Gamification Techniques for Product Onboarding

People don’t want to use a smart product. They want to FEEL SMART when using a product. Overall, people hate feeling stupid. When they don’t know what to do, they start to feel dumb or confused and eventually abandon the app.

40-60% of users who sign up for a free trial of your application will use it once and never come back.

So, the 1st rule of onboarding experience – Don’t let users accidentally stumble on a bad experience.

The 2nd rule – What’s the first primary win-state for the user to achieve?

A win-state is a moment when a user completes the desired action and says, “Wow, that was so easy & fun!” It’s also called the “AHA moment” when you make people experience the true value of your product.

Okay, but how do I guide people to a good experience?

We will cover several gamification techniques to achieve that.

The first technique is called “The Glowing Choice”. The glowing choice is a game design technique when you have something on top of the overlay, like a pointing arrow that says, "Press this button” or a Lightbulb. Something that glows and attracts attention to itself, prompting the user to take action now.

For example in a game “Candy Crush”, while playing if you don’t do anything for more than 4 seconds, the game will highlight/wiggle the possible winning combinations for you.

Desert Oasis is another game design technique you can use in your onboarding process. The Desert Oasis is when the rest of the interface looks plain, without any vibrant colors or catchy elements but one desired action stands out clearly. That action could be bold, big, colorful etc.

Imagine you’re in a desert, you don’t know where to go and you see a green oasis not far away from you. I bet, you’ll definitely be looking in that direction and most certainly go there.

Another example is when you’re driving a car and see the stop sign. Big, red octagon that is very hard to miss. That’s the example of a desert oasis design in real life.

The only difference between “The Glowing Choice” and “The Desert Oasis” is the Glowing Choice sits on top of the interface as an overlay and disappears after you interact with the desired action while the Desert Oasis is a permanent part of the UI (think of Google’s search page).

The last game design technique here is “The Step-by-Step Tutorial”.

When people join your app/product they don’t want to feel stupid, they want to get started quickly and be productive immediately.

Basically, they need certainty, feel smart about their actions and reach the first major win-state as quick as possible.

So, the Step-by-Step Tutorial is a collection of Glowing Choices that helps people perform the desired actions. Sometimes it can be a simulated experience to show people how it’s done and how it’s easy to do.

Make sure you show users how to quickly & easily perform the desired actions. This is a crucial part of the entire onboarding process, because lots of people think that onboarding ends when user setups his/her profile or you show they around.

A great onboarding experience is when user has completed the desired actions once.

The onboarding ends WHEN the user has done the desired activities once.

In some apps, onboarding consists of uploading your photo, typing in your nickname etc. and then a user gets thrown into the dashboard without any clue on what to do next and how things work there. This results in people leaving the app.

And when they leave, they don’t necessarily come back because there is a cognitive dissonance (a mental discomfort) in their mind. It happens because they don’t know what to do next and that prevents them from doing it.?

If you happen to read the “getting things done” literature, they all recommend you putting the easiest task first on your list and gradually increase the velocity.

For example, you shouldn't put “Write a book” as your first task in the list. Start with something small like opening a writing app and completing the first couple of sentences. This will help you avoid cognitive dissonance, because when there is a cognitive dissonance we don’t want to come back to the task.

Ideally, your product should train people how to do the desired actions and walk them through the activity loop to develop a muscle memory. The next time, people will already know that they should click here and there.

If you think about it for a second, when you play a game, a game never gives you a big manual on how to play a game. It either simulates the experience for you or walks you through a series of actions to learn on how to operate the system.

Users should learn by doing, not just observing.

Don’t throw people to the dashboard after they complete their profile. Guide them through the activity loop, make them reach a few quick wins, so they can learn the mechanics and repeat it the next time they log into the app.

Hope these insights were helpful for you. Let me know your own experience with onboarding best practices in the comments below.

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