Now this is what seamless user onboarding looks like

Everyone loves to say their product is focused on customer experience. But what does that mean? And really, who’s going to say, nah, that making-customers-happy-stuff, that’s not really for me.

Nobody. Ever.

But incredible customer experience is also incredibly difficult to pull off. Because it is the sum of a million minute decisions that come down to this one basic principle: Make life easier for the customer. Which really means:

Remove all points of friction along every step of the way.

The trouble is that by definition you and your team are not in the best position to appreciate the experience your consumer is going through. Because you know your product inside and out. You can’t see the biggest patches of friction because you’re so immersed in the minutiae that only superusers will get to over time.

But if you were to take a completely new user and place them in front of your site, I can assure you there are tons of points of friction — places of confusion, pockets of ambiguity.

Usually the instinct is to say, “well, there the user is dumb enough not to get this basic thing x, then I’m not sure they should be using it”. Not only is that arrogant, that’s shortsighted.

And while the whole customer experience is vital to make as frictionless as possible, I would argue that the top priority is making the 1st visit the seamless and productive.

Because each customer is asked to download or click or try hundreds of new and “revolutionary” things each week. What makes yours standout? In the 3 minutes you may hold someone’s attention, what is going to get them to stay with you? How can you “onboard” a user so that they not only get how to best use your product but they are delighted enough to come back and best yet, they’re willing to share it with others.

It’s a question that many companies are grappling with and very few have managed to address effectively. And it’s a tall order from the first interaction.

But this is now “table stakes”. “You only have one chance to make a first impression” has never been more true or important.

So who’s doing it well? There are some good examples out there, but none so well as Point and Canva.

1) Point: www.getpoint.co

Point is a simple Chrome extension that allows you to quickly clip and share articles with your network.

Currently I use Evernote to clip the articles and if I want to share I’ll use the email article function. But lots of friction here because a) I need to do at least 2 steps and b) I need to go look up email addresses. More often then not I just clip the article to my “Read Later” folder and never actually end up going back to share. Maybe Evernote has an easier process but I’ve never taken the time to explore and find out.

Point makes this simpler and therefore easier. But that’s not what blew me away. What amazed me what their onboarding process to make this apparent to me.

I urge you to try it out — if for nothing but to experience what an seamless and effective onboarding sequence looks like.

My describing it in words won’t nearly do justice, but though the basic steps of installation, importing of contacts and product orientation I fully understood the power and the capabilities of Point.

Mission accomplished. And then some.

Which leads me to another stellar example:

2) Canva: www.canva.com

I’ve written about Canva before and I’m a huge fan — both as a user and as a student of start-ups.

But one of the main things that made me a fanatic was their onboarding process. Canva’s mission is to make design accessible to the masses so that anyone can create beautifully designed digital assets (think social posts, banners, quote cards etc).

But design can be intimidating for the uninitiated. So in 5 simple steps, Canva arms the absolute beginner with all they need to venture out and create their first design. First with a 23 second (love the arbitrary number — cuts through the clutter) overview, then a 5 step try-it-yourself. From there, they also have a “Design School” that ups the skill level and the user’s confidence.

By taking something that is somewhat daunting and making is accessible, Canva minimizes the number of people that may try it out the first time but never come back. Because they didn’t get past the “tipping point” of making it personally relevant and indispensable.

So why are both of these examples so much better than the rest? Because they treat those precious 3 minutes that people are giving them as a gift. And they’re focused on doing the most with it so that they can earn the chance to become a regular part of the user’s product repertoire.

So with those 3 minutes they manage to craft an onboarding program that incorporates these 5 integral concepts:

1) painful simplicity: Canva knows there are 5 key design variables that they need beginners to get comfortable with: color, images, backgrounds, layouts and text. Of course there are others but they won’t matter if they can’t get people past the basics. And this is incredibly hard for professional designers to accept, let alone promote. But that’s what being truly customer centric means. If your target is the complete beginner, see the world as a complete beginner. Canva understands this and focuses on only the few that will lead to the many.

2) bite sized + concrete: Point almost lost me. Having installed the Chrome extension, I thought I knew all there was to know about this. I currently have 8 extension icons peering out at me. How different can this be? Go to page, see something interesting, click icon to save/share. Duh.

Well if Point had let me continue with my assumptions, I can assure you that they would have gone the way of the app graveyard. Because I like to try but I rarely commit to my regular line-up.

What saved me was that they invited me to do a short, couple-click orientation. And by doing so, in a small, concrete increments, they actually had me clicking through to the end, building momentum as I began to see and understand how and why they’re different. But for the small, specific ask, I would have been lost.

3) rewarding: If you remember only one point, it’s this: what’s in it for me. As you’re designing, find the ways that it’s rewarding to the user. Whether it makes them feel accomplished (in the case of Canva — creating a whole, pretty decent looking design in mere minutes), or delighted (in the case of Point where I had a light bulb go off when they showed me how I could highlight text and share specific parts so seamlessly). Whatever it is — gameification or exclusivity or whatever, make sure it’s legitimately rewarding for the user, not you or the team.

4) complete: Don’t shortchange your on boarding experience to only the first few steps. If you want users to understand the full value, find a way to make them see the full range of capabilities, end to end. Seemingly counter to my first point, it’s actually complementary. If you have 10 steps from 1) getting to the site to 10) end conversion, you may be tempting to pick the first 5 steps. That, in most cases would be wrong. Instead it should be something like 1, 2, 5, 7, 10. Whatever the case, make sure 10 is in there so that people understand from the beginning what the point is. Point (no pun intended) does this by making you do all the steps in quick bites (import, share, highlight). They could have chosen to stop after install, import and share. But then I would have never known about one of the features that I’m most excited about trying and telling others about.
Similarly Canva could have stopped at the design phase but they cover how to share/download so that they can illustrate the full end to end functionality and therefore value.

5) routine buster: Humans are inherently lazy creatures. Inertia is a powerful force to contend with. Knowing this is key to thinking about effective customer experience. Because you have to figure out how to wiggle your way into relevance in your user’s very crowded life. If you can’t convince them of why they should change their current status quo, chances are they won’t. Because routine is easy and back to the original point, your job is show how you can be even easier than doing nothing. Tall order. But incredible products and customer experience do exactly that.

Which brings up a point that should be obvious but I’m going to reiterate: Frictionless customer experiences and incredible onboarding is absolutely worthless if your product is crap. This is not an exercise in creating a slick interface to cover up a shitty product, like perfectly seasoned sauce covering stringy, tough meat.

Elegant onboarding should amplify a great product. It should give the product its chance to shine. It should be a rewarding means to meaningful end.

Point and Canva do that in spades.

What other products have stellar onboarding processes? Help me populate this Product Hunt collection: Extraordinary Onboarding Experiences.

Originally published at www.avnipatelthompson.com on December 18, 2014.