I get that there are probably established best practices that people follow for designing onboarding but I've never experienced one as a user that I didn't want to immediately dismiss or skip through.
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Don't Waste Time on User Onboarding
51–60 of 121 posts
Re: Don't Waste Time on User Onboarding
#52Earlier quoted context omitted.
I don't use Twitter, but if I'm specifically looking for something, I will actively seek out and do the research. I suspect many others who block ads and such are the same. "They don't reach me, I reach them."
What about when you are not specifically looking for something? How do you find out about new shirts, or cars, or coffees or trips or whatever? Do you stumble across them on web sites, like in articles? On TV? If you usually find out things word-of-mouth, then how do your influencers find out about them?
I don’t want to find out about any of those things. They don’t, as the saying goes, spark joy in my life. Sure, trips might be the exception from your list, but also any trips I go on I can plan for myself in a way that is both cheaper and more enjoyable.
Re: Don't Waste Time on User Onboarding
#53Earlier quoted context omitted.
I completely agree. I don't care if your ad is clever, relevant, organically sourced, environmentally friendly, necessary for financing your product, something I actually want, need, or didn't know I wanted yet. The internet is plagued with this cancer everywhere you go, no matter what you do. Somehow it's become acceptable that every second of our attention and time is competed for by corporations trying to sell us…
I don't understand this overreaction. Ads are there, so what, they don't even make noise or tend to cover parts of the screen like they used to.
The point is that I'm fundamentally disgusted by an incitement to spend money being thrust in front of me in any form, for any reason.
I see it as exactly at odds with what I'm trying to do with my life and my attention. I do not consent to have my time and attention taken from me in this way.
Yes, I am a free rider on much of the internet today, such as it is. That the entire internet is based on this absurd proposition is a symptom of its rapid growth and industries going after the lowest hanging fruit. I am confident that the internet will find another way forward.
Re: Don't Waste Time on User Onboarding
#54Earlier quoted context omitted.
I don't want to see ads, ever . I hope a growing number of people feel the same way. I don't care about the business model of the whole internet. It is obviously a house of cards. A business model based on bad UX? I hope it collapses. No, I don't know what will replace it. I don't care, as long as it doesn't involve ads. I really don't care if the ads are innocuous or labeled or relevant. I don't ever want to see an…
I completely agree. I don't care if your ad is clever, relevant, organically sourced, environmentally friendly, necessary for financing your product, something I actually want, need, or didn't know I wanted yet. The internet is plagued with this cancer everywhere you go, no matter what you do. Somehow it's become acceptable that every second of our attention and time is competed for by corporations trying to sell us…
I used to feel that way, until I built several services (the latest being tomotcha.com). Turns out, once you've built something, you need to advertise its existence out there. I mean "advertise" in the largest meaning of the word, not only paid for advertisement on Google/Facebook/Twitter/Criteo. That includes writing blog posts for people to stumble upon, talk about it on Hacker News, send samples to reviewers, etc.
How else would people learn about it? Turns out, if you don't talk about it, very few will come...
I think this is why HN has a lot more goodwill towards self promotion (Show HN style posts) than a lot of other communities (reddit notably, depending on the sub). Entrepreneurs know that advertisement is a necessary part of any business.
Re: Don't Waste Time on User Onboarding
#55Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Onboarding itself is extremely valuable. As a user, I find them extremely annoying. They stop me from achieving what I want to achieve and I try to get rid of them as quickly as possible. I also find them as the hallmark of a bad UI -- if you have to tell me how to use your product, then it's not well designed.
> if you have to tell me how to use your > product, then it's not well designed. VIM users, licensed drivers, and pilots would disagree. Powerful tools require training. If you're pushing an app that I'm already familiar with before I've ever used it, then you are obviously not innovating.
As VIM user, a licensed driver, and a pilot, I would like to point out that there’s a huge difference in risk of death and injury between those.
Learning vim can be done quite safely by trial and error, then googling for how to do specific things when interested. The other two, not so much.
So unless you’re product has a risk of death or severe injury then I will agree that it shouldn’t need training.
About planes. Unlike cars, they don’t have a standard cockpit layout which leads to lots of bad design In my opinion.
Re: Don't Waste Time on User Onboarding
#56Earlier quoted context omitted.
If you don't want to see ads, sure maybe use AdBlock or PiHole, but why block the company? Blocking the company stops the tweet appearing everywhere I see tweets. That's on my home computer, laptop, Chromebook, office computer, my phone, etc. It continues to block the ads from that company if/when Twitter work out ways around ad-blockers. And it makes me feel like I'm proactively looking after my account. I use ad bl…
I don't want to see ads, ever . I hope a growing number of people feel the same way. I don't care about the business model of the whole internet. It is obviously a house of cards. A business model based on bad UX? I hope it collapses. No, I don't know what will replace it. I don't care, as long as it doesn't involve ads. I really don't care if the ads are innocuous or labeled or relevant. I don't ever want to see an…
Have you ever ran a business? Curious to how you promote a business without ads or sponsored content to get the word out there to the masses..
Re: Don't Waste Time on User Onboarding
#57Earlier quoted context omitted.
So how do people reach you to sell to you? Or, to turn it around, how do you find out about new products/solutions?
I don't use Twitter, but if I'm specifically looking for something, I will actively seek out and do the research. I suspect many others who block ads and such are the same. "They don't reach me, I reach them."
That’s why paid ads on google search exist; so people can reach them easier
Re: Don't Waste Time on User Onboarding
#58Earlier quoted context omitted.
I completely agree. I don't care if your ad is clever, relevant, organically sourced, environmentally friendly, necessary for financing your product, something I actually want, need, or didn't know I wanted yet. The internet is plagued with this cancer everywhere you go, no matter what you do. Somehow it's become acceptable that every second of our attention and time is competed for by corporations trying to sell us…
I don't understand this overreaction. Ads are there, so what, they don't even make noise or tend to cover parts of the screen like they used to.
You need to look at what powers the ads.
It's never "just" an ad. Like the way you see an ad in a newspaper. It's the spyware that comes with it and the fact that tons of them are animated!
And yes, I consider it spyware and virus-like behaviour to track me wherever I go and I will actively do what I can to stop it. Even if it means you don't get paid... you chose that seedy medium to make money, not me. It's not my job to validate your business model.
By all means block me. I will go elsewhere.
Browsing the internet without an ad blocker is actually impossible for me now... whenever I rebuild a machine I have those few hours or so before I get the ad blocker installed where the internet is a horrific assault on the senses with everything trying to steal my attention away from the thing I am there to see and slowing down the page load (significantly in some cases)
I still remember when plenty of the internet was running fine from hobbyists and whatnot without resorting to ads and tracking... it costs practically zero to run a website (granted, at scale it's a whole other ball-game but how many people have that problem?)
The internet would survive fine without ads. It would have a different mix of behemoths and hobbyists sites but it would survive just fine.
That being said... I do remember trying to punch the monkey to win :D
Edit: added stuff for clarity
Re: Don't Waste Time on User Onboarding
#59Earlier quoted context omitted.
I don't want to see ads, ever . I hope a growing number of people feel the same way. I don't care about the business model of the whole internet. It is obviously a house of cards. A business model based on bad UX? I hope it collapses. No, I don't know what will replace it. I don't care, as long as it doesn't involve ads. I really don't care if the ads are innocuous or labeled or relevant. I don't ever want to see an…
The rest of us don't want to pay a monthly subscription to every single website we use, so ads it is.
Ad supported also competes with entirely free, by having more resources for development and, go figure, more marketing/ad dollars to promote their services elsewhere and gain usershare, for cases in which everyone-is-using-it matters—so, social media and messaging. Paid services aren't the only things that can/would replace spyvertising-funded services.
Re: Don't Waste Time on User Onboarding
#60This 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 th…
I've been thankful of sample data before - eg auditioning online image editors, I didn't want to hunt around and upload something but just wanted to get right in to editing to get a feel for the apps and whether they're so what I needed.
In general though: most onboarding I've disliked, too slow, but some with "click here to do this, or elsewhere to end the tutorial" have been good.