Onboarding: Building a first-time experience that makes users stick around
3 principles to make it gold ✨
Do you remember the first time you opened Photoshop? You probably asked yourself what should I do? where should I start? and eventually gave up, thinking it’ll be impossible to edit your photo.
Painful, isn’t it? Actually, you just experienced a shitty onboarding — too bad considering Photoshop has some awesome features.
The first experience with a product is decisive for long-term retention because:
- Users have no time to waste ⏱. They’ll quit if it takes too much effort to get what they want. The average app loses 77% of its daily active users within the first 3 days after the install (source).
- You need to activate new users 🚀. If not, you’re throwing your acquisition investments out the window.
- This is your first impression 👯. This is what all your users will experience first. This is what they’ll tell their peers.
So how do you build a great onboarding experience to keep people using your product?
- Define what users should do first
What are the key actions that will make them stick around? - Keep them engaged
How to keep user attention high? - Never stop improving
How to keep improving it until it’s gold?
1. Define what users should do first
A first-time user is successful if she sees enough value to keep using the product. At this very early stage of your product experience, only a few key actions matter.
What do users “hire” your product for?
People have many jobs to do in their lives — from commuting, to visiting their family for the weekend, or even looking for an apartment.
Figure out why people use your product — what are they here for — and you’ll be able to focus on delivering this value as early as possible, so that they don’t leave for another product.
What users do during this first experience will define whether they stick around or not. This is why the first few seconds of your product experience are decisive.
Example
To pass the time commuting, you can do several things — play games, listen to music, read the news, learn a new language or scroll social feeds.
Let’s say you’re into games. You would definitely stick with Angry Birds: 15 seconds after starting the game, you’ve already smashed some pigs and completed the first level! Instant reward. You’re hooked 😍.
What makes new users stay?
When they used your app for the first time, there are some key actions that your active users took that the ones who churned didn’t. This is the “Aha!” moment. It looks like this:
If users perform a specific action — add X contacts or play Y songs — , they’re more likely to stick around for Z weeks.
For Facebook, it’s 7 friends in 10 days, for Slack, it’s 2000 sent messages per team.
An easy way to find yours is to look at retention curves or cohorts in your analytics (Mixpanel, Google Analytics, Amplitude, Kissmetrics, etc.). List the different actions that first-time users do, and find the one that makes them stick around the most ☝️.
Example
On Instagram, you can’t get any value if you don’t follow anyone. It’s clear that following X users is a key activation metric. So it’s suggested everywhere. Well, maybe a bit too much.
Once you know why people want to use your product for, and what makes them stay, you can define the key actions that a first-time user should do to be successful and focus your onboarding effort accordingly.
It’s a balance between driving them to activation & letting them get the value they want.
2. Keep them engaged
After defining what makes first-time users successful, you have to work on how they get there.
Let users try it
You learn more by doing, rather than having someone tell you how something works — thanks J. Dewey for having spotted that a long time ago.
It works the same for products. You see how a product works and the value it brings you by using it. Games are the best illustration of this mechanic.
But it only works if you know what to do when you start using a product.
So the objective should be to help users focus on accomplishing key actions, defined in part one, to keep them in the flow 😌.
Example
On the first level of Angry Birds, there is one action to do, nothing else. Neither too easy, nor to difficult. You have to smash the pig. You get it. Then you step up. On and on. It’s progressive. It keeps you thirsty — you’re in the flow.
When landing on Quartz , a news app about global economy, the conversation starts right away. There is one action to do. The conversation keeps going. You not only get how it works, but also start getting value quickly. Boom! 💥
Reward them
Rewards encourage and motivate 🎉. When you get rewarded, you’re more likely to continue doing what you’ve started.
The objective is then to reward your first-time users based on the value they’re looking for.
Example
Let’s take Duolingo, a language learning app. The first time you use it, you’ve already learned something — which is a reward itself . But you’re also rewarded within the app.
Remove everything else
Sometimes you jump right into a product, there are 10 different things to do: several calls-to-action, notifications to open, a chat with support, etc 😱.
You’re distracted, and frankly, lost.
At this stage, only a few key actions matter — and nothing else.
Example
On the Paypal app, after signing up, instead of being thrown into the sea, you know what to do next thanks to a specific screen that highlights the key actions.
It means that when you have strong business constraints — if you need people to sign up or provide specific information — make sure it can’t be removed and users understand the value of it.
Example
On Duolingo, profile creation (or signup ) comes only after you’ve experienced the value of the app. Awesome 👌.
3. Never stop improving
Building a great onboarding experience requires research and iteration. Once you’ve built a first version, measure the success and iterate until a significant part of your users activate.
Spot where users drop
When you have enough data about usage, analyse your onboarding flow and see where you’re losing people.
A simple way to do so is to use conversion funnels. Once you’ve defined the key actions for first-time users through your analytics tool, you can track them and see when most of users drop.
Understand why & fix it
Quantitative data is sometimes not enough to understand what happens with users. If you want to know more, get in touch with them.
Here are two simple questions to ask:
- Why did you start using our product?
→ they may have specific goals in mind (personal, professional, social) - Why did it not meet your expectations?
→ something went wrong, you have to understand what it is
They may have been frustrated, bored, or even lost.
Example
Let’s take a simple one. Say a great part of users drop at signup/profile creation. After calling them, you realize they just wanted to try your product out before signing-up.
When digging more, you realize the information to provide are actually considered as sensitive — such as phone number, profile picture, or contacts. Users didn’t want to give it for free, so they left.
A great way to fix it is to ask yourself:
- Is a necessary step?
- Does it happen at the right moment?
- If yes, what’s the value for the end-user?
Conclusion
Onboarding is a serious matter, which couldn’t be reduced to a tutorial screen or an annoying signup flow.
It not only converts your acquisition investments but also feeds the ground for better retention.
Invest in this first experience for your users, and they’ll be willing to use your product again and again.
So, yes, you’re smart enough to edit a picture, and I’m sure you would have stuck with Photoshop if you’d been onboarded properly.
