Getting Started with User Onboarding Tools in 2022

Published On : 07/28/2022

Sponsored Feature Presented by Appcues

If you want to turn users from explorers to loyal customers, you’re going to need some great User Onboarding.

Especially in today’s fast-paced and competitive digital world.

User onboarding is all about familiarizing users with the incredible product, service, or app that you’ve built. First impressions are incredibly important and when it comes down to it, that’s what user onboarding is all about.

As great as your product is, if your users are lost, disengaged, or confused when they look at it, their odds of adopting, using, and eventually spreading it are incredibly unlikely. You want users to see the value of what you’re offering and immediately want to try it.

Your products can be as clean, well worded, and intelligently designed as possible, if you don’t make sure your users know how to use them, it’s moot.

Good onboarding is as much of an investment as great software or targeted marketing. Not only does it make you seem more professional but it’s got a direct effect on how your customers feel about your product and what they think you think of them.

Companies that design effective, user-attentive onboarding processes show that they care about their users and their interactions. That’s important because ultimately, your users become your customers and the foundation for your company’s success.

Getting Started with User Onboarding Tools in 2022

If you want your product to shine, it’s essential that your users know how it works and how it can work for them. Great user onboarding is the key to this. That’s why we’ve provided these key tips to help you set up the best onboarding possible.

1.    Use user personas to understand your customers

Your customers are the heart of your business. It’s their needs, desires, and wants that your products and brand are built around addressing.

That’s why you need to know exactly who your customers are and what they want. Specifically when you’re designing or implementing your onboarding tools.

Creating user personas can be a major help in this aspect. Especially if you’ve already got data to draw from.

User personas are a key tool in the repertoire of anyone trying to understand their users and their needs better. By answering the question of who you’re designing for, you can go about specifically trying to meet their needs.

Great user personas enable you to see how your onboarding might work from a user’s perspective. It’s one thing to think about how easy your onboarding tool is to understand from your highly involved and experienced perspective.

It’s another thing entirely to step outside yourself and acknowledge that for the average user, what’s obvious to you, or what you get out of the product may be very different for your users.

While there are dozens of excellent guides out there for how to go about creating your user personas, there are a few key things to remember.

• Personas should never be guesswork, they should always be backed by data and information
• They should always be based on user patterns and not individual user roles
• Personas should be present-based and not future predictions

Information is power, especially when it comes to something as important and influential as User Onboarding.

2.            Use in-app messaging to retain users’ attention

There’s nothing like feeling paid attention to.

There’s a lot to be said for the feeling of connection and how it can make an experience feel personalized. A few short, friendly key pop-up messages as a user explores your product can go a long way.

Using an in-app messaging guide is a fantastic way to do this.

In fact, if you can infuse your messages with your brand’s personality and a sense of humor, you’re much more likely to complete their onboarding.

In-app messaging can directly increase users’ product adoption and reduce churn. It helps retain users’ interest as they explore. The sheer feeling of the communication In-app messaging provides helps act as a natural guiding hand that makes a user want to see where everything is heading.

User onboarding and user experience go hand in hand.  That’s why anything you can do to make your users feel more comfortable with either your product or service is sure to impact your user onboarding.

3.            Guide naturally

As soon as someone feels like they’re being forced to look at or do something, their odds of enjoying it or wanting to do it drop dramatically.

When you design your onboarding it’s important that the process of discovery or learning feels as natural as possible. If you can incorporate a gaming sensation where users feel rewarded as they go about their learning process, the more effective your onboarding will be.

Users should be taking the basic steps to learn about your product. Keeping them interested, focused, and directed at a goal is essential.

It sounds counterintuitive, but another great onboarding feature includes the ability to skip onboarding. This rewards users who are updating or upgrading and prefer to figure it out rather than be bogged down.

4.            Direct users towards their “Aha” moment

“Aha’ moments are everything.

They’re the part of your user’s experience of the process where everything just clicks.

You may think your product is useful. Your potential users may even feel that it could be useful to them and their specific needs. But it’s only once they experience an“Aha” moment that they know it.

That element of positive surprise is incredibly impactful and helps the emotional link between your brand and its users. That bond is a massive help when it comes to converting potential users and building brand loyalty.

“Aha” moments make users feel a sense of euphoria that they connect with what you have to offer and makes them far more receptive to finding out the rest of what your product can do for them.

5.            Use a progress indicator

A small feature that makes a major difference is progress indicators.

That’s because users like to not only know how far along a process they are but whether or not they can devote the time or energy to it. Progress indicators act as a means to show in sections or percentages, how far a user is from finishing the process.

This helps add an inherent sense of accomplishment and a natural need to complete a process. People are naturally inclined to finish something once they get started, especially if they know it’s not going to be a long, drawn-out process.

6.            Have users interact from the get-go

The fastest way to learn how to do something is by trying it.

While you’re not going to go all out straight away and shove every feature you have in your user’s faces, having them try some of your best features will have them actively aware of what you have to offer.

People are more likely to remember easy experiences rather than complicated, jarring ones. Just think about the last instruction manual you read. Exactly.

 

Author Bio: Ryan Fick is a Cape Town-based, internationally raised, opinionated writer who is passionate about politics, social justice and a firm believer in the link between “Amandla” and “Awethu. With a background in Journalism, Travel, and all-round Content Writing – as well as a burgeoning interest in all things SEO – he is a perpetual knowledge seeker who knows enough to know he doesn’t know it all.

“I’m constantly learning and upskilling myself. I strongly believe that the learning process should never end in order to grow professionally and individually. I take pride in my ability to motivate, educate and inform myself. A versatile and creative writer, I’m learning to combine that with my more analytical skills as my abilities and knowledge in SEO grows.”