6 user onboarding best practices to boost your activation and retention

In this video, I'm gonna share with you six best practices that I've seen over and over again dramatically improve user onboarding experiences. (upbeat music) Hey friends, it's Ramli John from Appcues. If you wanna get the latest user onboarding tips and tricks, and who wouldn't want that, be sure to smash that subscribe button.

Now, user onboarding is the most important part of the customer journey. Nailing it results in increased retention and customer satisfaction. You don't believe me?

I've put together a whole video about that. You can find it in the link below or somewhere on this screen. All of this is to say that you've got to get your user onboarding right.

To help you with that, here are six best practices for better user onboarding experiences. First is the map out user journey. A successful onboarding requires that you have a clear image of your users.

I can already hear some of you, "Captain obvious over here, duh! " But you'd be surprised how many people actually just slap on a product tour before knowing the needs, goals, motivations, and messages that will resonate with their users. Some of the things you gotta know include: First, do most new users have a similar desired outcome with your product?

Second, do some users need more education? Or would they rather help themselves? And third, will your user be the final decision maker of the purchase or is it someone else?

These insights help you prioritize messages and establish user flows that best fit a customer's journey. Each user might have a different path to purchase, so personalizing the user onboarding experience can help increase conversions by tailoring the product to their specific needs, which leads you to the next best practice. Best practice number two is to tailor the experience.

This is the holy grail that will almost 100% of the time improve your user onboarding experience. I sound like I'm exaggerating, but let me explain why. Most complex products often have a few different use cases.

Each of these use cases matches a different user persona. If you offer a generic user onboarding experience for each of these user personas, then you're just gonna bore them to death. (Ramli snores) (blows raspberries) Or you might even just annoy them away.

Tailoring the experience helps users see and experience the value of your product quickly. An example of a product that tailors the experience for different use cases is Canva. They ask their users what their goal is with Canva, and based on that response, Canva suggests relevant templates.

This way, users don't have to go through thousands of templates. They can just choose one that's specific to their needs. As you can see, tailoring the experience based new users goals will help you guide them to achieve their first quick win, which is the next best practice.

Best practice number three is to provide a compelling, quick win. Another user onboarding best practice is to really just get users to that moment when they see the value of your product quickly. If you've been in SaaS long enough, you'll know that this is called the "Aha" moment.

It's when, once again, the new users experience the value of your product. Hopefully, they'll even shout "Aha! " at your screen.

The quicker you can get new users to experience the "Aha" moment or a compelling, quick win, the more likely they are to stay around and adopt your product. For sales executives who signs up for Calendly, that moment occurs when a prospect schedules a meeting using their Calendly link. Their onboarding focuses on getting new users to do that as quickly as possible, getting new users to send a Calendly link even to themselves, so they know where a prospect will see when they use that link.

By the way, if you don't know what your product's "Aha" moment is, I've put together a video that will help you find it in three easy steps. You can check it out in the comments below. Best practice number four is to focus on one user action at a time.

Now, really, this is super, super important because most user onboarding experience that I've seen makes user feel like you're trying to cram down everything down their throats in one sitting. Now that sounds like somebody will choke because of that. It's understandable that you feel eager to share everything you know and you wanna get them up to speed as quickly as possible.

But trust me, when I say this, trying to do that and teaching them everything at once is not the right approach. Rather, a much better approach is to serve up your onboarding in bite-sized, digestible portions. Duolingo does a good job of applying this technique to their user onboarding.

They focus on teaching the users one step at a time, with each step gradually increasing in complexity and difficulty. Best practice number five is to communicate the value proposition. A customer needs to understand what a product is all about before using it, right?

Well, duh, obviously! That means they need a compelling value proposition: a simple, clear description of what makes the product unique. Potential users shouldn't have to work hard to understand how the product can help them achieve their goals.

In less than five seconds, they should be able to grasp that and all of your product's core advantages. Wave, a financial tool for entrepreneurs, is a great example of this. On the signup page, the copy reads, "Send professional invoices.

Designed to get you paid three times faster, with over $24 billion in invoices sent each year. " Who wouldn't want that? Most folks underestimate the power of clear and compelling copy and content that shows up on product tours, checklists, and other onboarding elements.

They help motivate users by making it clear to them how your product can help them. They also set the tone and personality of the product, like whether it's playful and fun or serious and buttoned-down. Finally, number six is to show and tell.

You shouldn't just tell it, you have to show it as well. New users often lack the patience to read things. They wanna know quickly what your product does and how it can help them achieve their goals.

That's where adding images, GIFs, videos, and interactive walkthroughs are helpful to get new users to experience the product's "Aha" moment in a snap. The added bonus of using personal videos is that they humanize the experience and imply someone is personally involved in the users' success. An example of this is Deputy, an employee scheduling tool.

They do this by getting a personal video from the CEO, who walks new users through the product quickly. Well, that's all for now. What are other user onboarding best practices you've seen and maybe that some of the stuff that I've missed?

I'd love to know them in the comments below. Also, if you found this video valuable, then share the love, share it with your colleagues and friends. We've also created a free user onboarding certification course that details how to create an onboarding experience that turns more of your users into paying customers.

Also, don't forget to subscribe to get the latest tips and tricks to improve your product's user onboarding. There's a link to your left or somewhere on the screen or below. You can also check out some of our other videos on improving user onboarding.

So that's all for now, this is Ramli John from Appcues. See you in the next video, bye!