Notes on Krystal Higgins’ Onboarding for the Long Run

(From uie.com’s All You Can Learn library, link here)

Onboarding is too often thought of only from the perspective of a first time user—not taking into account that there’ll be iterations based on user feedback, new features to launch etc

Onboarding is an experience throughout a product’s lifecycle

So different customers may need different onboarding paths

Opportunities over time

Onboarding has multiple jobs and stages:

• Familiarize—help the prospective customer know that the product and its services exist
• Learn—teach the prospective customer more details about the product’s value prop
• Convert—engage the prospective customer enough to convert them into actual customers
• Guide—help the customer understand the product over time, esp as the product evolves

Research shows users typically take 3-7 days to decide they will stopping an app—it’s not a decision made during the first experience, but after reflection about that experience

Some onboarding stages include:

Example of initial onboarding: brain training website Lumosity

• First, they ask 4 questions to get some insight into the user while giving the user some insight into what the product is about

• Then the site presents the user with 3 games reflective of the site’s game-focused brain training techniques, with quick popups before each game that explains the game’s purpose and how to play it
• A subscription option is always present during the games, but the focus is on the games themselves
• Upon completing the games, the user is given an overview of their performance                                                                and how the site can help them improve

• So, they make their value prop extremely clear and provide value to the user before really pushing to convert the user into a customer
  • But they also provide some tips for folks not ready to convert at this moment—again, people will judge their experience upon reflection. Give them a good experience and some will return and convert—the site also follows up with a few email reminders
• As customers progress through the game structure, they occasionally get further informational popups similar to those in the initial onboarding flow

Wealthfront also allows users to perform quite a few tasks before converting, and save their work so they can sign up later

Onboarding flows that span the prod lifecycle:

• Guide the customers through interaction
• Build a personal focus
• Lead the customer to discover what’s next

Some products like TurboTax are only used sporadically

• When customers return after a long lapse, they are reminded about their success with the app previously and shown what’s new since they last used it—a great way to remind customers’ of the value  prop

 Diverse methods

Customers have different learning styles and preferences—which may change over time

People learn new material best when they encounter it:

• Multiple times
• Through multiple modalities

We need to invest in a set of diverse onboarding tools to make guidance available to a wider segment of customers over a wider breadth of time

• Strong default settings get the customer off on the right foot—esp. since the vast majority of folks won’t change them
• Inline messaging provides subtle support
• Reactive guidance is education that appears in response to customer interactions, often only one time
  • On Twitter, when a user hits Mute for the first time, they get a popup explaining the function
• Proactive guidance is directed guidance that anticipates needs
  • On Evernote customers get small popups highlighting new functions—but unobtrusively, so the screen’s main task is not blocked and the user can choose to ignore the popup
• On-demand guidance like FAQs

Long-term guidance

5 activities to scale onboarding for the long-term

Start at the end to reveal key actions:

• Figure out the intermediate- and ultimate-use destinations and use that to focus first-time onboarding
• Also consider why some customers fail to continue usage

Use customer research to discover key customer usage patterns:

Break key actions down:

• Medium shows a trigger at the bottom of each post to follow the author’s other posts, provides a Get Updates CTA, and then follows up with a confirmation that also offers some next steps

1/3 of what someone learns is lost after a day. Use reinforcement strategies throughout the customer experience to support continued understanding and usage of features and the app overall

• But avoid mindless repetition (such as popups that come up repeatedly with the exact same info and no way to turn them off)
  •  

Assemble appropriate methods, considering:

• Customer context
• Product context

Set learning checkpoints spread out over time:

• Usability testing can help discover these—but probably only for new users
• Cohort analysis, user interviews can also help
• If possible, follow up with people who cancel or stop using your product to try and figure out what action was missing or failing

About Krystal (from uie.com): Krystal Higgins is a senior interaction designer passionate about user onboarding and user education. She shares tips for designing experiences for new users on her design blogand maintains a collection of onboarding reviews from websites, apps, and other products.