User Onboarding Tips

User onboarding is the first rung of retention. Misplace that step & you're already knee-deep into churn.

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Some tips to keep in mind:

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1. On sign up, always give assurances that sensitive information won't be misused in any way to reduce abandonment.
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2. Capture what a user is planning to do with their product. Personalize the onboarding journey based on that.

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3. Use progress bars to indicate steps remaining on a wizard. Set expectations.

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4. Use onboarding tools like Appcues to stitch up a separate walkthrough for each feature. Trigger only once the feature is accessed.

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5. Display checklists upon initial entry. Always have 2 or 3 obvious items crossed out to give the user a sense of progress. Avoid routing new users on empty reporting dashboards.

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6. Create dummy records on listing tables to show how they're used. You can also create a blank state GIF or video for this purpose.

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7. Optimize the journey to reduce the clicks from sign up to the first aha moment.

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P. S. Check out UserOnboard for some amazing teardowns of popular products. Tons of great ideas and feedback.