Reducing support tickets 30% through improved billing flows
Reimaging billing flows for our developer dashboard
Product Design
Design Systems
Helius
Overview
Developers depend on Helius for enterprise-grade infrastructure to build apps on Solana.
While our developer tools and killer uptime attracted builders, it would mean nothing if customers couldn't successfully manage their subscriptions. Ultimately, our overhaul of crypto billing resulted in a ~30% decrease in support tickets.
Helius
The Challenge
The team had launched the ability to pay with crypto, but confusing management flows were costing us support resources and risking churn since delinquent customers' apps would go down.
60% of our customers pay for their subscription with crypto. We were drowning in support tickets, struggling with slower iteration time due to the 3rd-party wallet provider, and had a never-before-solved problem that directly affected our revenue.
Helius
The Solution
We launched a completely reimagined onboarding and billing flows that reduced friction at decision points and kept developers well-informed along the way.
Crypto subscription UX Billing interface rebuild User testing
I'm proud of our team for working quickly to launch improved iterations as we new information came to light during developer feedback sessions.
Helius
Performance Results
Developers onboarded with more confidence around their crypto subscription plans and could effectively manage their spending limits directly in our developer portal.
Less support tickets
For billing issues
Activation rate
with crypto subscriptions
Kate's an excellent designer. She took our vague objectives and produced the results we needed to level up our developer portal and website.
Nick Pennie
Co-Founder, Helius
Helius
Deep Dive
Our Approach
The way we work
Go faster
At Helius, we prioritize speed above all else. This meant async messages, quick mocks in Figma, and close collab in QA. We don't sweat the details when the mission is to first solve our customer's pain.
01/
Assess the bleeding. What areas are directly affecting business goals or risking customer churn?
02/
Prioritize shipping quick wins for those areas. Follow through with customers that they're effective.
03/
Do another sweep for iterations, polish, and systems. Monitor metrics and keep communication with customers open.
The team breakdown
Our team for this project was 4 people: 1 designer, 2 engineers, and one of our co-founders.
As the only designer, I knew I needed to priotize speed but consider systems long-term. I chose to move us to ShadCN per project to do this over time.
Tools used: Figma, Claude, Slack, Linear.
A problem without a playbook
Unlike traditional billing flows with decades of established patterns, there's no standard for subscriptions paid with crypto.
Understanding delegate wallets
I was unfamiliar with delegate wallets, so I worked closely with our engineer, Haji, to map out the end-to-end flow over a 20-minute Slack huddle. My key learning was that everything hinges on this "authorization limit".
Our Approach
First attempt
We updated our portal to link directly to our partner Loop's site for delegate wallet management.
While this was an interim solution to unblock our customers while we build a more mature billing page, it was less than ideal. This was to be a frequent user action. We needed to build that muscle for users early.
Aha Moment
Flip the question
We were building our new billing page when I realized we were asking the wrong question. Instead of asking how much money a dev would like to set for their auth limit - why not lead with a more palatable question around duration?
01/
It mapped to a mental model developers already had (time, not amounts)
02/
We made sure to add information that helps them feel educated about how to manage their delegate wallet
03/
For our power users, they can still input an amount manually or cancel their subscription after the first payment
Edge case
One edge case worth noting: if a user entered "0", the system would surface a clear message explaining that this would cancel their subscription. That single guardrail eliminated a whole class of accidental misconfiguration.
Terminology
User testing
Good design often lives in the words we choose. We had a feelin that "authorization limits" was contributing to the problem. So worked with Loop and customers to fix this.
Last iteration
Deliverables
Our last iteration included a completely reimagined checkout flow and a new billing page to manage your subscription. All complete with the new language updates.
Helius
Final thoughts
We ended with a fully reimagined onboarding into crypto subscriptions, and a proper way to manage those payments. Huge thanks goes to this team for moving as quickly as we did on this and making a measurable improvement.
Helius
Credits
Kate Kassab
Haji
Koen
Nic Pennie
Design Lead
Engineer
Web Developer
Co-founder
COMPANY
Helius
ROLE
Design Lead
TYPE
Fulltime (Remote)
TIME/TENURE
YEAR
2025
Maturing design at $10B crypto infrastructure startup
Reducing support tickets 30% through improved billing flows
Reimaging billing flows for our developer dashboard
Product Design
Design Systems
Helius
Overview
Developers depend on Helius for enterprise-grade infrastructure to build apps on Solana.
While our developer tools and killer uptime attracted builders, it would mean nothing if customers couldn't successfully manage their subscriptions. Ultimately, our overhaul of crypto billing resulted in a ~30% decrease in support tickets.
Helius
The Challenge
The team had launched the ability to pay with crypto, but confusing management flows were costing us support resources and risking churn since delinquent customers' apps would go down.
60% of our customers pay for their subscription with crypto. We were drowning in support tickets, struggling with slower iteration time due to the 3rd-party wallet provider, and had a never-before-solved problem that directly affected our revenue.
We launched a completely reimagined onboarding and billing flows that reduced friction at decision points and kept developers well-informed along the way.
Helius
The Solution
Crypto subscription UX Billing interface rebuild User testing
I'm proud of our team for working quickly to launch improved iterations as we new information came to light during developer feedback sessions.
Helius
Performance Results
Developers onboarded with more confidence around their crypto subscription plans and could effectively manage their spending limits directly in our developer portal.
Less support tickets
For billing issues
Activation rate
with crypto subscriptions
Helius
Final thoughts
We ended with a fully reimagined onboarding into crypto subscriptions, and a proper way to manage those payments. Huge thanks goes to this team for moving as quickly as we did on this and making a measurable improvement.
Kate's an excellent designer. She took our vague objectives and produced the results we needed to level up our developer portal and website.
Nick Pennie
Co-Founder, Helius
Helius
Deep Dive
Our Approach
The way we work
Go faster
At Helius, we prioritize speed above all else. This meant async messages, quick mocks in Figma, and close collab in QA. We don't sweat the details when the mission is to first solve our customer's pain.
01/
Assess the bleeding. What areas are directly affecting business goals or risking customer churn?
02/
Prioritize shipping quick wins for those areas. Follow through with customers that they're effective.
03/
Do another sweep for iterations, polish, and systems. Monitor metrics and keep communication with customers open.
The team breakdown
Our team for this project was 4 people: 1 designer, 2 engineers, and one of our co-founders.
As the only designer, I knew I needed to priotize speed but consider systems long-term. I chose to move us to ShadCN per project to do this over time.
Tools used: Figma, Claude, Slack, Linear.
A problem without a playbook
Unlike traditional billing flows with decades of established patterns, there's no standard for subscriptions paid with crypto.
Understanding delegate wallets
I was unfamiliar with delegate wallets, so I worked closely with our engineer, Haji, to map out the end-to-end flow over a 20-minute Slack huddle. My key learning was that everything hinges on this "authorization limit".
Our Approach
First attempt
We updated our portal to link directly to our partner Loop's site for delegate wallet management.
While this was an interim solution to unblock our customers while we build a more mature billing page, it was less than ideal. This was to be a frequent user action. We needed to build that muscle for users early.
Aha Moment
Flip the question
We were building our new billing page when I realized we were asking the wrong question. Instead of asking how much money a dev would like to set for their auth limit - why not lead with a more palatable question around duration?
01/
It mapped to a mental model developers already had (time, not amounts)
02/
We made sure to add information that helps them feel educated about how to manage their delegate wallet
03/
For our power users, they can still input an amount manually or cancel their subscription after the first payment
Edge case
One edge case worth noting: if a user entered "0", the system would surface a clear message explaining that this would cancel their subscription. That single guardrail eliminated a whole class of accidental misconfiguration.
Terminology
User testing
Good design often lives in the words we choose. We had a feelin that "authorization limits" was contributing to the problem. So worked with Loop and customers to fix this.
Last iteration
Deliverables
Our last iteration included a completely reimagined checkout flow and a new billing page to manage your subscription. All complete with the new language updates.
Helius
Kate Kassab
Haji
Koen
Nic Pennie
Design Lead
Engineer
Web Developer
Co-founder
Helius
Final thoughts
We ended with a fully reimagined onboarding into crypto subscriptions, and a proper way to manage those payments. Huge thanks goes to this team for moving as quickly as we did on this and making a measurable improvement.
We ended with a fully reimagined onboarding into crypto subscriptions, and a proper way to manage those payments. Huge thanks goes to this team for moving as quickly as we did on this and making a measurable improvement.
Reducing support tickets 30% through improved billing flows
Reimaging billing flows for our developer dashboard
Product Design
Design Systems
Reducing support tickets 30% through improved billing flows
Reimaging billing flows for our developer dashboard
Product Design
Design Systems
COMPANY
Helius
ROLE
Design Lead
TYPE
Fulltime (Remote)
TIME/TENURE
YEAR
2025
Helius
Overview
Developers depend on Helius for enterprise-grade infrastructure to build apps on Solana.
While our developer tools and killer uptime attracted builders, it would mean nothing if customers couldn't successfully manage their subscriptions. Ultimately, our overhaul of crypto billing resulted in a ~30% decrease in support tickets.
Helius
The Challenge
The team had launched the ability to pay with crypto, but confusing management flows were costing us support resources and risking churn since delinquent customers' apps would go down.
60% of our customers pay for their subscription with crypto. We were drowning in support tickets, struggling with slower iteration time due to the 3rd-party wallet provider, and had a never-before-solved problem that directly affected our revenue.
Helius
The Solution
We launched a completely reimagined onboarding and billing flows that reduced friction at decision points and kept developers well-informed along the way.
Crypto subscription UX Billing interface rebuild User testing
I'm proud of our team for working quickly to launch improved iterations as we new information came to light during developer feedback sessions.
Helius
Deep Dive
Our Approach
The way we work
At Helius, we prioritize speed above all else. This meant async messages, quick mocks in Figma, and close collab in QA. We don't sweat the details when the mission is to first solve our customer's pain.
01/
Assess the bleeding. What areas are directly affecting business goals or risking customer churn?
02/
Prioritize shipping quick wins for those areas. Follow through with customers that they're effective.
03/
Do another sweep for iterations, polish, and systems. Monitor metrics and keep communication with customers open.
The team breakdown
Our team for this project was 4 people: 1 designer, 2 engineers, and one of our co-founders.
As the only designer, I knew I needed to priotize speed but consider systems long-term. I chose to move us to ShadCN per project to do this over time.
Tools used: Figma, Claude, Slack, Linear.
A problem without a playbook
Unlike traditional billing flows with decades of established patterns, there's no standard for subscriptions paid with crypto.
Understanding delegate wallets
I was unfamiliar with delegate wallets, so I worked closely with our engineer, Haji, to map out the end-to-end flow over a 20-minute Slack huddle. My key learning was that everything hinges on this "authorization limit".
Our Approach
First attempt
We updated our portal to link directly to our partner Loop's site for delegate wallet management.
While this was an interim solution to unblock our customers while we build a more mature billing page, it was less than ideal. This was to be a frequent user action. We needed to build that muscle for users early.
Aha Moment
Flip the question
We were building our new billing page when I realized we were asking the wrong question. Instead of asking how much money a dev would like to set for their auth limit - why not lead with a more palatable question around duration?
01/
It mapped to a mental model developers already had (time, not amounts)
02/
We made sure to add information that helps them feel educated about how to manage their delegate wallet
03/
For our power users, they can still input an amount manually or cancel their subscription after the first payment
Edge case
One edge case worth noting: if a user entered "0", the system would surface a clear message explaining that this would cancel their subscription. That single guardrail eliminated a whole class of accidental misconfiguration.
Terminology
User testing
Good design often lives in the words we choose. We had a feelin that "authorization limits" was contributing to the problem. So worked with Loop and customers to fix this.
Helius
Performance Results
Developers onboarded with more confidence around their crypto subscription plans and could effectively manage their spending limits directly in our developer portal.
Less support tickets
For billing issues
Activation rate
with crypto subscriptions
Kate's an excellent designer. She took our vague objectives and produced the results we needed to level up our developer portal and website.
Nick Pennie
Co-Founder, Helius
Last iteration
Deliverables
Our last iteration included a completely reimagined checkout flow and a new billing page to manage your subscription. All complete with the new language updates.
Helius
Final thoughts
We ended with a fully reimagined onboarding into crypto subscriptions, and a proper way to manage those payments. Huge thanks goes to this team for moving as quickly as we did on this and making a measurable improvement.
Helius
Kate Kassab
Haji
Koen
Nic Pennie
Design Lead
Engineer
Web Developer
Co-founder