Your user onboarding is mediocre. I spent 39 hours researching what a great one looks like. Here's the rundown.
WTH is onboarding?
Your users are using your product because they have a problem. It's your responsibility to guide them to the solution. Onboarding is a way to handhold them through doing specific actions that will get them to go: Aha! I get it now!
Educated users = less churn = happy founder 😃
If you want to build a good onboarding experience
- Select 3 actions a user can do that will make them see why your app is useful to them. Product Tours are useful here.
- Learn about them at the beginning:
- What’s their pain point?
- What do they do? Job, Company etc.
- What have they tried already?
- Craft the perfect user journey:
- A Dev likely wants to see APIs, whereas a Marketer will want to see Analytics
- Short 1 minute videos > 10 page instructions
But if you want to build a great one ✨
- Throw some confetti.js to make them feel special. Because they are.
- Give them a discount to upgrade. You could even ask them to invite their friends to experience the same delight they just experienced.
- Send nurture emails showing them what’s possible with your product and examples of what others have built.
Keep them coming back:
The onboarding process will disappear the minute it is completed. To help your users afterward:
- Build a knowledge base. It should include:
- All the instructions from the Product Tour
- Common support requests
- Link to relevant docs whenever there’s an empty state. Here’s an example:
- “No products available. Here’s how you can add one - [Link to doc].”
Who's doing this right?
Tiktok became more popular than Google at the end of 2021, according to Cloudflare. Their onboarding process is prob the most intuitive of them all:
- When you first open the app, you can select your interests. Or skip it.
- Only 2 actions: swipe up or swipe down
- "The more your watch, the better your feed gets"
Tools
- Notion for Knowledge Base
- Intro.js for product tours (thanks @antarctican)
- Hotjar - Session replays
- UserTesting - Test with real users
I research SaaS and give you the best way to build a stellar product. Follow me on Twitter for more juice.
Love this! Especially the part about confetti, keeping it simple and not asking too much at the outset.
Everyone loves a bit of confetti! It's like trying to be mad while you say the word "bubbles". You physically can't!
The onboarding experience can seriously impact employee retention as 64 % of employees will possibly leave within their first year if they receive a poor onboarding experience. Only a structured onboarding program can reduce employee attrition by helping new hires to integrate into the company culture well and assume their role faster. A structured onboarding program follows an efficient onboarding workflow, helping to build a more productive workforce.
Driving the onboarding program well is key to improving employee engagement, retention and productivity. So, utilizing an employee onboarding software that has the required features to support a modern onboarding workflow is necessary for accomplishing efficient and successful onboarding practices. It will make your employees up and running faster and help them to perform better, promoting organizational growth and success.
visit to know more-- https://bit.ly/3sUqVS8
Does anyone use https://usetiful.com for onboarding? I use it for https://twayobiz.com
Duuude! There we go, finally a tool that doesn't cost an arm and a leg for onboarding. I'll add it to the suggestions.
Re Twayobiz: Love the landing page. I was curious about how the branded experience feels like. Maybe add a "demo link" so people can get a feel for it. (The image is good too, just a bit too small)
I'd like to add that product onboarding is much more than in-app product tours. Way too many products plaster an onboarding tour and call it a day.
Every piece of communication (whether it's an email or in-app) should be relevant and most importantly, contextual.
I've built an onboarding product called Engageful (https://www.engageful.io), so I've spent a lot of time studying SaaS onboarding.
In essence, you want to identify WHY someone signed up to your product, and then show them the easiest way to achieve that outcome.
Very interesting point. Hadn't thought about it that way. Btw now that you said this, your product makes perfect. Showing everyone the same information doesn't make a lot of sense. It's showing someone relevant information at the right time.
Gorgeous UI designs btw, is it built out as well? I would be interested in using the banner and in-app messaging feature.
On the technical side:
Totally cool if the product isn't meant for my use case :)
Thanks for the kind words. Yes, it's all built out.
Would love to have you on board and show you around, no worries!
Send me an email at [email protected]
Happy to chat!
Any indie-made products that you think do onboarding really well?
I personally love:
Let's poll the IH space and see if people have seen any others.
Thank you for this Sukhpal!
This is a great checklist.
How did you narrow down what made one good vs bad and which things to highlight?
Hey Sophia! The list is a combination of personal experience (things that when I try I'm like hell ya!) + research + looking at big-name products and seeing what they're doing well.
PS Ignore no mo! Made me chuckle :D
Aah, love it! That's a winning research process (anything that involves hell ya is a win in my book).
thank you! 😊 I absolutely love saying that's the name.