Offering the Best Onboarding Experience to Your Users

What is User Onboarding Experience?

User Onboarding Experience is critical to get more conversions on your website or app. It is the crucial period when a new user acquires knowledge and learns to use your product or service. It is when users get acquainted with your website or product features. User Onboarding done well can bring you higher conversions and retention rates, while poor onboarding will drive your new users away. Designers always consider this phase as the most important. A user onboarding experience is the best way to guide users to interact with your products without hassle.

Designers, product managers and developers often get stuck when deciding how to introduce new users to the app. They need to understand that users will leave if they cannot value the product. Therefore, it is crucial to design the user onboarding process for new users at different stages of their journey, so you can meet them where they are and teach them how your app solves problems. Designing a rock-solid onboarding experience can be challenging, but with a little bit of research and clever thinking, you can create something that works great for both your business and your user’s needs.

What is Important in A User Onboarding Experience?

The onboarding experience must be creative and intuitive. To create a fantastic user onboarding experience, designers must focus on many vital areas:

• The onboarding experience must be simple and clearly explain your product or service in easy language.
• The design of an onboarding process should be bright, exciting and non-distractive, with a clear call to action button for download or sign up.
• It must be educational while motivating to make an immediate purchase or subscribe for additional features.
• The best onboarding experience is the one that helps users get started quickly without any hassle.

When creating a rewarding onboarding experience, designers should keep some essential points in mind:

1. User-Centricity

The most important thing to keep in mind when designing the onboarding experience is your users. 74% of people will revisit your website if it is user-friendly, but 50% of customers will stop visiting your website if it is not. Therefore, every action you design must be made keeping them in mind. Designers need to envision the user as a person, not task lists.

2. Interactivity

It is better when onboarding is an interactive process where your users can take action. It should not be a simple guided tour. Be creative with your onboarding. Rather than just walking your users through, ask them to participate somehow. Let them know what they are supposed to do. It must be gradual engagement where you teach your customer how to use your product bit by bit. The design should be such that it motivates and educates the users simultaneously.

3. Targeted and Informed Actions

Every action you design must be targeted towards achieving a specific goal. The efforts and measures taken should be informed with data relevant to the users’ interests and demographics. It should pinpoint where your users are struggling, which buttons they are not clicking, etc.

4. Refreshing and New Methods

Being creative and innovative in your user onboarding process will help you attract prospective customers. The onboarding experience must be refreshing and new, keeping in mind what your competitors are doing. You can conduct surveys to get insight into whether your customer is satisfied with the existing user onboarding process. Based on these surveys, you can make changes accordingly to increase conversions. Using new techniques and tactics to engage or motivate them for a first-time experience will help you achieve the goal.

Benefits of a Strong Onboarding Experience

User Onboarding Experience is essential because the entire customer journey starts with it. The user onboarding process becomes successful if your users can quickly find value in your products. In addition, the onboarding process must positively impact your user’s first impression of your product so they can get a better understanding of its benefits and be motivated to try it out.

1. Build Customer Loyalty

When the user onboarding experience is done right, you will have a customer for life. It helps create an emotional connection with your customers. Loyal customers are 5 times more likely to purchase again from the same company and 4 times more likely to refer a friend to the company. If users can achieve their desired results within hours of using your product, they will develop trust and see high value in it. They will feel more comfortable with your product and would be more likely to recommend it to their friends.

2. Increases Customer Engagement

Customer engagement is directly proportional to how well your users are engaged throughout the entire customer journey. A good user onboarding experience increases your customers’ willingness to explore more features of your products. It helps create many opportunities for them to engage with your product, generating more revenue for you.

3. High Retention Rates

The first impression is your last. A good user onboarding process improves your customers’ retention rates. Customers who can quickly learn and explore the functionalities of your product will be more inclined towards using it frequently. They would come back to you for more products and services as they know how helpful they can be if used correctly.

4. Decreasing Customer Churn

Customers are more likely to churn if they cannot find value in your product. Retaining customers with a good user onboarding experience is critical for businesses as it helps decrease customer churn rates significantly. A good user onboarding experience helps your customers get familiar with your product quickly, so they can easily move up the customer value ladder.

5. Increases Revenue and Lifetime Value

A good user onboarding experience increases your customer’s revenue and lifetime value. Users engaged with the product will be more willing to pay for its optimum functionalities. By providing users with a good user onboarding experience, you will be able to learn more about your users and their preferences and improve your product offering based on that knowledge.

6. Reduced Customer Support Cost

80% of people have deleted an app because they didn’t know how to use it. Creating an onboarding strategy that successfully educates and converts users can help you reduce your customer support costs and increase retention rates. Customers who find value in your product will also naturally see less potential for customer support issues.

Leading Customer Onboarding Strategies

90% of customers think that companies could “do better” when user onboarding. Onboarding experiences are best if they can elicit the three emotions that users feel at various points of using your product — delight, relief and desire. Designers need to focus on creative yet functional ways of guiding users throughout their initial product use. Here are a few user onboarding best practices that you can implement to make a positive first impression on your users:

1. Sign-up Process

Design your sign-up process based on ease of use. The sign-up flow should be short and easy for users to complete without hiccups or lags. Be careful not to ask unnecessary questions during the sign-up process. The fewer questions you ask, the faster new users can get started with your product and start experiencing its value.

2. Welcome Email

A welcoming email can help bridge the gap between sign-up and the user’s first session in your product. It should highlight what your users will get out of using your product and help them overcome any apprehension they might have about using it.

3. Setting Up and First Log-In

Design your first log-in and account creation experience to be simple and easy for users. Be sure to make it clear how they can accomplish their tasks. You can even include a walkthrough video to help users accomplish the task more efficiently.

4. Fill in Empty Spaces

Customers get anxious if their accounts are empty with no data. It creates the feeling of incompleteness, so in the first sign-in, fill up your product’s gaps to satisfy customers’ needs based on their usage patterns.

5. Interactive Product Walkthroughs

An interactive product walkthrough helps customers understand how to use your product. A walkthrough that does not allow users to interact will seem bland and monotonous. Instead, give them a chance to learn by doing as they go through the journey of using your product.

6. FAQs and Support

Often users need help with specific questions and problems. Customer churn can be reduced by 67% when companies solve customer issues during the first customer support interaction. A well-maintained FAQ section can help them solve their problems quickly and easily, so they can use your product more efficiently.

7. Checking In

It is essential for users to see their progress and how much they have accomplished when using your product. An ‘achievement unlocked’ tone in a product walkthrough can help your customers feel that they are accomplishing something by going through the journey you set out for them in your user onboarding flow.

8. Follow-Up Emails

You can also use a sequence of follow-up emails to target specific user behaviours and help them achieve the intended outcome of your product. You can help your users further by sending them personalized recommendations relevant to them. However, be careful not to send too many emails as it can turn off new customers and discourage them from using your product.

Conclusion

Customer onboarding experiences should be brief, efficient and functional, and designers can provide user value by incorporating a range of tools and strategies to ensure that users can quickly get started with your product. The design process should begin with a deep understanding of your customers, goals, and strategies to provide the best possible user onboarding experience. On the whole, creating a compelling user onboarding can save you time and money. User frustration can also be avoided by designing a good UX journey that doesn’t require too much effort from them, and your product will see a rise in customer retention and satisfaction.