An Approach To Product Flow

Imagine this scenario: Bob is looking for headphones.

He walks into an electronics store.

The salesman at the shop greets Bob & proceeds to showcase the variety of products they sell.

"... and sir, here we have the latest iPads, beautiful screen covers, and over here, you can find handy chargers.."

Bob tries interrupting the salesman but to no avail.

After the unnecessary tour was over, Bob asks about wireless headphones.

The sales rep hands one, Bob pays for it & goes back to his life.

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I hope it's clear why Bob had a less than an ideal experience.

He was being stalled from accomplishing his main goal at hand.

Knowing about the other products wasn't a bad thing. It's just that it wasn't the right time.

Now, this is what happens in a lot of product onboarding flows.

There's a tendency to stitch up a wizard that attempts to introduce several features that may not be relevant just yet.

Instead, find out what the user needs to do right now.

Zipline them to that point asap without burdening them with information they don't need.

Shorten the time to value.

Ex: Canva takes you straight to their editor after you sign up and indicate you want to design a poster.

They don't try to teach you magic resize or animated videos in the first go.