Don't Waste Time on User Onboarding
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Don't Waste Time on User Onboarding
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Re: Don't Waste Time on User Onboarding
#2But how do I get visitors in the first place, this is the first challenge. Twitter is pretty good at hiding my promotion tweets from other users...
Re: Don't Waste Time on User Onboarding
#3This article is great, and full of really helpful advice!
I think the best advice for me was "Add sample data to avoid an empty nest." I just realized that my product has this problem, so I'm going to be adding some sample data for new users. I think I'll also have a toggle switch so you can easily hide all the samples. (It would be annoying if you had manually delete everything.)
Concierge setup is also a great idea, and I've recently been offering that to new customers.
Re: Don't Waste Time on User Onboarding
#4I was a bit sceptical when I read the title, but the author raises a good point about calcifying users into suboptimal ux decisions.
Wofkflow breaking UI changes are always hard and there's always someone whose use case [you're breaking](https://xkcd.com/1172). Then again, you can't please everyone and it might hurt to stick with older decisions.
Onboarding itself is extremely valuable. No application is so self explanatory that everyone gets it without a guide. When should you onboard then? I'd say when you're sure that you're not doing any major changes within the next few months.
All UIs can and should be iterated upon and it helps if you have a timeline on when you're upgrading which views and components and it'll help you decide when to launch the initial onboarsing process.
Re: Don't Waste Time on User Onboarding
#5This article is great, and full of really helpful advice! I think the best advice for me was "Add sample data to avoid an empty nest." I just realized that my product has this problem, so I'm going to be adding some sample data for new users. I think I'll also have a toggle switch so you can easily hide all the samples. (It would be annoying if you had manually delete everything.) Concierge setup is also a great idea…
> I think the best advice for me was "Add sample data to avoid an empty nest."
I respectfully disagree with that view and I say that as someone who has implemented a product with sample data during the onboarding process.
Users don't care about your data. They care about their data. The easier you make it for the user to input their own data and get some value out of it...even if its something trivial...the faster they'll be able to relate their problem to your products ability to solve it.
Re: Don't Waste Time on User Onboarding
#6My only point of contention after skimming through the article is with the trial period. The other side of that coin is that, if it's too short then users bookmark your site thinking they'll sign up later and forget, and if it doesn't exist then users may end up not signing up at all and going with the free option instead. In practice it really depends on the product's criticality.
Re: Don't Waste Time on User Onboarding
#7On the other hand, if you're offering something that breaks with an established paradigm -- i.e. first-time viewers don't know what to expect, a short storyboard to clarify your model might be invaluable, and worth fussing over.
Re: Don't Waste Time on User Onboarding
#8This article is great, and full of really helpful advice! I think the best advice for me was "Add sample data to avoid an empty nest." I just realized that my product has this problem, so I'm going to be adding some sample data for new users. I think I'll also have a toggle switch so you can easily hide all the samples. (It would be annoying if you had manually delete everything.) Concierge setup is also a great idea…
Instead of adding sample data when the initial view would be empty, I prefer to replace the empty view with a message about what the user should be doing first.
So instead of "0 photos" and a blank page, it could say "Get started by [uploading some photos]".
Re: Don't Waste Time on User Onboarding
#9But how do I get visitors in the first place, this is the first challenge. Twitter is pretty good at hiding my promotion tweets from other users...
No idea if this is common practise, but I block any account that promotes a tweet in to my timeline so I don't see it again. If it is, and you're serving a niche market with few people who'll buy from you, promoting tweets could be a really bad idea.
Re: Don't Waste Time on User Onboarding
#10On the other hand, if you're offering something that breaks with an established paradigm -- i.e. first-time viewers don't know what to expect, a short storyboard to clarify your model might be invaluable, and worth fussing over.
This is the "don't waste time" part - on-boarding users with things they already know is wasting time, so don't do that. Teach users the new and exciting bits they don't know yet.