How do you approach user onboarding?
I'm building my nth startup / idea. At this point, I'm optimizing to use as many off the shelf resources and best practices as possible so that I can dedicated most of my time to the core of the idea.
One area that I often "reinvent" is the user onboarding (think after sign-up but before and just after landing on the product for the first time).
Question for you: how do you approach the onboarding funnel? Do you use any tools, tips, other best-practices -- or is this just not that important to you?
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Don't over engineer if you are just starting, pick up any popular form builder and right after the signup, show the form and let users fill in the details like the size of the company, what features they need etc and if the form builder has a webhook, let it call your API to update the DB that the user filled in the form.
Makes sense - especially for new / unvalidated ideas! Past the initial stages, how do you think about onboarding screens versus product tours?
Ok, looks like you are in search of what to build next. If you are looking for some product ideas - check out Micro SaaS Ideas that I have been compiling.
But to answer your question both 'user onboarding screens' and 'product tours' has huge market. There is a post-sale market niche also like Arrows with higher tiers.
Firstly set you funnel in Google Analytics. Than, with more data, think on better tools like mixpanel.
This is closer to where my heads at. For the funnel - do you set up onboarding screens before they land on the product or rely on product tours?
Using Typeform or others to collect data is a pretty low-cost way to get familiar with your users
Love this hack!
I'm current lywarm to the idea of doing it based on drip E-mails. Grab a small bit of attention, show them a new feature, have them thinking about how to integrate it into their life and work.
E.g.: I just switched to Notion from Roam. They sent me a 7-day sequence where each introduces me to 1-2 new features. (I think they actually have several of these sequences, depending on what you say at the start for what kind of user you are.)
Oh that's an interesting take. So your more a fan of outside the app engagement and soft-onboarding / education (rather than in the app 'forced education')?
They both have their pros and cons. The drip E-mail style is really good for habit formation, especially for busy people.
You need to watch people try to onboard in person. That will clarify what areas need guidance and what areas are hard to learn / which tasks are hard to accomplish. Otherwise you are guessing. Most people don’t read and go for the fastest path etc. Also make sure you get them to a place where they clearly see the value.
The strategy I'm following right now is to place a "to do list" front-and-center once my users are past the signup page.
From UX interviews I've done with family and friends, they prefer that to multi-step forced onboarding tours.