Designing a Compelling Onboarding Experience with Pivotal Tracker

User onboarding refers to the steps a user is guided through immediately following signup to learn how to use a product. Although onboarding plays a critical role in deciding the fate of your product, it’s often treated like the middle child. That is, companies typically devote their time to building out features, roadmaps or specs and ignore teaching users how to actually use the product.

Why is onboarding important? Onboarding serves as the foundation to your customer’s product experience by reinforcing the “aha moment” of how your product adds value to the user, orienting your user’s actions in a meaningful direction and creating motivation for your user to continue using the product. Simply put, effective onboarding sets the stage for your product’s amazing story and entices the user to want to join in. Onboarding can be the “make or break” moment for your product. You only have one chance to get it right and it is your best (and possibly last chance) to convert your new user into a power user.

What makes a successful onboarding experience? Effective onboarding should be like a good first date. You’ve already caught their attention with their sign up. Now, you need to convey (in a natural way) what an amazing product you have without laying out all of the details so that you can score another date. Simply put: “Onboarding isn’t about setting them up — it’s about getting them back.” By the end, a user should be able to:

1. Identify and locate key features
2. Understand how these key features work
3. Find value in these features
4. Have a desire to use your product again

Let’s apply some of this knowledge and examine a real life example.

Case Study: Pivotal Tracker (Desktop Version)

I. Why Focus on Pivotal Tracker’s Onboarding Process

Pivotal Tracker is a project management tool for agile teams to “build better software faster.” A look at the website metrics displayed below for Pivotal Tracker against its competitor Jira indicate that it is being outperformed by Jira in both unique visits and the average session period.

Furthermore, online reviews suggest that Pivotal Tracker is difficult to use in the beginning.

• “Pivotal Tracker is easy to use once you actually learn how it works” — Julie Titterington
• “The more you use this program the easier it becomes. It was intimidating to me at first” — Mira

These web statistics and online reviews potentially indicate that the onboarding experience for Pivotal Tracker’s desktop version might be the source for low conversion of users between activation and retention. I will test this hypothesis through usability testing and provide suggested improvements.

As with any hypothesis, I have made some assumptions including:

1. While the inherent complexity of Pivotal Tracker’s features can be the source for relatively low KPIs and the negative web reviews, I have assumed that there is still a potential to capture new users by improving the onboarding process.
2. Pivotal Tracker has a large online support community and various tutorial videos. I have assumed that most first time users rely only on the quick start video as their source for learning how to use the product and will focus my research on the video.
3. Online reviews may be biased. I have assumed that their sentiments represent a large market of potential users.

II. What is the Onboarding Process for Pivotal Tracker?

After signing up for the desktop version of Pivotal Tracker, users are brought to their workspace dashboard.

Workspace dashboard new users are defaulted to

They must select “Create a Project” in order to proceed and then they are shown the below welcome video. The quick start video utilizes a function oriented onboarding approach as it takes the user through the steps needed to perform key features.

III. Testing Our Hypothesis

To test whether Pivotal Tracker’s onboarding video has a negative effect on the conversion of users between activation and retention, I designed a usability test.

I conducted the test on a range of developers, product managers and user experience designers all of whom have never used Pivotal Tracker previously and were familiar with agile development practices. The test was divided into four sections:

1. Introductions
2. Onboarding video viewing + debrief
3. Tasks conducted using Pivotal Tracker.
4. Recap, recommendations and takeaways

In designing the questions for the interview, I focused on three components:

1. Presentation: Does the video make the user comfortable and engaged throughout?
2. Content: Does the user understand the product and how to use it?
3. Value Proposition: Has the user uncovered the benefits of the product?

IV. Findings & Recommendations:

Usability Testing in Action

Finding 1: Video length is too long

“I probably would have clicked out of the video midway if you weren’t here.” — Nick, Developer

• 100% checked the time remaining on the video at some point during their viewing
• 60% verbally expressed that the video was too long.

Recommendations:
The onboarding experience should be designed with the mindset that attention is scarce. We should “look at [the] onboarding experience as highly optional.” Some proposed changes include:

• Shorten the video to eliminate secondary features that the user can intuitively explore on their own (i.e. remove the section showing the different categories of stories as features, bugs and chores.)
• “Show them the Emerald City in the distance” by adding a progress bar to the video to promote engagement and organization. The bar can have labels separating each task learned to a) reinforce new content b) provide a means to easily revisit sections of the video and c) give viewers a sense of completion and motivation to finish the video.

Finding 2: Video is overwhelming

“They cluttered a lot of things which was confusing.” — Ashutosh, UX Designer

“A lot of moving parts, there is a screen here and a screen there and they’re moving” — Patty, Product Manager

80% commented on the video having too many moving parts when asked about their initial thoughts on the video

Recommendations:
Onboarding should be as unobtrusive as possible. It is important to know your audience and to tailor the tone and style of your onboarding to them. A user who has just signed up for Pivotal Tracker and who is dedicating the time to watch the onboarding video is likely unfamiliar with the product. While watching the video, the viewer must process the background music, voice over and moving animations while keeping up with the content being displayed. Some suggestions on how to ease the user into the material within a comfortable environment would be to:

• Cut down on the animation and movement of elements (i.e. point estimation section can be done with less animations)
• Declutter visuals (i.e. remove unnecessary stories from the backlog)
• Zoom in on key sections

Finding 3: Video provides moderate viewer confidence & viewers are unable to use key features

After watching the video, I asked users to rate their comfort level in jumping in and using Pivotal Tracker on a scale of 1 (very uncomfortable) to 5 (very comfortable). The average score was 3.5

Viewers were also asked to conduct various tasks with Pivotal Tracker:

• 60% could not add a story to the current backlog and include an “easy” estimation without some assistance
• 100% of users had trouble locating the save button for each story

Recommendations:
Prioritize showing the absolute essentials versus everything cool about the product. “It’s not about getting people to do more things, it’s about getting them to do the right things.” Just as we design our product with a minimum viable perspective in mind, we should figure out what features our user will need to interact with in order to successfully adopt the product and focus on this in onboarding. Some specific suggestions for Pivotal Tracker:

• Begin with a quick overview of the layout and the components of the dashboard paired with a clearly labeled visual (i.e. explain what the ‘Icebox’ is) before jumping into the functionality of the features
• Take the user through the process of creating a story in a completely new backlog without any other existing stories.

Finding 4: Viewers unable to define key terms used

• 80% could not define “iteration” in the context of Pivotal Tracker without some assistance
• 80% could not define “velocity” in the context of Pivotal Tracker without some assistance

Recommendations:
As mentioned previously, know your audience and speak to them in their language. Pivotal Tracker should refine their definitions for key terms using simpler language that will easily register with the viewer.

How “iteration” is currently explained: “Your entire backlog is divided into iterations. Each section shows one iteration and each iteration only holds a certain number of points.”

This definition is very meta and can be confusing to hear.

How “velocity” is currently explained: “Your velocity is the average number of points accepted in each of the past few iterations.”

This definition is only clear if the viewer understands what an iteration is and can gauge over what amount of time an iteration lasts for.

Finding 5: Moderate Likelihood of Adopting Product

When asked to rate their likelihood of recommending Pivotal Tracker as their next project management tool for a team based project on a scale of 1 (very unlikely) to 5 (very likely), the average score was 3.3

“I really like it but I don’t think the onboarding will be fast” — Patty, Product Manager

“I already use Jira” — Franchini, Developer

Recommendations:

Onboarding is your best chance to shine and to convert your user into a power user. Every step should have concise, “constant and compelling reminders of how much better their life will be with your product.” Potential improvements for Pivotal Tracker include:

• End with a screen listing key additional secondary features (i.e. integration with Jira or other tools could be a main selling point)
• End the video with the opportunity (i.e. snippets or links) to view testimonials and examples of how other companies have used Pivotal Tracker. Another route would be to structure the entire video from the perspective of a company who has successfully adopted Pivotal Tracker.

V. Takeaways:

Pivotal Tracker is a wonderful agile project management tool and while it’s onboarding video is doing many things right, there is always room for improvement. Here are six tenets to help in designing or updating your onboarding experience.

1. Show your product’s best self
2. Know your user
3. Remember that attention is scarce
4. Don’t overload the user
5. Keep your user motivated with figurative high fives
6. Do not set it and forget it

A special thanks to all of my usability test participants.

If you have any questions or comments, drop a line below. Thank you for reading.