New User Onboarding

$836 billion – that’s the projected amount digital products will be spending on user acquisition by the year 2026. Last 2021, it was estimated at $522.5 billion – that’s a staggering 60% increase in 5 years. On average, it costs $3 to install an app, and user acquisition takes up to 25% of companies’ spending.

But do you know how many of the acquired users are lost after their first interaction with the app? Try to take a guess:

A) 15-35%

B) 30-50%

C) 40-60%

…The answer is C. 40-60% of users abandon the app after their first use. Tens of billions of dollars are lost because companies fail to understand the needs and wants of their users.

Why Product Onboarding Matters?

Now we enter the realm of product onboarding and why it is a crucial yet so often the underestimated aspect of the digital product space. As Jeff Bezos puts it “We see our customers as invited guests to a party, and we are the hosts. It’s our job every day to make every important aspect of the customer experience a little bit better.”

Here’s why New User Onboarding is critical to your product’s success:

Your product’s onboarding experience is the very first interaction the user has with your product. It is the make-or-break moment where you either make them a life long partner or you risk losing them forever.

With the right approach, onboarding can significantly increase your user engagement and reduce churn rates. Take the wrong step, you might never recover. You only have one chance with each user, so start from the very first visit.

Let’s say you are a new neobank application. Your user signs-up for your application because people want a more convenient way to transfer and store money, plus they saw an advertisement that gives them a high-yield savings account with 6.5% interest rates. But they had no idea how to deposit money into their account  – users ask themselves; “how can I benefit from growing my funds if I don’t know how to put money into my account in the first place?”

What is Product Onboarding?

As an example, let’s look at Trello, a collaboration tool known to almost everyone, and see how they tackle the onboarding experience.

Let’s go through every single step of Trello iOS app onboarding funnel. We took screenshots of every step and added comments on the good part and the parts that can be improved.

✅ From the get-go, Trello makes it easy for the user to sign-up by providing single sign-up and log-in options, with platforms from Gmail to Slack.

❌ But, the app listing and first screen don’t include an effective value proposition messaging. “Trello: organize anything!” is too generic, and “Move teamwork forward – even on the go” is vague. Trello fails to connect the user with the real value it provides.

✅ As a collaboration tool, Trello reinstates the team aspect by giving you the option to share your new account with your team member, which is useful for returning users coming from other platforms.

❌ But, for a new user of Trello, I’m still in the dark of what this app provides, and this page adds more confusion with introducing the concept of “Board” with no explanation.

How this step can be better: provide an enticing description of what a new user can do with their board. For example, “Trello board is where you add all the tasks and milestones of your project”.

✅ In the next onboarding step, Trello gives the option to create your first board with a predefined template which is a really cool way to show all the use cases Trello serves.

❌ But, why do all templates look the same except for the background image/color?

✅ After selecting a template, Trello takes it even further by allowing the user to include sample cards in the template or start with a clean slate.

❌ The problem is, what is a “Card”? One big mistake is assuming that new users will understand my made-up terminology. Also, what does “Community Template” mean and why is it important to include in the onboarding flow? Product Managers need to reduce distractions and noise from the onboarding flow so that to reduce the time it takes the user to become an active user.

Now the last step of the onboarding flow.

❌ “Create From Template” sounds like the name of the function the engineers have created in the code. A better title can be “Create New Board” and under the title we mention the template.

Product Managers should pay attention to every detail in the onboarding process; “New Board” is not a great field name, a better one is “Board Title”. Also, why is it asking me again to keep or hide the cards? Didn’t I answer that question in the previous screen?

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It’s evident that even well-established and thriving businesses can mistakenly craft an onboarding process based on incorrect assumptions about new users. To ensure your product’s onboarding and conversion funnels remain effective, it’s essential to engage in ongoing optimization. Introducing a new perspective for an evaluation and audit can greatly enhance efficiency. Critical funnel optimization is included in our services, learn more on our website here.

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PRODUCT360 Onboarding Framework

Introducing our framework to optimize your product onboarding flow for new users; a step-by-step guide:

1. Define User Personas: Begin by digging into your user base. Conduct thorough research to create personas that encapsulate your typical users’ characteristics, behaviors, and pain points.
2. Identify First Aha Moment: Analyze your usage data to pinpoint the pivotal moments where users first experience the value your product provides.
3. Measure Current Performance: Once you delve deep into your data, find the X% of new users who find the first aha moment within a specific time range.
4. Set a Target: Set an ambitious yet achievable goal to increase the percentage from X% to Y%.
5. Track User Flow: Map out the exact steps new users take within your product. Identify any roadblocks that hinder the user journey of getting to that Aha moment.
6. Ideate, Test & Iterate: Get creative. It’s time to brainstorm improvement ideas, prioritize them, and put them to the test. Embrace a culture of continuous iteration to refine your onboarding process constantly.

Putting the Framework into Action

With more than 260.28 million subscribers, Netflix has dominated the industry and positioned itself as the biggest streaming service. So how can we use the PRODUCT360 framework to improve its user onboarding experience?

Let’s see another example – Slack, a communication platform used by over 100,000 organizations.

PRODUCT360 Onboarding Framework can be used in all types of industries – from productivity tools to e-commerce platforms. The goal is to keep in mind that you only have one chance to create a lasting impact. Don’t wait for user engagement to start after registration, make the user feel it from the moment they land on your platform.

In today’s competitive digital product landscape, it’s imperative to turn your new users into loyal customers. The best way to do that is to build a killer user onboarding experience.

Would you like a copy of the grab a copy of PRODUCT360 Onboarding Framework? Click PRODUCT360 Onboarding Framework, copy the file and start optimizing your product’s onboarding flow.

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