onboarding

The goal of onboarding is to deliver the expectation the user already set—to not only make users satisfied but also feel delighted about aspects they didn’t know they'd need.

Don't waste your time working on so-called "retention" mover features before you nail the onboarding part.

I learned this the hard way.

Bad onboarding makes your user leave. If you want better retention, working on onboarding experience will be your top priority in the early days.

“Research by Frederick Reichheld of Bain & Company has shown that a 5 percent increase in customer retention rates increases profits by anywhere from 25 to 95 percent”.

Good onboarding impacted your retention in a significant way.

It's not the first 3 sliders on your app's screen.

It's not the highlighted tool tip that you tried to put on every part of your products.

It's about making the first-time experience flow naturally & feel like play rather than following an instructional guide.

Frame the onboarding like when you play a new game—some people will follow the tutorial but most people will skip it unconsciously. Make sure to serve both use cases to help users experience your core value seamlessly.

Instead of a blank state, help users with a default option they should perform to get the core value of your product.

If you want to drive a specific behavior to your product for short-term & long-term benefits for your users just ask users with a prompt. 1 more click wouldn't hurt so much as long as you keep it in context & flow naturally.

For consumer products, the first 5 minutes is the most important moment for your product. Focus on this.