How Shopmonkey cut announcement launch time by over 50% with Arcade

Name: Shopmonkey

Industry: Automotive Management Software

Using Arcade since: 2024

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Types of use: 

• Interactive guided tours
• Seamless user onboarding
• Feature discovery assistance
  
  

Results:

• Improved feature discovery 
• Reduction in support requests
• Minimized frontline team interactions
• Faster creation process

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We spoke with Daniel Rothbard, senior product designer at Shopmonkey, to hear how his team has transformed their product experience with Arcade—making onboarding seamless, empowering users, unlocking the platform’s full potential—and what exciting plans are on the horizon.

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The Problem

Shopmonkey, a cloud-based platform for managing auto repair shops, faced significant challenges during this year's transition of its customers from Shopmonkey 1.0 to the newly revamped 2.0 platform. The overhaul required migrating all user data and introducing customers to a completely redesigned system.

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Shopmonkey needed a way to guide customers through the transition and ensure that they were aware of the full range of features available for their benefit in Shopmonkey 2.0.

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"Our shops can feel uncomfortable testing features that might impact their customers. So with Arcade, they can experience it without doing anything to their own data and their own shop, which is part of its power.”

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Daniel and his team turned to Arcade to address these challenges. They needed more than the embedded checklists they’d used previously—they needed interactive demos that could walk users through important setup tasks and provide them space to learn (and practice) without affecting their live shop data. 

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Why Arcade?

“We knew that people would come over and say, ‘Hey, where’d you move this thing?’ That’s where Arcade comes in—helping us educate our customers on what’s new in the product.”

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Shopmonkey sought an agile way to highlight platform features and support users transitioning from Shopmonkey 1.0 to 2.0. Arcade proved the ideal solution, enabling content creation at more than twice the speed of previous tools and providing customization to match their design and brand standards. 

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"Arcade allowed us to go beyond tooltips. Users feel guided without being overwhelmed."

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The implementation of Arcade’s guided tour features followed a phased approach. Insights from customer support conversations and hands-on onboarding sessions with small customer cohorts were instrumental in optimizing the onboarding process for the 2.0 platform.

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“We noticed it was a lot easier for me and anyone else to pick it up. With [previous tool], we had to inject code and deal with selectors and data inputs, which was more complex. With Arcade, it feels like going into Figma—you can quickly create an idea and turn it into an interactive experience.”

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Shopmonkey 2.0 Launch

As part of the thoughtful rollout of Shopmonkey 2.0, they created a ‘guided tours’ experience within the product and prompted users upon first login.

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Unlike traditional in-app tours, which finish and are difficult to restart, Arcade provides a seamless way for users to return to key steps whenever they need guidance.

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“When they first logged in [Shopmonkey 2.0], the first thing we show them are the guided tours... If they leave the guided tour, we made it clear where in the UI they can always go back to access it”.

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The General Tour Arcade introduced users to the new layout and features, offering a broad overview to help them confidently navigate the updated platform. 

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The Workflow Tour Arcade delivered step-by-step guidance for new features in Shopmonkey 2.0, ensuring users could seamlessly incorporate the new workflows into their shop operations.

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Arcade’s guided tours have also been utilized to highlight and explain newly introduced features on a deeper level, like a Buy Now Pay Later option. The BNPL Tour simplified the setup of this critical but often complex payment feature, boosting user confidence in managing financial transactions.

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Shopmonkey reporting shows that these interactive guides have reduced support requests, eased user frustration with Shopmonkey 2.0, and improved frontline team efficiency by providing clearer instructions that reduced the volume of user inquiries.

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They also included a form step at the end of the Arcades asking, “How helpful was this tour?”, to get a real-time sense of value. The average score across 280+ responses was 4.2/5.

Looking ahead, Shopmonkey plans to expand its use of Arcade with new features like page-specific tours, a discover page, and transient help, further improving user onboarding and experience.

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