Education — How to Retain Your Application Users

Most applications loose 95% of new users within 90 days. How absurd is that?

This short article is a guide on how you can welcome new users into your product in a way that motivates them into being lifelong customers.

Here’s the 80/20 on onboarding: (80/20–20 percent of your activities will account for 80 percent of your results)

Start by visualizing the user’s journey toward experiencing value from your product, this is the reason users sought you out.
Then: 1. Identify the obstacles that come up along the way
2. Address those obstacles in your onboarding flow

How to identify obstacles: Some obstacles will be known to you. They’re onboarding steps that:
1. Require a lot of work
2. Are boring

Other obstacles are hidden. To find ’em, observe users using your product:
~For SaaS apps: Record users’ in-app activity using Hotjar
~ For physical goods: Run a study. Watch customers use your product

User behavior reveals the NON-obvious broken paths taken in onboarding.

Example:
Twitter studied their users’ onboarding behavior & found out that new users who don’t immediately follow a few other Twitter users when they first sign up are less likely to return.
So they redesigned their onboarding flow to force users to choose five people to follow.
Once you’ve identified the obstacles (tedium, friction, dead-ends), you can address them using 4 principles:
1. Educate users
2. Entice users
3. Reduce friction
4. Make onboarding productive

Actionable tactics for each

Quickly show users how they can unlock the product’s value If it’s not self-evident, try one of these;
~ Walkthrough: Point out key features.
~ Video: A no-fluff, 1-min video > 15 mins of documentation reading.
~ SaaS apps: Fill a dashboard w/ sample data & tips.

Rule of thumb: Don’t ask users to do something until you’ve excited them about the value they’ll get from it.
Example. Want someone to download your Chrome extension? Get them hooked on your web app first.
Then prompt them to download once they clearly see value.

3. How to reduce friction
You need to reduce:
1. Total workload: Only ask for what you need.
2. Pre fill in forms * Perceived complexity: Break a complex task into easy steps
3.Choice anxiety: Anything that requires users to put effort into choices. You should also include suggestions.

4. Make it productive
You want users to accomplish something meaningful while learning to use your product.
Example. If you run an email app, your onboarding walkthrough could guide the user through cleaning up their inbox.
Also provide a small dopamine hit so users continue to engage.

5.A great onboarding experience delights users
Always make it clear what the next step is and that step must appear easy. This will help to build momentum towards your product’s value.
To a new user, nothing is more motivating than experiencing a product’s ultimate value within minutes.

1.Your onboarding should show users how to get value out of your product.
2. Excite users and turn them into lifelong customers.
3. Find the obstacles. Address each. Aggressively reduce friction and cognitive overhead
4. Focus on being educational, enticing, and productive.

I write about growth hacking, strategy and startups. If you liked this articles, find my other articles here: https://createxdigital.com/ams/​

Originally published at https://createxdigital.com on December 3, 2021.