What is User Onboarding?

A better definition is needed to enable user onboarding to drive long-term user success.

The term gets thrown around a lot in the software world, but has varying definitions?—?even to people on the same team! Some say it’s teaching new users, others that it’s indistinguishable from user experience, while others imagine it to just be swipe screens or a quick product tour.

How are you supposed to have great user onboarding if your team isn’t on the same page about what user onboarding is? Let’s get clear about what user onboarding is, and clear the air about what it isn’t.

User onboarding is the system of actively guiding users to see new value in your product.

This definition works well for two reasons:

1. It acknowledges that onboarding extends throughout the user lifecycle. It begins before a user even signs up and it extends past the point they convert to a premium account.
2. It understands that user onboarding is much more than just showing users how to use your product. In order to make users successful, you need to also show them why they need to use it, and give them the help they need to find value.

In order to effectively apply these principles, you need a lot more than just great UX or a product tour. You need to understand your customer, and nudge them to take the appropriate next steps.The formula, therefore for great onboarding, is to nudge users to take action via:

• the right content
• in the right channel
• at the right time

By nailing the content, timing, and channel of your user onboarding, you’ll go much deeper than just good UX and a product tour to retain and delight your userbase.

Product Tour ≠ Onboarding

Product tours are really helpful, especially for first-time users. But they’re just one of many channels you need to use for effective onboarding.

It starts with what the user needs?—?email may provide a case study to re-engage outside of your app, while in-app chat can pre-emptively help when users get stuck. Onboarding can’t simply start and end with a product tour, because you can always deepen a user’s mastery of your product with increased guidance.

For a more detailed look at how to create a cohesive engagement for new users, check out our guide to cross-channel onboarding.

Great UX ≠ User Onboarding

User onboarding and UX design have similar goals: make your product easy to understand for users. But great UX design can’t replace user onboarding and vice-versa!

Great UX improves the ability of people to use your product. But they also need motivation, as BJ Fogg explains in his model of why people behave the way they do.

They need: motivation, ability and triggers to act.

When applying this to product, it translates to strong value proposition, intuitive interface and timely prompts. Therefore just a simple interface isn’t good enough; as almost always users don’t want to learn how to use your product!

You need user onboarding on top of a great UX in order to prompt users to take actions within your app. These prompts don’t come from the steady-state UX; they come from delivering dynamic UX, such as product tours, tooltips, emails etc. And ideally they utilize the right format at the time when users need them most.

Applying this definition to 3 Stages of User Progression

In order to increase the odds of your users’ success, you need to match what you’re telling them to do?—?whether that’s sign up for an account, explore your product, or use a new feature?—?to their abilities and motivations.With a combination of the right content, timing, and channel, users progress from one stage of the customer lifecycle to the next. But it’s never a smooth progression from being a new user to becoming a power user.Instead, it looks like more of a step-function:

• Value plateaus as usage becomes habitual
• Users jump to higher value as they realize the product’s capabilities

When users are guided to new value within the product, they evolve?—?they use the product more and understand how it can help them.

To encourage users to progress in the customer lifecycle, you need to guide them to new value, through user onboarding.

1. Preview User → First-time User

Onboarding starts with marketing. That’s right: before the first product experience!

It’s easy to forget that many new visitors to your site know next to nothing about you. When you’re trying to get these visitors who are “previewing” your product to actually sign up, you need to focus on content that delivers a clear value proposition and positions your company as credible.

• Timing: First-time visitors, or people who haven’t experienced your product first-hand.
• Content: Value proposition; knowledge leadership (to increase authority and credibility); customer case studies / testimonials?—?all as specific to the viewer as possible.
• Channels: Your landing page (incl. explainer videos); ads; blogs / content (incl. on networks such as Medium and LinkedIn).

By focusing on high-quality content that showcases your product (and demonstrates your credibility), you’ll educate them, make your value propositions clear to them and show them that your company is credible.

This provides the motivation they need to move from *knowing *about your product to actually using it.

2. First-time User → Committed User

In the next level, your goal shifts from getting users to sign up to making sure that you fulfil those promises and then some.

At this stage, the content is about specific use cases. You need to explain to users how they can shape the product to match their specific workflow, like how to integrate your app with Slack or Trello.

• Timing: When users have experienced your product, but aren’t regular users.
• Content: Most critical concepts / high-level functionality; specific use cases for your product; setup requirements (e.g. connecting to data sources); highest value actions; path to “aha”.
• Channels: Tooltips / product tours (Chameleon helps you build and manage these ??); in-app messages; lifecycle emails .

When users know how to use your app, they’ll be able to see it as a tool that actually helps them and they’ll develop a habit around it.

3. Committed User → Proponent User

The next transition turns your regular users into your biggest fans.

Some companies do this really well by establishing a community. Community can take various forms, from getting users to attend your conference to wearing your company t-shirt on BART.

The content and channels are a bit more personal in this stage. Since users already know how to use your app (and are doing it well), you need to deepen your relationship with them. Respond to them when they tag or mention you, create an online relationship with users, and share content that shows personality and isn’t strictly product-related.

• Timing: When users have made a habit of using your app.
• Content: Anything evangelizing your product, or deepening the connection between user and your app.
• Channels: Conferences, social media, company t-shirts, company Slack channel for customers.

Every level of user onboarding expands on how much your users can actually use your product?—?from promising solutions to showing them how to use your product to creating solutions to finally moving past solutions to forming a relationship between your company and them.

User Onboarding Makes or Breaks Your Product

Guiding users to new value within your product is an active and continuous process?—?it can’t be solved through just interface design or a just product tours. 

User onboarding is a multi-channel system that shows users how they can expand their use of your product and derive new value each time they do so, but only with the appropriate combination of timing, content, and channels to help that user be successful. As users move through the customer lifecycle, they progress when they understand how the product fits into their lives. And if they don’t understand, they churn.

User onboarding can be the difference between users staying and leaving.So now you’ve got a better handle on what user onboarding is, check out the guide to building great onboarding.

Originally published at www.trychameleon.com/blog.