How do you keep your users to continue using your product? If you achieve that goal of impacting your users to the point of them realizing that your product is what they need in their life, then odds are, they will continue using your product.
However, if your users do not "get it" from the start, they most likely resort to abandoning your product to find a better solution.
In this article, User Onboarding UX: A Comprehensive Guide, we will discuss making your users stay with you and continue using your product through proper user onboarding.
We will also cover the following sub-topics below:
It is a moment of wonder when your users realize that they must continue to use your product. This is what we call the "wow moment," which leads us to a successful product.
The goal of user onboarding is to get that wow moment from your users, and user onboarding is about creating that user journey into the wow moment. This includes everything from first-time users get to interact with your product to until the time they signup.
In this article, we will guide you on identifying this moment and creating your onboarding journey, including how you can create a great user onboarding on a paid or free trials.
What is User Onboarding?
User onboarding provides a series of interactions or instructions that helps users go through the user onboarding experiences journey.
The user onboarding can be as simple as a greeting or explanation that guides users to complete a task or series of tasks.
This also includes providing users with an on-ramp to the benefits of your product to set them for success.
So, for example, for a new app, it is good to get your users to familiarize themselves with the product by supplying them with 2-3 series of screens explaining in short and friendly sentences what the app is about and what it is for. This will give users an insight into your product before they begin to use it.
Another example of user onboarding is signing up for a brand-new social media app. This app can guide users through the signup process, profile setup, and profile customization.
In short, user onboarding gives users a sense of what they will need to do to get what they need from the product.
User onboarding builds confidence and trust with users. This not only helps your users onboard their free trial access but is also the key to better conversion and user retention.
The value of user onboarding
As previously said, user onboarding is essential for conversion and customer retention. This is very true with newly launched products or apps.
You will often notice that when users create new accounts during a product tour and try the product in new products or apps, they never come back after.
This results in the company trying to get the user back to their free trial access by sending emails, but this rarely works out.
This happens because the user did not get the value of the product to them, and/or they do not know what to do after signing up.
Another fact is, there are so many similar and alternative products like yours out there. Thus, it is straightforward for users to go and look for other products that they find more suitable and more accessible.
Having said this, winning back your users is quite a challenging task, and that the first user onboarding experiences matter A LOT.
Factors that make a great user onboarding
Uniqueness
This is one of the things you need to think about, how you can make the user onboarding experiences unique for your product during a product tour.
However you create your user onboarding experiences, consider what you want to solve and the value you want to bring to the table.
Do not rely on and copy other products' onboarding processes because what works for one company may not work for another.
Do your research.
Keep it short
You need to get your user's "wow moment" as soon as possible. Think that every user's time is value and that the more time they spent on your onboarding process, the lesser the user onboarding experiences will be for them.
So, the golden rule of thumb is to keep the user onboarding short but effective.
Not a feature
Onboarding is not a feature that you can add to your design process. To make it clear, onboarding is built for user experience. This is not built to add several introductory screens. You cannot expect the user to read and understand them at once.
Remember that user onboarding is more about the value and how you create the value for your users.
This is not about showcasing the product. It does not tell customers about the cool features that you offer.
Instead, onboarding is about making sure your users get the value from your core value product. If your users get this, then the rest can come after the onboarding process.
Spontaneous
Lastly, good user onboarding is about creating spontaneity and momentum. The goal of user onboarding is to get your users excited about exploring your product after the user onboarding experiences.
It is about making users happy that they finally get the right solution for them through your product.
It should also create the need for your users to make it a habit to use the product daily.
A good user onboarding is about making your users feel good about your product and not dread using it.
How to identify the "wow moment"
We have talked about the value of the "wow moment" in user onboarding. To achieve this, you need to know what the wow moment is and where it should be.
This is not an easy job, and most of the time, not so obvious to identify and point out. But we have included tips for you on how you can identify your "wow moment":
Identify who you are
This is the first thing you need to do before a product tour: identify and understand who you are as a company. This will include answering the questions: What are you trying to solve? How to solve that problem? Who is your target audience? Why is that your target audience?
Be prepared to have detailed answers to these questions on your free trial or paid trail.
Define success
What does your success look like? What are your key performance metrics? What are the things that you need to do to achieve user retention?
Know your customers
Identify your target audience and schedule a meeting with them. Reaching out to your customers is something you need to do for both your free trial or paid trial offers.
Some critical questions you should ask: Why are they using the product? What features do they love about your product? What are the features that they love the most compared to your competitors? What are the features that your product lacks compared to your competitors?
It is also equally important value that you talk to your paying customers and your ex-customers (or those who abandoned your product after signing up).
For customers who created an account but never came back, try to learn what happened. Ask questions like: What are the expectations that are not met? What are they looking for? What could you have done differently?
When you understand how your users think and interact with your product, you will get some value insights about their user onboarding experiences and essential patterns that you can use to create better user onboarding.
Understand the data
By data, this is the data that you get from user analytics and event tracking platforms. Observe how your users utilize your product and cross-reference that with what you have gathered from your interviews.
Try and try
There is no right or wrong process when it comes to the proper way of doing user onboarding. Your first time may not likely identify your "wow moment" either. But that is okay.
Remember to keep trying and testing. This is the key to perfecting your user onboarding for free trial or paid trial access.
This is an ongoing onboarding, is the process that you need to repeat and retest to get the right formula to success. Like I have said before, identifying the "aha moment" is not an easy task. And thus, this will take a lot of effort and research before you can adequately do your onboarding.
User onboarding patterns and methodologies
Types of onboarding
There are so many ways to do user onboarding. Whether this is for an app or a product, you can employ a combination of several user onboarding patterns to meet the needs of your users and retain customers.
Nickel Tour
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This is a common and popular pattern used mainly through mobile apps. Once the user launched the app the first time, they are presented with several quick screens that outline the app's value and some basic information on users how to use it.
This pattern is usually composed of a simple, static intro that serves as a welcome mat for users. This should not be more than few short phrases with very simple graphics.
TIP: One of the best practices is to provide users an indication of their progress (also called progress bars), including an exit or skip option for users to click.
By creating progress bars, it helps users can understand how much of the introduction is left for them to read and how many steps left users need to do.
Another common and low-effort method for user onboarding, from the beginning and throughout the entire user onboarding experience.
It comprises simple user interface devices that catch attention to areas where interaction, buttons, menus, help alerts are located. This is helpful for users how to use it.
These are helpful in complex interfaces where the items may not be immediately visible or the features and sections are hard to understand.
TIP: While this type of user onboarding pattern is helpful, one of the best practices is to avoid overdoing it. This may bombard your users with tiny windows all at once.
Thus, it is essential to figure out when and where the helpful tooltips or coach marks would be most beneficial. Try to only guide users to one element or action at a time to avoid too many explanations.
This user onboarding method prompts users to interact with the product through a series of steps. This way, the product can stick to your users' minds by actually letting them do it.
Guided task completion is typical when the product wants users to create an account or set a customization parameter.
This is a great technique to familiarize your users with your website or app's menus, controls, and other sections.
Helping your users achieve an early "win" will help improve your chances of using your product again.
Tip: For best practices, It is a good idea also to include an exit or skip button for users, so they have the option to skip or exit the great onboarding when possible.
For account creation tasks, try to see if you can include a skippable experience to test for completion rates vs. the non-skippable flow to see which one works best for your users.
When to do user onboarding
So now that we are familiar with the types of user onboarding, you also need to know which part of your product experience is necessary to right-size your onboarding user experience design.
Try to look for opportunities through the user journey, which includes features like the initial launch to the continued usage, to give your users a helping hand.
As I have explained, first impressions matter, so you may not get a second chance in this crucial aha moment to get things right. This is because users can abandon the app or product after they open and use it and never come back again. There are many alternatives to your product out there that make it challenging to get your users back.
To avoid this kind of problem, apply user research and conduct rigorous user testing to get the right approach to what your context is about.
This type of onboarding method is a mix of new users and progressive onboarding. It is useful when you launch a new feature or make any significant changes to the product experience. This lets users know what is great about the new feature or change and utilize it.
A great way to feature the new additions to your product experience is to use tooltips and coach marks.
User onboarding best practices
Understanding your users
It is essential to use user personas when it comes to creating your user onboarding process. The user persona will guide you to understand your users better and what makes sense to them.
User persona will help in right-sizing your onboarding experience. Tailor your user onboarding experience to target your user personas.
Try to uncover and leverage your users' existing mental models to help bridge any gaps in terms of their product expectations.
Additionally, user research helps in building empathy with your target audience. Thus, you must conduct frequent user testing and usability analysis to improve the overall design and inform you of areas to focus on with user onboarding.
Balance your qualitative and quantitative metrics for user onboarding experience.
For example, if you have a significant abandonment experience on your onboarding, you can check in with your users.
Tie your onboarding to value for the users
The focus of your onboarding should be getting users to the "aha moment" of satisfaction in the seamless way possible. Start by identifying the core value proposition for your user, then find a way to communicate that to your user.
Utilize the benefits in your introduction for onboarding to remind your users that your app or product is the best tool for user needs.
If your user onboarding includes personalization, explain why you ask your users about their preferences and explain how it will enhance their user experience.
Make a quick and easy onboarding experience
You do not want to overload your users with too many unexplained buttons and toggles, but at the same time, you do not want to bombard them with too many step instructions.
Stick to user onboarding, which focuses on the insights you got from your user research and user testing.
If the app or product is simple, then a quick introduction would be enough. However, if it needs more depth, consider adopting progressive onboarding or a progress bar across the app experience as is necessary to provide helpful guidance.
Make it repeatable
Never forget to include a way back to your guidelines or walkthroughs that you've shown your users during their onboarding.
Do not assume that your users do not want to reaccess your instructions or tutorials. They may have forgotten some things and may find themselves lost, especially if they are skipping many things during the onboarding experience.
Do not get too personal
Long forms with too many questions are bound for users abandoning the app or product. While asking users for critical information is good, please do not get too personal by asking for details.
You should not be asking for a ton of personal information, especially that privacy is becoming more value in the digital era.
Remember that you can always add this extra information at the later stages of the user onboarding experience.
Build your user's trust first by inviting them in and allowing them to look around before trying to find out more information about them.
Do not rely on tutorials that call for bad UX
Always remember that even in onboarding, your app or product should always make to the new user.
With this said, avoid confusing or lengthy instructions. This is not a good UX design practice.
Do not focus on the user interface
While the user interface is essential in designing and creating your onboarding experience, do not confuse the new user onboarding as part of your virtual graphic interface.
User onboarding involves emails that you send to users' lifecycle, blog posts, calls, customer support, and more.
Test and iterate
A good, solid new user onboarding experience involves a lot of testing and iteration.
It is but natural that you find yourself wrong with all of your assumptions. You may also find that you've used the wrong approach and that the "aha moment" you thought turned out not to be the real one.
But this is fine. These are part of the process. So, you need to include in your process usability testing early on. Get your users involved and conduct testing along the way. Then it is best to re-iterate after.
User onboarding mistakes
There are some common mistakes that you should be aware of as these prevent proper new user onboarding. Here are some of those common mistakes to avoid:
Planning your user onboarding last
You should not plan your onboarding last. If you make your new user onboarding an afterthought, this will become an afterthought to your users.
"In a world of moving fast and pushing out a 'minimum viable product,' the first mile of a product's user experience is almost always an afterthought. The welcome/product tour, the onboarding, the explanatory copy, the empty states, and the defaults of your product make up the first mile. Ironically, these crucial components of initial engagement that make up the "top of your funnel" for engaging new users are typically addressed in haste as a product is launched. In some teams, I have even seen these pieces outsourced or delegated to a single engineer or designer to figure out on her own."
So instead, always think you will onboard your users as you develop, design, and implement.
An easy exercise would be writing your UI copy and your onboarding tooltips to design the app.
This way, it will make your final onboarding experience feel more natural, and this helps better match the rest of your work.
Designing the onboarding by different departments
Cracks often appear in the onboarding process when more than one department is involved in building the product, and each is also responsible for creating the onboarding tooltips for their sections in the product design.
Instead, treat your onboarding as a product itself and should only be the concern of a single team. This way, you will maintain a cohesive experience throughout the product development.
Catering to the average user
The thing is: the larger your product is, the more it will cater to multiple and wide range of users. It is but a mistake to assume that users share a common goal.
To resolve this, guide your users on what they want to accomplish. For example, QuickBooks asks their new users what they want to achieve with their app during the onboarding flow, and then they adjust their users' experiences to match what they need.
Ignoring the early signs of churn
It is a mistake to wait for users to leave and then beg them to try again. This is just waiting too long. So instead, you need to actively look for early signs of churn, even during the onboarding.
If you can detect that your users are not taking the critical steps to your 'aha moment' and are not taking your value proposition, you need to have a follow-up plan of action that can be triggered automatically.
Some examples of automatic triggers are message pop-ups, asking users if they need help, or you can send them a personalized welcome email and nudge them in the direction of your tutorials, especially on user onboarding.
Sending time-based messages during onboarding, or no messages at all
An active, contextual message during user onboarding helps eliminate confusion and re-engage users thinking of alternatives.
However, the problem with these contextual messages is too often, teams et them to be sent based on the number of days after the user signs up.
Why is this a problem? The user, after signing up, may have spent all day in your product. So, in this case, activity and usage matter.
It is best to actively communicate with your users based on what they have done or have not done. The messages should always be tailored to their activities, not on when they signed up.
Only focusing on the first visit
It is wrong to assume that your onboarding is enough to convince your users to come back and use your product. It is also wrong to teach your users everything in just one sitting.
Instead, you need to think beyond the first experience and ask yourself this question: What can I do to support users who have finished their onboarding experience, and are returning to the app for the first time in hours, days, and maybe weeks?
Your returning users will appreciate it if they can find your onboarding resources easily within your user interface or setting sections.
You may also try to offer personal, conversational support through live chat applications in cases where users need hands-on guidance or more help beyond their first walkthrough.
Optimizing for the single user
The way the software is being bought is constantly changing. For example, a SaaS product like Slack knows that the sooner they can connect individuals to a team, the more momentum they can build toward paid subscriptions.
Slack provides teammate invite right into their onboarding flow before letting users utilize the product's features.
And since teammates make the Slack app necessary, its simple opt-in inside the app allows new users to let their teammates join.
And these happen without an additional permission being requested, as long as the users have a Slack account created using the company email address.
Making this connection between users and their teams helps the company get onboarded quickly to the product and in record time.
Great user onboarding examples
A great user onboarding experience all goes down to your ability to connect the initial steps from your users with the value that your product offers them.
Thus, the faster you take your users to that 'aha moment' journey, the more likely your users will continue using your product.
This section will discuss some perfect, classic user onboarding examples of how these products became a success in terms of users' growth because they showed immediate value to new signups.
It is worth reviewing their onboarding experience so you can get a clear idea of what makes an effective user onboarding. Let us discuss several great user onboarding examples
We know how Twitter works and this is also one of the best user onboarding examples. As a social media platform, one of the critical KPIs is to get activities on the user following. So whether or not a user follows other people on Twitter is a crucial retention indicator for the social media platform.
Thus, Twitter highly encourages new signups to follow at least 20 other users with a single click during the onboarding flow.
New users are also encouraged to pick topics from the suggested topics to get most of the product.
Pinterest onboarding flow makes sense to new users who are not familiar yet with the application. Let us take a look at how Pinterest gets to be one of the best user onboarding examples.
Pinterest makes sure that its new users do not leave the platform until they understood how it works.
Since digital "boards" and "pins" have not been a thing yet, Pinterest does not provide automatic triggers to its tutorials. Instead, it lets users be in control by allowing them to explore at their own pace. They wait until an image is clicked in their feed, which is when the tutorial is shown.
LinkedIn is the first social network for professionals, which now had over 740 million users from more than 200 countries. Why LinkedIn gets to our list of user onboarding examples? Let us take a look.
What makes LinkedIn successful is its seamless user onboarding flow, which is consistent across different devices. This means that regardless of the device, the user onboarding experience is the same.
Once you have downloaded the LinkedIn app and open it, you can see its user onboarding message, "Make the most of your professional life," which gives its users a hint of what the application is about.
Users can swipe through the screens to learn more about LinkedIn's benefits.
The app has a progressive onboarding flow, and it guides users into setting up their profiles
Once the user logs in to the LinkedIn app, it takes the user into four stages:
1. Complete your personal information
2. Receive an email confirmation
3. Follow LinkedIn groups and leaders
4. Get suggestions of people to add to your professional network
Once the user sets up the profile in LinkedIn, they will be taken to the app's main page.
LinkedIn divides its main page into two sections: the menu section with custom tabs; and the page feed section with the message, "Nice! You are all set". This simple message brings a human touch to the app, which is a good idea.
Instagram, as we know, is one of the most popular photo-sharing apps and also one of the best user onboarding examples. This app provides a great user onboarding experience as it can allow users to signup using their Facebook account or email ID.
Facebook, which is the most extensive social network, uses its power to do the work for its users like it suggests friends that are already on Instagram. This process creates "fear of missing out," which serves as a motivation trigger to complete the onboarding flow.
In addition, Instagram also allows users to follow public figures and other celebrities based on the suggestions from the insights gathered in the user's Facebook account.
Another app that made to the list of user onboarding examples is SoundCloud. This app is known as a music social network application that allows users to signup using one of the following: email address, Facebook account, Apple ID, and Google ID.
SoundCloud provides a one-step signup process. After users signed up, it asks them to continue accepting the terms and conditions of the application.
Then, it asks users for age and gender, which they possibly need to understand their users' demographics better.
The next step involves asking users' consent to track what they do within the app. This, in turn, offers users a personalized ad.
When you look at SoundCloud's user onboarding flow, it does not explain to users the benefits or functions of the app, but instead, it leads users to explore the app and the music immediately.
This is an excellent example of fast and easy onboarding since UX is self-explanatory, and SoundCloud gets its users the "aha moment" as fast as possible.
On the app's main page, users can easily follow music based on the playlists. It also provides a minimalist user interface design, where users can easily search for their music, track other users, and stream their podcast or audio in the app.
The Flipboard app is similar to flipping through the pages of a magazine. This app has one of the best user onboarding examples out there.
Their user onboarding starts before the user even signs up for the app.
Users are welcomed with curated news and blogs marked with a flip on the first page of the page, which gives users a visual intro on how the app works.
When users flip the first page, they can see the exceptional user interface UI where they can easily choose the topics they are interested in.
The next step is the signup process. What is good about this onboarding strategy is that you get your users acquainted first before they sign up for the app.
The signup process also provides users with easy options to sign up with their Google account, Facebook, Twitter, or email. The fast and easy signup process ensures that users can onboard and start flipping through the pages.
MyFitnessPal is a diet plan/calorie-counting app that helps users gain, maintain, or lose weight.
This app also provides excellent user onboarding examples despite the many features it offers.
It provides an easy way to signup as well. The app lets you roll with your Facebook account or email and then redirect you quickly to set your weight goal.
If your goal is to lose weight, the app will ask you for more details about your height to set your weight goal.
After setting up your weight goal, the app redirects you to its step-by-step guide to get you acquainted with all the features and functionalities. You can start filling in your daily diet, how much water you consume daily, and then you are all set to tracking your fitness and diet.
As we have mentioned, the apps should be simple to use with little to no instructions.
But how about apps that have so many features to show? How do you let users learn when a good onboarding process does not require too many details about the app's features and functionality?
We take a good example on MyFitnessPal's user onboarding. This app uses progressive onboarding combined with an excellent function-oriented onboarding flow.
Foursquare is a discovery and search app. It helps users find places, restaurants, hang-out spots, and more.
The user onboarding is also one of the best you can find as it welcomes users with a heartwarming message then redirect them to a page where they can start using the app.
What is good about Foursquare onboarding is you do not have to signup to start using their app.
Instead, the app immediately guides you through its features by giving messages in between while you are using it. It also provides users the option to signup later with a social media account or email.
Strava is a social networking app for athletes and cyclists and is also is one of the good user onboarding examples. This app helps track runs and rides through GPS technology.
It has over 55 million users, and it has grown this big because of its easy onboarding experience.
The signup process allows users to signup via Facebook, Google, or email.
Once the signup is complete, users are directed to a page where they can import their Facebook contacts or search users by name.
After following people, users can now start using the app and exploring activities like running, riding, etc. After this, users are on their own to explore more functionalities.
This strategy makes it easy for all users to onboard the app with a clean and straightforward user interface.
Expensify is an app for tracking, managing, and reporting expenses. This is a financial app that also has a good onboarding experience flow.
Before signing up, the screen shows the benefits of using the app to its users.
The signup process of this app is probably one of the simplest among applications in the market.
All you need to do to sign up is provide your email address, and you can set your password later through the email that will be sent to your inbox.
This mobile app also provides a clear message and call to action. First-time users are properly guided using the pop-up messaging strategy.
As for the rest of the experience, everything seemed to be self-explanatory.
The mobile app also does not impose a lot on the user on any given page or section. Instead, it allows users to explore by keeping things as simple as possible, offering one idea per page only.
Hootsuite is a social media management platform, which allows users to manage all social media accounts in one place.
The signup and onboarding process is also straightforward. It lets users sign up using Google, Twitter, Facebook, or email account.
Once the user completed the signup process, Hootsuite allows users to connect all their social media accounts and manage them through the mobile app.
The entire onboarding process only takes two steps for users to start using the platform.
User onboarding tools
In user onboarding, we have already highlighted that first impression is everything.
With this in mind, you must have a perfect onboarding flow. And to be able to do this, you need to have a rock-solid experience and skills in user onboarding.
Below are ten user onboarding tools to help you engage and educate your users:
Social proof is undoubtedly one of the best drivers when it comes to getting users and buyers the decisions.
This is a powerful psychological tool affecting personal decisions. It acts as a mental shortcut by trusting the opinion of others.
The proof is the tool to use when displaying lice social evidence on your marketing website with real-time notifications that others have viewed a product demo or signed up.
It is essential to reduce friction and instead drive your users as quickly as possible for user onboarding.
Doing this can provide dramatic results. For example, some companies saw a 20% increase in conversion rates when adding social accounts in the signup process.
However, this does not mean that you also allow rush new users to signup that easily, which can cause some security issues later.
To resolve this issue, you can use a tool like Auth0 to activate users during the onboarding and personalize their experience using sign-on (SSO) across platforms and another social login like Google, Facebook, and Twitter.
During the user onboarding, you collect your users' email addresses, which is an essential piece of information that you need. However, when it comes to qualifying leads such as pro users, you need to tailor your user onboarding experience and make it more personal by collecting more data like location, job, industry, and more,
The tool that can help you collect these data is Clearbit, which is excellent for calming the needed information for your leads.
Appcues lets you build user onboarding experiences without the need for codes. This is an excellent tool for marketers as they can create user onboarding without coordinating with the developers. And because of this, developers can put more time into developing the product.
Appcues offers a combination of complete product lessons, modals, slideouts, and less intrusive tooltips and hotspots that help propel new users to sections where there are user engagements and help them realize the product's value.
You may also create multiple paths into your product, adding persona-based onboarding.
If time is not a problem for you and you have ample development resources to do user onboarding coding, you may want to look for available tooltip plugins such as jQuery tooltips that you can integrate into the user onboarding to focus users' attention where it mattered the most.
Drip campaigns have long been available for user onboarding. However, a conventional drip campaign puts all your new users on the same schedule.
A suitable alternative is to send new users emails that are triggered by actions. This way, it allows you to send the correct email to the right customer at the right time, based on what they do or did not do during the user onboarding.
A tool that can do this is Customer.io. You can segment your audience based on real-time events and send them custom messages as part of an omnichannel user onboarding experience.
Mailchimp is a powerhouse when it comes to email marketing. They provide you with great email templates, handy automation, and powerful analytics for all your marketing user needs, including the capability to automatically signup recently onboarded users to your newsletters.
Vero is a tool that works like Sherlock Holmes, where they can collect data from different sources. It segments customers based on what you want like you can segment by emails they open, location, or even their likes and preferences.
Hubspot has an email marketing software that runs A/B testing on emails. Using this tool will allow you to find out the best CTA or subject line that resonates well with your audience. You may also check more data about your customers, like who read your emails, who opened your emails, or who clicked your link.
The takeaway
As we always say, when it comes to user onboarding, it is crucial to get this done right to guide your new users to that aha moment, as a swift user onboarding flow can make all the difference when it comes to user retention.
While a great user onboarding flow does not guarantee a product's success in the long run, this helps retain customers during and after the user onboarding process.
