Collection creation and reach a Gallery without opening the native file picker, while keeping their own images as the primary path when they are ready.

Why it mattered: The first mobile session no longer depended on users having production-ready files on the device they happened to sign up with.

I designed the simplified first-time flow and the full mobile Collection experience together, so the initial experience could remove complexity without becoming a separate product. Dates, tags, visible folders, and Move are hidden at first, then introduced within the same structure once the user creates a Gallery or starts another Collection.

The underlying folder model still remains intact, which let me simplify the experience without changing the data structure or creating a migration problem for engineering.

Why it mattered: First-time users get a clearer path through the product, while returning users still gain the full organizational tools they need without relearning the experience.

The old flow treated upload as the end of a task, but gave users little direction about what to do next. In the redesign, upload completion transitions directly into cover selection, making the next action explicit instead of leaving users to infer it.

I made cover selection required, even though it adds a step, because it gives every Collection a visual identity and lets that image carry forward into Gallery creation. One tap sets the cover, the CTA explains the requirement, and the state logic prevents the current cover from being deleted without choosing a replacement.

Why it mattered: The added step creates clearer momentum through the flow while removing work later at the Collection-to-Gallery handoff.

The redesign brings first-time and returning users into the same core structure, with complexity introduced only when it becomes useful. New users get a focused path from Collection creation through upload, cover selection, and Gallery creation, while returning users retain folders, dates, tags, moving images, and the broader organizational tools needed for ongoing work.

The full experience also accounts for what happens after a Gallery exists, shifting the emphasis from creating to managing and sharing through the Photos / Galleries & Apps view.

Following launch, early reporting showed that approximately 30% of new mobile users uploaded an image in their first session, compared with 14% before launch—a 16-percentage-point increase.

Among successful uploaders, 48.8% reached Gallery creation within the measured conversion window. This identified the next opportunity: helping more users turn uploaded photos into a Gallery.

My next priority would be to measure progression from upload through cover selection to Gallery creation, separating sample-image and own-photo paths. Follow-up usability research would help explain where users need clearer guidance, whether required cover selection adds friction, and whether some are simply exploring before they are ready to finish.