Say YES to User Onboarding
Research by Aaply
Hey everyone! Aaply team here. For a whole year, we were building our wireframe constructor. The first version of our mobile design tool is almost ready, and we will launch it very soon.
Why we started a research
Now Aaply is in beta, and recently we implemented an onboarding product tour. To create it, we carried out a small research. We asked our friends and potential users what they even think about user onboarding. Then, we collected all the answers and statistics in this article. First, we did it for ourselves but decided to share with all the startup, design & makers community. We hope you’ll find it useful :)
What we asked
What do people think about onboarding? How do they react to it? What should be added in onboarding to make it simple yet educational? Let’s explore!
We asked one question:
When implementing a new tool in your workflow, how heavily do you rely on onboarding provided within the tool itself?
Overall, there were 30 detailed answers:
- 16 from designers
- 6 from product managers
- 3 from developers
- 3 from founders
- 2 from marketing managers
Here are the results!
✅ 8 users said they take onboarding seriously and heavily rely on it.
Jon, Product Designer:
«I actually do take onboarding seriously, especially videos and tips. So on a scale of 1–10 I’ll say 7»
Mubarak, UI/UX Designer:
«I greatly rely on onboarding.»
Oluwaseun, UI/UX Designer:
«I had a chat with a user recently and she said she really loves to see what the tool has for her before she signs up. And as a user, I love engaging onboarding process too!»
❌ 11 users said they don’t rely on onboarding at all, never use it, or find it annoying.
Joe Natoli, UI/UX Designer:
«In too many cases, the onboarding either (a) doesn’t accurately mirror the situations and scenarios the team finds itself in or (b) is so surface level that it doesn’t cover any reasonable use cases.»
Even though every answer highlighted unique points, there was one overall conclusion to them:
💭 All users want the tool to be intuitive, so there wouldn’t be a need to touch the onboarding at all.
Ololade, UI/UX Designer:
«Basically, I’d appreciate a very intuitive tool that’s built and designed in line the user’s mental model. tutorial videos would come in handy… I especially prefer videos, I like to see how it works visually.»
📚 The biggest dispute surprisingly was the format of the onboarding. While some people consider videos to be the most useful instrument within onboarding, others prefer to have written instruction.
Thomas Aufresne, Creative Developer:
«I did read the documentation more than anything — videos feel like they’re hit & miss most of the time. I’ll just follow a mini-tutorial the first time I’m logging in.»
🎥 Most of the users skip video during the onboarding, but if necessary they’ll go to YouTube to find answers to their questions.
Jesse, Founder:
«I usually skim the documentation, and then search for videos as I encounter problems.»
Ilya Miskov, Product Designer:
«Typically I prefer to skip most of the onboarding experiences to play with the tool myself, learn it myself, including all the shortcuts and stuff. Simplifying that experience by only focusing on the most crucial areas of the app/tool, having 2–4 screens is usually good enough, or even a more non-distractive experience if you can come up with such.»
What conclusion we came to
With all the above results, we had to say “yes” to onboarding! There always will be both, users who skip an onboarding part, and users who don’t. But all of them may want to come back to it later, if they face some difficulties. The most important point is — people wanna use tools that are simple and intuitive. Not to spend time on onboarding, watching the videos, or reading the email instructions.
Come see how we did with Aaply onboarding to judge it yourself!
You can pass it in 3 minutes, and even plan your first mobile app in 10 minutes.
