Are app walkthroughs effective?
I’ve been wondering how to properly help people learn to use the app I’m working on outside of making the UI as easy to understand as possible.
I’ve seen multiple apps where they do a step by step and focus the screen on specific components but I remember always clicking through those as quickly as possible then googling a video later.
Has anyone here added walkthroughs in their apps and know if they are effective in helping people understand your app?
I've wondered about this as well.
There's a 50/50 chance I might proceed thru the walkthrough as intended, other times I just quickly click along.
I think there's a lot of nuance to it. If I have an immediate goal in mind that I want to achieve, I'm probably not going to be paying too much attention as I click through the walkthrough.
If I'm just exploring and I'm curious, I'm probably more likely to pay attention to a walkthrough.
I think ultimately you want to get your app to a point where a guided walkthrough isn't required. This means not only trying to get the UX to a point where the user is taking the right steps naturally, but also make it so if they make a mistake it's very forgiving and easy to recover from. Easier said than done, obviously.
I was going to implement a guided walkthrough for my product Notazen - but I settled on instead filming instructional demo YT videos and periodically sending them out to my mailing list. I noticed after sending those videos out, users were more comfortable in the app and were engaging a lot more with the complex features.
I really like that video idea in the newsletter. I’ll give that a shot. I think I may just do that instead of the walk through.
Do you also put them in a knowledge base on your app?