How SquadTrader broke its MRR ceiling with a funnel-first relaunch.
SquadTrader's growth had plateaued — good product, leaky funnel. We rebuilt the marketing site and trial experience, then matched paid acquisition to the new funnel, growing MRR +67% in the first quarter.
SquadTrader had a strong product and a stalled growth curve. The brief: find and fix the leaks between visitor and paying customer, then turn paid acquisition back on against a funnel that actually converts.
The marketing site sold features, not outcomes, and the trial buried the 'aha' moment behind setup friction. Paid traffic landed on pages that didn't convert, so spend looked unprofitable.
We rebuilt the site around jobs-to-be-done and rewrote the trial to reach value in the first session. Only then did we scale paid, mapping each campaign to a specific funnel stage and outcome.
How it actually shipped.
- Phase 1Month 1
Funnel audit
Instrumented the funnel and found the drop-off between trial and paid.
AnalyticsCRO - Phase 2Months 1–2
Site + trial redesign
Rebuilt the marketing site and trial around time-to-value.
UI/UX - Phase 3Months 2–3
Paid relaunch
Turned paid back on, mapped to funnel stages and outcomes.
Performance Marketing - Phase 4Month 4
Optimize
Tuned onboarding emails and pricing page against live cohorts.
Retention
What changed for SquadTrader.
Compounding gains in the quarter after relaunch.
Faster time-to-value lifted conversion.
A converting funnel made paid profitable again.
Better onboarding reduced early cancellations.
“We thought we had a traffic problem. We had a funnel problem. Once the site and trial converted, paid did the rest.”
Lessons that transfer.
Fix the funnel first
Paid amplifies what's there — convert before you scale.
Time-to-value wins
Reaching the 'aha' fast drove trial conversion.
Outcomes over features
Buyers convert on jobs done, not feature lists.
Onboarding is retention
The first session shapes whether they stay.
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