Improved conversion by 62% by switching from Auth0 to Stytch
Key takeaways
Lighthouse is a next-gen rental platform that provides renters exclusive access to apartments that reward them with cash back. By switching from Auth0 to Stytch as its primary authentication provider, Lighthouse now offers a more flexible and seamless onboarding and authentication experience to its users. After the switch, Lighthouse saw a 62% improvement in its sign-up conversion rate.
Challenge
Lighthouse was using Auth0 as its primary user authentication tool. The Lighthouse team was able to quickly get Auth0 up and running, but it soon faced challenges after realizing that it was infeasible to customize its user flow to meet its users’ needs while remaining on Auth0. Specifically, Auth0’s inflexible data structure and authentication flow made it impossible to give users the flexibility to choose either emails or phone numbers as their primary identification method for signups and logins. In addition to forcing Lighthouse developers to select just one primary user identification method, Auth0’s authentication flow redirected users to an Auth0-hosted page and then back to the app, creating a clunky, frustrating onboarding experience for users.
As Lighthouse was quickly gaining traction and increasing its user base, the company soon realized that it needed to look for a new authentication solution that would allow it to fully customize its user authentication and onboarding flow, thereby improving its user experience and conversions.
Products used
Solution
When the Lighthouse team decided to revamp its authentication flow, it initially had an internal conversation about whether to build the authentication flow in-house vs. integrating with an authentication provider. It quickly realized that there were a myriad of complexities that go into building and managing an authentication flow (e.g. data management, security protocols, and building reliability measures) and that its internal resources could be better spent on core product initiatives by going with an existing authentication provider.
After carefully reviewing API docs of multiple authentication providers and determining whether those providers could support its use cases, Lighthouse decided that Stytch would be the best solution to meet its needs. Lighthouse software engineer, Jack Grzechowiak, was particularly impressed with Stytch’s easy-to-follow documentation and flexible APIs and also appreciated how quickly Stytch’s support team responded to his questions.
“Your documentation was very easy to understand and read,” says Grzechowiak. “Also, the Stytch team responded super quickly to my questions about whether or not I could do certain things and updated the documentation the next day to reflect that.”
By stripping out Auth0 entirely and implementing Stytch’s API instead, Lighthouse can now deliver its vision of offering a flexible and seamless onboarding and authentication experience to its users. With the majority of users on mobile, the Lighthouse team wanted to create a mobile first experience with SMS OTP as the default authentication method, while also allowing users to first authenticate through email OTP to offer flexibility. In the second step of the onboarding process, Lighthouse now collects users’ email or phone numbers with an option to verify now or later. Those additional identification methods would later be used as secondary verification layers when users want to engage in activities that would require higher security such as accessing bank account information or changing insurance details. With Stytch’s flexible session management product, the Lighthouse team can introduce ”just-in-time” authentication only when necessary on any given route to remove unnecessary friction from its user flow while also maintaining security.
Moreover, instead of redirecting users to an Auth0-hosted landing page when they try to sign up or login, with Stytch, Lighthouse now presents a more seamless sign up and login flow through a pop-up screen that is completely embedded and on brand. The company believes that the new onboarding flow will provide a far better experience to its users, thereby increasing customer conversion and satisfaction.
Results
After the switch from Auth0 to Stytch, Lighthouse saw a 62% improvement in its sign-up conversion rate. As it looks to the future, the Lighthouse team is excited to continuously optimize and improve its user onboarding flow with Stytch’s flexible and secure APIs and further improve its sign-up conversion rate.
Ready to get started?
Interested in trying out Stytch for yourself and customizing your user onboarding and authentication flow like Lighthouse did? You can sign up for free to start using our flexible APIs. Or, you can read more about them in our documentation. We can’t wait to see what you build with Stytch!