The user journey: onboarding
Part 2 of 4: A guide to the user journey for Google Play apps and games
This piece is part of a series of articles by the Growth Consulting team at Google Play and focuses on increasing app performance by optimizing the user journey. (You can also catch up on our previous series about understanding KPIs for apps and games by reading the article series or watching previous webinars.)
In our previous article, where we introduced the app user journey, we defined each of the main stages and provided some high-level tips on how to consider people’s needs in your approach to app design. Now we’ll dive into specific stages, starting with installation and onboarding. Think of these as ‘education’ stages, where your user is primarily focused on learning basic but crucial information about your app and discerning whether it could have value for them.
This article will answer questions like the following:
- Which of my app’s features should I introduce first?
- What’s so important about the first ten minutes a user spends in my app?
- How can I make sure I’m continually improving my new user experience?
The education stages, in context
Let’s start by putting context around what it means to educate your new users. Note: while the starting point on our app user journey is installed, followed by onboarded, education also includes re-installed and re-onboarded stages after a user has churned.
It’s useful to consider your new users as composed of two groups: purpose-driven users and window-shoppers. As these nicknames imply, these groups can have different needs and expectations.
- Purpose-driven users want to be fast-tracked to the benefits your app can provide for them. They are likely to know what they are looking for or have specific goals in mind, so that means they are hunting for confirmation that your app will provide what they need. For these users, it’s imperative that you help them find and complete the core action of your app as quickly as possible.
- Window-shoppers have more curiosity, but less certainty. They may be less aware of what they’re looking for — but something about your app caught their attention. If you expose window-shoppers to more of your app’s capabilities, they may discover something they like. For these users, a well-crafted onboarding flow that provides a ‘tour’ of different aspects of your app will help them come to an informed decision.
A good trick to ensure you’re addressing the needs of both is to design your new-user flow with flexibility in mind: create options for users to skip ahead in the tutorial or jump straight to the core action, so purpose-driven users can engage immediately and window-shoppers can stay in your broader tour.
Every app is different, so if you’re still in the process of understanding how these two different groups are coming into your app, we recommend looking at the first action users take after onboarding. Let’s use an example from our developer community to see why this is useful.
Case study: Audiomack and first actions
The team behind Audiomack, an app for streaming and offlining music, discovered a substantial number of new users (51%) were tapping ‘search’ as their first action after downloading the app. Many new users appeared to bypass Audiomack’s curated musicians and tracks to search for specific music. Although the product team had intentionally designed the home screen to feature popular artists and hit tracks, a significant group of new users clearly wanted to explore Audiomack’s catalogue on their own.
The team correlated this data insight with feedback in reviews posted on their Play Store listing and found out that users were commenting that they weren’t able to find certain tracks they wanted to listen to. Audiomack has a large catalog of music and wanted to make sure to expose new users to music they might like before they even think to search.
This led the team to do an experiment: before new users arrived on Audiomack’s trending music page, the app’s onboarding asked users what music they’d like to hear and presented a curated playlist based on the artists they selected. As a result, the number of songs played in the first week after signup increased by 40%.
This example of how Audiomack prioritized a revamp of their app’s onboarding flow and home screen illustrates how valuable it is to look at those first actions and adjust accordingly to meet your user needs.
You should balance what you think a user’s needs are with what you’re seeing them do — ideally within the context of being purpose-driven or window shopping, as well.
Every minute is critical
Users must find what they need and have a good experience in the first few minutes of using your app. Let’s look at some collective data from across Google Play to help gauge how important these first moments are and to identify some patterns.
As you can see by the shape of the curve in the chart below, there is a correlation between how long a user engages with the app on their first day (D1 minutes used) and the likelihood of coming back the next day (D2 retention).
The curve is steeper in the first ten minutes of use than it is in the following 20 minutes of use (between the ten-minute mark and the 30-minute mark): this means that users generally make up their minds about an app in those first few minutes. This is why it’s critical to introduce the most valuable parts of your app as soon as possible. Quickly prove to your new users that your app has what they are looking for.
This isn’t always a single or straightforward change — especially if your app is designed to serve a broad variety of potential users with varying needs. Here are three tips for thinking about how to shape the first few minutes of a user’s experience.
Tip #1: Pace the introduction of features.
- Focus on the core action. Sometimes the most effective way to do this is just to spell it out or highlight it for them directly. The user should understand what value your app is offering and how to achieve it.
- Divide your feature list into ‘need to know’ and ‘nice to know.’ Use the first few minutes only to show the ‘need to know’ features and how to use them.
- Build flexibility into your onboarding flow by allowing purpose-driven users to skip feature introductions or jump straight to your app’s core action.
- Don’t forget about the re-onboarding stage: some users are coming back after either forgetting where things are or never having learned about them at all (if your app has significantly changed recently). One way of addressing this is to make sure any important features that are new or rearranged are included and introduced early, to lessen confusion for returning users.
Tip #2: Hint at other features you will introduce later.
- Signal to your users that there is depth of content, without overwhelming them by showing too much.
- Take your ‘nice to know’ list and stack-rank those features so you know which ones might be worthy of hinting at (if any).
- Telegraphing, a concept common in game design, is a good way to show that other functionality exists but without wasting any onboarding time on explaining it. An example of this concept in gaming would be locking advanced features behind level progression: a user might be able to see in the menu that they can (someday) join a tournament with other players, but not until they have reached a certain level. If these options are grayed out, it helps the user stay focused on more important actions early on rather than distracting them visually — but having them there is a hint that players have more things to look forward to later.
- Teasing upcoming events, promotions, or updates is another way to show that your app is dynamic and continually adding new and interesting things, as well as improving its quality.
Tip #3: Test it out!
- Once you’ve crafted what you think is a solid ‘need to know’ onboarding flow, launch an experiment and analyze user behavior to validate your hypotheses.
- If you have the ability to differentiate purpose-driven users from window-shoppers (based on which campaigns acquired them or other installation telemetry), create respective tests to confirm whether your flexible onboarding flow is sufficiently serving both of these groups.
- Remember, you can use the correlation of D1 minutes to D2 retention yourself to see if your new and improved user flows lead to a better retention curve (see graph above).
Onboarding design is a continual practice
Seasons change, people change, and expectations change. Refining your app’s onboarding flow should be an ongoing process — what works best today may not work forever. With thoughtful planning, testing, and analysis, you can build a deep repository of trends you’re seeing (on certain days of the week, over seasons, or from different types of campaigns).
The mix of users in your app will rarely stay constant: the composition of paid installs and organic installs will change, new regions around the world might join your community, in-app community events might attract different segments of users. Continually iterating on your onboarding flow ensures that you are adequately educating your users.
If you watch what your users do in the first few minutes of their onboarding, you’ll have a solid foundation to meet user needs during the education stages of your app’s user journey.
What next?
In the rest of this article series, we’ll continue to dive deeper into more stages — next up is the pinnacle of engagement: committed users. Follow our Medium publication to catch future articles!
What do you think?
What metrics are you most or least familiar with when analyzing app performance? Let us know in the comments below, or tweet using #AskPlayDev and we’ll reply from @GooglePlayDev, where we regularly share news and tips on how to be successful on Google Play.
