User Onboarding — A Design Perspective
Why User Onboarding is Important?
Elements of User Onboarding.
Best practices of engaging users.
Real world examples.
Why Onboarding is Important?
A study showed that about half of the users who use an app in the first week after the download are retained or will show further activity over the next three months. And also usually show more engagement over the course of a month and eventually retention, increases. This means that brands that welcome new users with a robust onboarding experience are going to be better positioned to retain users in the long run. Onboarding isn’t necessarily a one day campaign. It can span several days, basically as long as it takes to educate users.
What are the essential elements of User Onboarding?
Introductory content
Permissioning
Multi channel messaging
Testing
Measurement
Introductory content
Once a user downloads your app, it’s important to greet them with introductory content. This will help showcase your app’s value, discuss key features, and provide users with a clear call to action.
The dilemma is that most apps omit the intro content which is basically the content you see when you first install and open an app. Intro content is your apps first impression, it’s the smile that’s essential to starting the relationship off on the right foot.
We can see an introductory screen from SoundCloud, with a clear call to action to start listening.
Tips for Introductory content:
Providing indicators, give users a sense of how long it’ll take to get through your intro content.
Provide an option to leave the Intro. Some users may already have an account and want to just hop right in, give them the option to do that.
Show the value and functionality of the app through images. Words are great but images are more powerful and may provide more direction.
Keep it short. Only include the most essential information.
Include your app’s logo and slogan to build trust with the user.
Permissioning: Asking the Right way
If the app requires special permissions from the users, or if you would like for push notifications to be enabled to send useful messages, you need to communicate this with your users.
Tips for Permissioning:
Use a custom opt-in prompt which gives you the ability to ask for permissions in your own way and instil your brand personality and so the prompt.
Critical — The custom opt-in prompt should show before the native iOS prompt. The reason is, once the native OS prompt shows you won’t get another chance to ask for permission, a user would have to go through their settings to update.
Test your Opt-in prompts to see which variants generate the most Opt in’s.
Be sure to explain to users why you’re asking for certain permissions, don’t just ask without giving them a reason why. Explain the benefits of getting push notifications, having their location-enabled, etc.
Multi-channel messaging: Boosting Retention
A whitepaper states that apps that running multi-channel onboarding campaigns during the first seven days after install show a 130% increase in two months retention versus 71% increase for campaigns that only use push notifications. So this means that you should do two things.
Tips for multi-channel messaging:
Supplement push notifications with other channels like email, in-app/in-browser messages explaining the value of your app.
If your app requires registration for full functionality, let users know by push notifications that there’s more to do to get the full experience. Some people may quit on a morning early for many reasons. But you don’t have to give up on them sometimes people just need a little reminder.
Testing: Optimize your Onboarding
In the beginning, you would want to start with just creating one onboarding flow. One message, but as you ramp up your acquisition strategy, testing becomes critical, you want to find the onboarding flow and messaging that’s going to drive the most users to your desired action.
Tips for testing:
Testing your onboarding flow which will include the content, the link, and the actions, for example, you might have one flow that has three intro screens that lead to our registration page, another flow may have five intro screens that lead to our registration page, you can test which flow generates the highest amount of registrations
Test your messaging: This includes copy, images, tone, personalization of your push notifications and emails.
Measurement:
Once you’ve finished building all the content messaging and flows, you have to assess performance.
Tips for measurement: Three Popular ways to calculate retention
Retention. This includes retention after onboarding, as well as range and rolling retention. Retention is probably the single most important metric you can use to determine if your onboarding campaign is creating engaged users.
Analyze the impact of onboarding on first-time purchases, registrations or any other key actions that you’re focused on. First-time purchases indicate that users are interested in what you’re offering and registrations indicate that users are interested in engaging with your brand and your app for long term.3. Compare your retention metrics to your industry’s. The most popular methods for measuring retention are classic, range and rolling.
Classic retention is the per cent of users who would turn on a specific day. Range retention is similar to classic retention but also looks at multiple days instead of a single day. Well, one can choose any intervals, seven day weekly ranges or 30 day monthly ranges tend to be the most common. Finally, there’s rolling retention which looks at the per cent of users who turn on or after a certain day looking at three different calculations will help you account for strengths and weaknesses inherent to each calculation.
Real-World Examples:
IHEARTRADIO — Great Intro Content
Going through the flow as a new user in the first three screens. You can see that they immediately, explain the value of the app, and how I can benefit. So, the first screen is music to your ears, thousands of live radio and artists stations, connect with your favourites always free. The second screen says join the party, discover millions of songs in your releases, all your music wherever you go. And then the third screen, don’t miss a beat, running or relaxing pre-party or post-breakup. We have a station perfect for you.
We can see that at any point, I can create an account or log in. After the third screen, I have to either login or create an account as a new user I choose to create an account, which takes me to the fourth screen. This has been prompted to fill out brief info about myself. I will create an account they immediately asked to use my location or zip code to serve me the best DJ and radio stations. As you can see, explain the value in the prompt itself.
After pressing “No Thanks” they prompt me to select my favourite genres so they can suggest tailored stations. Once I select the genre, they explain the reason to enable push, which is great. They explain the value of getting push notifications and asked me with a custom prop. Once I accept. I then receive a native iOS prompt which I also allow, then I’ve been taken to the main screen.
Hopper — Great Permissioning
During the interest screens, you can see on the left that they have created a custom push app-in prompt and prompt explaining the value of push, if I deny, they get a second chance to ask later on.
TripIt — Great Multichannel Onboarding
After I decide to create an account. I’m prompted to check my inbox for the verification link, they didn’t send a verification email but subsequently welcome email that reiterates the value of their service.
When I click the link in the confirmation email, I’m taken to the site that greets me with a message. The message tells me to enter more information about myself to complete my profile. In this example, they’ve used three channels and that are messaging, email, and browser messaging to guide me to the process.
Key Takeaways:
Always include natural content.
Use custom prompts to ask for permissions don’t just leave it to the native OS to decide to users opt-in fate.
Use multi-channel messaging to boost retention and better guide users to your app and brand.
Test and optimize based on the results.
Measure the impact of onboarding and don’t just assume things are working, determine how onboarding is affecting retention and first-time actions.
There is an awesome article on User Onboarding funnel
