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Don't Waste Time on User Onboarding

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Re: Don't Waste Time on User Onboarding

#91

Post by dhimes »

jawilson2 wrote: post #50
dhimes wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 am experiencing an almost 100% disconnect with almost everything you wrote. I don't find out about them then, and my savings and 401K continue to grow unabated. Maybe I'm missing out on cool stuff, but assuming I never found out I was missing out, then my life isn't impacted negatively regardless. I don't really know what an "influencer" is; is it the internet equivalent to the ShamWow or OxiClean guys? I have 0 to…

Don't take me the wrong way: I hate ads too. I usually find out about things from other people, or ads in non-online media, or when I am physically at a store or on Amazon searching for something.

I tend to by generic/commodity items over brands, but there are some notable exceptions.

I pick my groceries by checking the grocery ads and seeing what's on sale.

I don't think I've ever clicked on a search ad or a mobile ad except accidentally.

Concerts and stuff I learn about through ads.

It's kind of an eclectic list, I guess, but ads do seem to serve some purpose. I'm just hard to reach via them unless I'm going looking for something.

Re: Don't Waste Time on User Onboarding

#92

Post by tomc1985 »

burtonator wrote: post #48
waylandsmithers wrote: post #28

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.

Here are our stats for Polar.... Before onboarding our cohort retention was 2%...after 1 week. This means that after a week only 2% of our users came back to use the app. After a basic onboarding we jumped to 10%. We're now at about 14-15% (just via improving the app). About 50% of our users completely skip the onboarding altogether. I think I'm going to experiment with a video instead of a tour to see the difference…

God I hate user onboarding... seeing stats like that make me so sad, and feel ever further away from the current internet zeitgeist.

Re: Don't Waste Time on User Onboarding

#93

Post by tobr »

waylandsmithers wrote: post #28

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.

If you can skip it, it’s probably not designed right. Well designed onboarding should answer the questions you might have right when you have them, not before you even know that there is a question to ask. It’s not rocket science, but it takes some thought. Design empty states that make it obvious how to use a screen and what it’s for, always have a clear “main” action that will have a productive outcome for most users most of the time, and make sure to have a clear and consistent way to get well designed help that is relevant to what you currently see on screen (can be tricky to do on small screens, though).

That said, traditional onboardings have their place, for example to introduce new features. Even if you skip them or click through and only skim it, you might still pick up enough of a heading or illustration to make it easier to figure out why things are different.

Re: Don't Waste Time on User Onboarding

#95

Post by Animats »

He has one good point about user testing. The way to test a user interface is well understood, but not done enough. You have a setup to take video of the screen and the user at the same time. You get some people roughly comparable to the desired user base to try it. Alone, with no help. You give them a set task to accomplish.

Then you have someone review and annotate the videos. Where did people get stuck? Where did they back up? Where did they give up? Put together a highlights reel and have the developers and managers watch it. It's usually obvious by that point what's wrong.

Re: Don't Waste Time on User Onboarding

#96

Post by narrowtux »

arkitaip wrote: post #79
jstanley wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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]".

It annoys me when onboarding basically means having to delete the demo data that was automatically added because I like my apps clean and tidy, and because random data makes it difficult to discover the app's functionality my myself. Maybe there's a compromise where you can suggest to the user that they can import demo data to see the potential of the app?

When I tried Asana, they had lots of example projects you could choose to add. These showed what's possible with the more advanced features.

I really like this approach because the use case for products like these varies from one client to another. Just throwing in some demo data that's always the same wouldn't really help everyone.

Re: Don't Waste Time on User Onboarding

#97

Post by mitko »

The article talks about “user onboarding” as if it is different from the first run experience. Perhaps it is a SaaSy jargon to separate them. But for us at Sleek, we obsess over the first run as it is how we onboard users - until the user has gone through their use case, we assume they’re new to it.

Learn by doing, not by learning.

Re: Don't Waste Time on User Onboarding

#98

Post by hombre_fatal »

enlyth wrote: post #34
jordanpg wrote: post #27

Earlier 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…

The take-away here is to just buy covert ads that you confuse for content. It's win-win. You get to think you're not seeing ads, and advertisers get to advertise in unblockable ways.

Re: Don't Waste Time on User Onboarding

#99

Post by wolco »

Xixi wrote: post #54
enlyth wrote: post #34

Earlier 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 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.…

I think people confuse advertising in general with the 360 tracking facebook/google and others use. People need to advertise and it's helpful to both the consumer/company.

Re: Don't Waste Time on User Onboarding

#100

Post by DanHulton »

rfwhyte wrote: post #87
burtonator wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Here are our stats for Polar.... Before onboarding our cohort retention was 2%...after 1 week. This means that after a week only 2% of our users came back to use the app. After a basic onboarding we jumped to 10%. We're now at about 14-15% (just via improving the app). About 50% of our users completely skip the onboarding altogether. I think I'm going to experiment with a video instead of a tour to see the difference…

This is why I have a certain distaste for articles like this. The author has this sort hypothesis / contention, specifically that user onboarding is a waste of time, yet presents no data to either validate or disprove their hypothesis. We're supposed to just accept their hot take as gospel, where as folks like yourself can offer actual data that serves as a compelling counterpoint.

I dunno that it's a counterpoint. The thesis of the article is that setting up a user onboarding flow before you're ready is a waste of time, and/or that it's not as useful an activity as others you could be doing with that same time.

I'd consider Polar a success of "adding onboarding when ready." I just don't want people to consider onboarding as the first and only tool to reach for when trying to fix your Trial-to-Paid Conversion issues. There are a lot of other useful tasks you could - and frequently should - be working on as well.

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