User Onboarding
Intro to User Onboarding
User onboarding refers to the process of guiding new users to understand and use your product or service effectively. It is a critical step in the user experience that can make or break your customer retention rates. Effective onboarding involves creating a seamless experience that addresses user needs and expectations, and helps them achieve their goals quickly and easily. It requires a deep understanding of user behavior and preferences, as well as a commitment to continuous improvement and optimization.
Why Onboarding is the Most Crucial Part of Your Growth StrategyCasey explains what is needed to define successful onboarding for your product: understanding your target frequency and your key action. He then provides 3 principles around how to provide value to users.
What SaaS Startups Miss in User OnboardingTomasz provides a nice intro to onboarding with a key premise: "the onboarding process must create some value for the user during that sign-up session, in order to keep the user coming back."
User Onboarding Frameworks
There are several user onboarding frameworks that can help you design and implement an effective onboarding process. These frameworks provide a structured approach to onboarding that focuses on key elements such as user motivation, user goals, user education, and user feedback. Some popular frameworks include the AARRR framework (Acquisition, Activation, Retention, Revenue, Referral), the HEART framework (Happiness, Engagement, Adoption, Retention, Task success), and the Jobs-to-be-Done framework (JTBD). Each framework has its strengths and weaknesses, and the best approach will depend on your specific product and user needs.
Psych’d: A new user psychology framework for increasing funnel conversionDarius provides a framework for how to look at onboarding flows from a user's point of view. As they they go through each step, it either adds or subtracts emotional energy, and you can sum up the total by the time they get to a major conversion point such as a form.
Inside the 6 Hypotheses that Doubled Patreon’s Activation SuccessTal provides a framework for how to identify a North Star metric for onboarding that takes into account qualities of conversions, not just absolute conversion. He then provides six examples of how the team at Patreon were able to improve this metric.
User Onboarding Case Studies
Looking at successful user onboarding case studies can provide valuable insights into what works and what doesn't. Case studies can help you understand how different companies have tackled onboarding challenges, and what strategies and tactics they have used to achieve success. By analyzing these case studies, you can learn from their experiences and apply their insights to your own onboarding strategy.
>50 User Onboarding Tear-down PresentationsSamuel provides an outsider’s perspective on more than 50 websites you’ve probably heard of, including Asana, Gmail, Meetup, and PayPal. Consuming some of these teardowns will get you up to speed quickly on accepted onboarding design patterns.
PagerDuty's Stack for Optimizing OnboardingDavid walks through how PagerDuty improved onboarding, including their selection of which analytics tool to use to understand user actions.
Unifying Mobile Onboarding Experiences at UberUber’s team learned that multi-step onboarding - asking for and validating info one step at a time - not only converted better, but also made experimentation and internationalization easier. The article also goes into the technical architecture behind their onboarding.
