How to Optimize App Onboarding to Maximize Customer Conversions

Josiah Humphrey
Jul 21, 2017 · 9 min read

There are currently 2.8 million apps available for download on Google’s Play Store and another 2.2 million on Apple’s App Store. Despite these numbers, research shows that nearly 85% of all smartphone usage is allocated to 5 apps or fewer; and almost 4 out 5 users never use an app again 72 hours after first installing it. Mobile app creation is clearly an extremely competitive market. If you’re a startup founder hoping to design the next big app then you must retain your customers after they first experience your product. In this article I’ll discuss 6 app onboarding best practices to promote effective customer conversion and retention.

What is App Onboarding?

william-iven-5895
william-iven-5895

App Onboarding can be understood as one key component of “user onboarding”.

Jackson Noel of appcues.com provides the following helpful description of user onboarding:

“In the world of software, user onboarding is your user’s initial experience with your brand, product, and people. It spans from the moment someone starts to sign up for your product, until the moment they realize how your product is going to improve their life, [i.e.,] their “WOW moment”. The goal of user onboarding is to help users find your product’s core value(s) and benefit from it regularly”.

User onboarding, thus, is all about converting a potential customer to a committed user –or better yet, to what Pulkit Agrawal calls a “proponent user”, i.e., a user who willingly celebrates and promotes your product for you.

When we talk about app onboarding in particular, we’re focused on the entire process of introducing users to your app, familiarizing them with how it works, and convincing them to become long-term users (sources: 1, 2, 3)

The major objective of app onboarding is to gently guide users along the process of using your app to the point where they finally have their “Aha! Moment”, i.e., the moment when they truly recognize the value that your app provides to their lives and they then become dedicated users.

Given that the vast majority of users permanently abandon recently downloaded apps within 3 days of their installation, practicing effective app onboarding is crucial to building up your user base and retaining your customers.

App onboarding is a fundamental component of your customer acquisition cost (CAC), i.e., the cost of converting a potential user into a paying customer.

As we’ve pointed out here at Appster in the past, “[w]hen it comes to startups, a high CAC is often deadly”.

And what’s the connection between app onboarding and CAC?

In the absence of an efficient onboarding process, your startup must spend a lot more money on less direct/interactive marketing approaches in an effort to reach your critical mass of users.

Spending more money on less effective forms of advertising just doesn’t make sense so developing a successful app onboarding process is clearly the way to go.

Fortunately, as a startup operating in 2017 you’re well situated to learn from the mistakes made by other companies that have come before you.

For example, Dropbox, Facebook, and Twitter each discovered that having their new users complete one or more specific tasks was essential to converting them to long-term users:

  • Dropbox: user putting at least 1 file into his/her new Dropbox folder
  • Facebook: user becoming “friends” with at least 7 people within the first 10 days of signing up
  • Twitter: user following 10 people shortly after joining

Consequently, each app/platform made changes to its onboarding process in order to promote these activities (such as Twitter implementing personalized “suggestions” for people to follow immediately after a user registers an account).

Twitter onboarding, with personalized “follow” recommendations:

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(image source)

Effective app onboarding requires the right mix of educating users about how to use, and selling users on the value offered by, your app.

Here are 6 methods for optimizing your app onboarding in order to maximize your customer conversion and retention rates.

1. Reduce Friction

vlad-grebenyev-188332
vlad-grebenyev-188332

By removing unnecessary obstacles in the sign-up process — such as excess copy, lengthy text-based explanations, unnecessary form fields, and even frivolous features in the product itself — you can increase the likelihood that new users will complete the signup through to the end and then start enthusiastically using your app.

As part of this step, Megan Marrs from the Localytics blog emphasizes 3 key points:

  1. Stick to the basics by not forcing users to swipe through screen after screen before finally getting to use your app
  2. Avoid text-heavy explanations and opt instead for app screenshots and illustrations
  3. Don’t overwhelm your users: present only one feature explanation per screen

To these I will add: minimize the number of clicks and other actions that users must perform between the initial download of your app and the arrival of the “Aha! Moment”.

Hotel Tonight’s simple signup process, with personalized offer based on current location:

hotel-tonight-onboarding-e1423787213952
hotel-tonight-onboarding-e1423787213952

2. Provide a Clear Indication of Progress

user experience
user experience

Research studies show that people like using progress indicators and that technology users in specific experience greater satisfaction and demonstrate higher engagement levels when asked to work on tasks in which progress indicators are provided.

Presenting users with a clear idea of how many steps it takes to complete a task can thus significantly reduce user abandonment and thereby encourage the arrival of the “Aha! Moment”.

This is something with which we can all relate in our everyday lives.

Whether it’s the number of exams required in a college course, the amount of monthly payments that must be made in order to repay a debt, or the number of steps involved in constructing a desk from IKEA, we’re much more likely to see something through to the end if we know exactly how long it’ll take to complete.

Progress indicators in mobile apps typically take the shape of little circles or parallax images representing how much of a task has been completed and how much remains to be done.

The introduction/welcome screens that Dropbox uses as part of its onboarding process are a good example:

dropbox-onboarding-e1423787188766
dropbox-onboarding-e1423787188766

3. Use Social Sign-Ups

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mobile-phone-1917737_1280

One very effective and easy way to simplify the onboarding process is to incorporate social network sign-ups (and sign-ins) and use them in place of comprehensive registration (and login) fields.

One-click social sign-ups are becoming more and more popular these days, making it extremely easy for users to register for your app or website without actually having to fill out any of their personal information.

(Insofar as social sign-ups remove barriers to registration, they are also an example of strategy #1 above, i.e., reducing friction).

In addition to added speed, social sign-ups are valuable because they make it far easier for your users to connect to their social contacts.

This increases the chance that users will help their friends/colleagues migrate over to your app.

Depending on your app’s permissions, social sign-ups may also allow you as a company to target and interact with users’ social contacts much more easily.

Examples of huge startups that have incorporated the social sign-up option include Airbnb, Medium, Quora, Uber, and Vimeo.

To learn more about the technical procedures for instituting social sign-ups (or logins) on your app or website take a look at the following developer links:

Various examples of apps that offer social sign-ups as part of their onboarding process:

social-signup-e1423787229731
social-signup-e1423787229731

4. Offer Incentives

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ice-2367072_1280

Another effective method for converting your potential customers into long-term users involves adding incentives — i.e., freebies — to your app onboarding process.

In essence, you incentivize people who download and install your app to keep using it regularly by offering them something valuable for free merely for completing simple but important tasks.

For instance:

  • Dropbox allows free users to accumulate more free space by completing its official getting started guide, referring other people to sign up for the service, installing Dropbox on multiple computers, and so on.
  • Evernote operates a double-sided referral system in which users can accumulate points for additional storage or free premium services for referring others
  • Lyft and Uber both incentivize current users to have their friends/colleagues sign up for the services by utilizing dual-reward referral systems

Dropbox’s 250mb freebie offer uses both incentives (i.e., free space for completing specific tasks) and what we might call “gamification” (i.e., incorporating game-like elements into the finishing of a set of tasks, thus capitalizing on the human drive to overcome “obstacles”, amass accomplishments, and be recognized for our “triumphs”):

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Evernote’s referral program:

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(image source)

5. Provide Use Cases

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iphone-500291_1280

Another great strategy for successfully guiding new users along to the “Aha! Moment” is to create and offer use cases, i.e., practical examples showing others using the app and receiving substantial benefits from doing so.

Try incorporating images, video tutorials, and even short audio clips into your app onboarding process in order to demonstrate the basics of using your app and the immense value associated with doing so.

Your use cases are a particularly important medium through which to convincingly establish the value of your app, especially since these examples represent an opportunity for you to clearly show why anybody would want to use your app over the long-term.

As Megan Marrs from the Localytics blog emphasizes:

“Many apps make the mistake of telling users about the bells and whistles of their apps rather than showing users how their apps can change the user’s life for the better. … Yes, [e]xciting features and impressive functionality are important, but showing users just what they can do with those features, [i.e.,] your value proposition, will win them over long term”.

Here’s an example of a simple yet effective use case example by Evernote:

use case
use case

(image source)

6. Use Brief Yet Helpful Tutorials

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cell-phone-1245663_1280

Finally, users often greatly appreciate apps that offer brief, uncomplicated, and straight-to-the-point tutorials that easily show them how to use the core features of the app.

Many different examples of this technique can be found.

Gmail, for instance, offers interactive tutorials that “spring into action” as a new user moves about his/her Inbox and starts exploring different features.

Dropbox uses a similar system to help acclimate new users to the platform.

Here are some screenshots of the onboarding tutorial that Pomodoro Keeper offers to new users:

pomodoro-onboard-e1423787221288
pomodoro-onboard-e1423787221288

If You like This Article and Want to Learn More About Customer Conversion and Retention Then Be Sure to Download Our Free Whitepaper:

Originally published at Appsterhq.

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Josiah Humphrey

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