It has been observed that most startup founders focus too much on user onboarding and keep changing it very often. They usually refer to other people's processes and try to copy them without looking at their own data. However, if you don't have your own insights yet, experts advise you to ignore onboarding completely at this stage.
Amazing user onboarding convinces customers that your product is a must-have experience by making them exclaim, "WOW, this is awesome." These WOW moments, however, are not common. And whether or not people are impressed with your product is mostly based on how you onboard users.
The value your product provides to your user—something in their life that must get better, faster, cheaper, more efficient, more enjoyable, etc.—is the more important factor in the equation. If not, why would they change? and creating that is the challenging part.
That aspect needs experimentation and customer development. It calls for you to challenge your presumptions, change course, and attempt new things.
Building a seamless onboarding experience to instantly provide value to your users will be much simpler once you get that right.
1. Your team won't have as much time to create something that actually provides value, which is another extremely challenging and crucial aspect of growing user growth.
2. You'll develop "product baggage," which will make building and experimenting more difficult. Now, every time you want to make a product change, you have to be concerned about your onboarding flow.
After reading this, you might be wondering, as most of you probably are: But wait, how would I ever know whether my product is providing enough value if I don't have a great user onboarding flow?
Indeed, it's a dilemma.
Instead of spending your development time on user onboarding, you should take all necessary steps to ensure the success of your new users. Send them a personal email, set up a live chat programme, schedule demos, etc. to get in touch with them.
Yes, this method is not scalable. However, it will conserve developer time, your startup's most valuable rare resource, and gather information, your startup's second-most valuable scarce resource.
1. Ask each new user who registers about their objectives and offer to assist them in setting up their accounts.
2. Ask all of your current consumers what they appreciate about your product.
3. Speak with every single person who signed up but did not use your product (in this scenario, an email sent after 60 days of inactivity is helpful).
4. Keep tight tabs on your usage data (Mixpanel and KISSmetrics are effective tools for event tracking, and Inspectlet is excellent for capturing user sessions). Cross-reference all of your qualitative findings (from client interviews) with quantitative information.
It's difficult to perform this manual onboarding process. You will undoubtedly see alarming data and receive a lot of unfavourable criticism if your product is still in its early phases. It may be discouraging.
However, it will strengthen your team and improve your product. You will be able to spot areas of confusion, gain a more in-depth understanding of your users' motivations and concerns, and determine why disinterested users left.
This knowledge is priceless for a startup in its early stages. It provides you with the knowledge you need to carefully refine and adapt your product in order to increase the number of customers who say, "This product improves my life."
You must fire yourself as the onboarding king and hire your product once you are confident to such a significant level that users are greatly benefiting from it. Unfortunately, there isn't a set period for every start at which this should occur.
However, there are often two categories of indicators to pay attention to:
1. Indicators of a product's value. This might be Sean Ellis' 40% rule, your NPS score, or churn.
2. Measures of volume A vanity measure like the total number of users should be avoided. Use a more insightful metric, like the number of highly engaged users or the number of paying clients.
In a nutshell, if you have a startup business, stop focusing too much on user onboarding and instead focus on growth and your products. Pay attention to the metrics stated above and prioritise the onboarding experience accordingly.