Ryan Scott
Product Designer
Scorecards in AWS Marketplace
Designing a free, self-serve AWS Marketplace onboarding flow that let prospects experience Mission's paid Scorecards feature before ever talking to sales.
Mission Cloud
AWS
Quick read
3 min
Full story
8+ min
5
AWS cloud pillars scored per Scorecard
<3 min
To configure a Scorecard, start to finish
24 hrs
From signup to a live, generated Scorecard
DURATION
7-8 Months -> Feb 2023 - Nov 2023
ROLE
Product Designer
TEAM
10 Engineers, Engineering Lead, 1 PM
STATUS
Shipped and live
Mission Cloud partnered with AWS
00 – PROJECT OVERVIEW
A free feature designed to sell the paid one
Mission Cloud, an AWS reseller later acquired by CDW, sold Scorecards, a paid monthly report on a customer's AWS usage across five pillars. To reach prospects who weren't customers yet, I designed a free entry point through the AWS Marketplace: a self-serve onboarding flow that generates a real, live Scorecard with no sales call.
02 – PROBLEMS + GOALS
Every unanswered question was a drop-off risk
Before this shipped, prospects only met Scorecards through a sales conversation, so there was no way to try before buying. Early on, the open questions outnumbered the answers.
Project Goal
Deliver a low-touch, software-driven onboarding via AWS Marketplace · Increase Mission Scorecard customer retention · Turn free-trial users into qualified pipeline for paid features
03 – OPPORTUNITY
This wasn't a signup form, it was a trust handoff
The obvious version was a form: connect your AWS account, get a Scorecard. But every step asked a stranger for real permissions in their cloud before giving anything back. The opportunity was to sequence the experience so trust and value arrived together.
04 – PROCESS + KEY DECISIONS
The moments that shaped it
Running a full design sprint before committing to a flow
Story mapping and sketching up front let the team test the onboarding sequence on paper before anyone touched a screen, and kept us from converging on one flow too early.
The wait wasn't the problem. The silence was.
In testing, verification and account linking happened silently in the background and people weren't sure anything was working. I removed AWS Role internals users didn't need to see, and added progress states for the real background work plus error states we hadn't planned for.
Designing around real customer personas, not "AWS users" broadly
I designed for CloudOps and DevOps people inside Mission's own customer base who already wanted a clearer way to monitor their environment, not a generic Marketplace shopper.
Turning research into a handoff engineering could act on
I created a "Ready for Engineering" page at the top of the Figma file, triaged incoming Jira tickets against it, and translated the research into 17 scoped engineering tickets.
From paper sketches to a working flow — the design sprint kept the team from converging on one idea too early.
07 – FINAL DESIGN
A flow that gets out of its own way
Scorecards ships as a self-serve entry point distributed entirely through the AWS Marketplace listing: an onboarding portal that configures a Scorecard in under 3 minutes with least-privilege access only, an immediate validation notification, a completed Scorecard within 24 hours, and weekly summary emails.
08 – OUTCOMES + IMPACT
A free feature that sold the paid one
Scorecards shipped as a free, self-serve entry point through AWS Marketplace and worked as an acquisition channel.
MARKETPLACE-DRIVEN PIPELINE
A free, self-serve Scorecard became a repeatable top-of-funnel entry point for prospects who'd never talked to sales.
FREE-TO-PAID INTEREST
Customers who saw their free Scorecard regularly asked about Mission's full paid Scorecards features — the intended bridge.
NOTE
I no longer have access to Mission's internal metrics following the layoff, so these outcomes are directional rather than measured. Mission Cloud was later acquired by CDW.
09 – TAKEAWAYS
What I'm taking forward
Sequence trust and value together, not trust first.
Removing steps isn't the same as removing friction.
Handoff quality is a design decision, not a formality.
Scorecard in AWS Marketplace
Designing a free, self-serve AWS Marketplace onboarding flow that let prospects experience Mission's paid Scorecards feature before ever talking to sales.
Mission Cloud
AWS
Quick read
3 min
Full story
8+ min
5
AWS cloud pillars scored per Scorecard
<3 min
To configure a Scorecard, start to finish
24 hrs
From signup to a live, generated Scorecard
DURATION
7-8 Months -> Feb 2023 - Nov 2023
ROLE
Product Designer
TEAM
10 Engineers, Engineering Lead, 1 PM
STATUS
Shipped and live
Mission Cloud partnered with AWS
00 – PROJECT OVERVIEW
A free feature designed to sell the paid one
Mission Cloud, an AWS reseller later acquired by CDW, sold Scorecards, a paid monthly report on a customer's AWS usage across five pillars. To reach prospects who weren't customers yet, I designed a free entry point through the AWS Marketplace: a self-serve onboarding flow that generates a real, live Scorecard with no sales call.
02 – PROBLEMS + GOALS
Every unanswered question was a
drop-off risk
Before this shipped, prospects only met Scorecards through a sales conversation, so there was no way to try before buying. Early on, the open questions outnumbered the answers.
Project Goal
Deliver a low-touch, software-driven onboarding via AWS Marketplace · Increase Mission Scorecard customer retention · Turn free-trial users into qualified pipeline for paid features
03 – OPPORTUNITY
This wasn't a signup form, it was a trust handoff
The obvious version was a form: connect your AWS account, get a Scorecard. But every step asked a stranger for real permissions in their cloud before giving anything back. The opportunity was to sequence the experience so trust and value arrived together.
Running a full design sprint before committing to a flow
Story mapping and sketching up front let the team test the onboarding sequence on paper before anyone touched a screen, and kept us from converging on one flow too early.
The wait wasn't the problem. The silence was.
In testing, verification and account linking happened silently in the background and people weren't sure anything was working. I removed AWS Role internals users didn't need to see, and added progress states for the real background work plus error states we hadn't planned for.
Designing around real customer personas, not "AWS users" broadly
I designed for CloudOps and DevOps people inside Mission's own customer base who already wanted a clearer way to monitor their environment, not a generic Marketplace shopper.
Turning research into a handoff engineering could act on
I created a "Ready for Engineering" page at the top of the Figma file, triaged incoming Jira tickets against it, and translated the research into 17 scoped engineering tickets.
07 – FINAL DESIGN
A flow that gets out of its
own way
Scorecards ships as a self-serve entry point distributed entirely through the AWS Marketplace listing: an onboarding portal that configures a Scorecard in under 3 minutes with least-privilege access only, an immediate validation notification, a completed Scorecard within 24 hours, and weekly summary emails.
08 – OUTCOMES + IMPACT
A free feature that sold the paid one
Scorecards shipped as a self-serve, free entry point distributed entirely through AWS Marketplace, and it worked as an acquisition channel: prospects who got a free taste of what their Scorecard could show them regularly converted into interest in Mission's full paid Scorecards features.
MARKETPLACE-DRIVEN PIPELINE
A free, self-serve Scorecard became a repeatable top-of-funnel entry point for prospects who'd never talked to sales.
FREE-TO-PAID INTEREST
Customers who saw their free Scorecard regularly asked about Mission's full paid Scorecards features — the intended bridge.
NOTE
I no longer have access to Mission's internal metrics following the layoff, so these outcomes are directional rather than measured. Mission Cloud was later acquired by CDW.
09 – TAKEAWAYS
What I'm taking forward
Sequence trust and value together, not trust first.
Removing steps isn't the same as removing friction.
Handoff quality is a design decision, not a formality.
