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Don't Waste Time on User Onboarding

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Re: Don't Waste Time on User Onboarding

#81

Post by arkitaip »

dhimes wrote: post #36
RobertKerans wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's what Twitter is really good at already, it's literally just people chatting and shouting about stuff that other people are chatting and shouting about.

I can't imagine Twitter being good at reaching a market unless you've gone viral. Maybe I'm wrong, but it seems like it's like pouring a taste of wine into a fire hose. I don't think I've ever learned about a product on Twitter (but I block ads and don't do much on there). I hear about news and stuff from Twitter.

You have to have a following and be careful with how your market your stuff but yes, I've discovered many products via Twitter BUT they are almost always aligned with my interests and hobbies. Those that aren't, typically promoted tweet, get blocked.

Re: Don't Waste Time on User Onboarding

#82

Post by jermaustin1 »

snuxoll wrote: post #69
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 a product wants me to go through a lengthy onboarding session, whether it be with a representative or through some guided tutorial it's an immediate turnoff and I will likely abandon right then and there. Personal anecdote: We were evaluating Cisco AppDynamics last year as we were in the market for an APM product and, unfortunately, we are a huge Cisco shop. They wanted to hold our hand and walk us through everyth…

This is a problem I've run into anytime I'm purchasing "Enterprise" licenses for software. They always want you to contact a sales rep, talk to an integrator, set up a meeting to discuss your needs. My NEED is to pay via Purchase Order...

There was never an enterprise licensed software that didn't involve multiple meetings. The software was the same software we had already integrated in the development environment, we just needed licenses for production. Didn't matter that we'd been using the software for ages, they still wanted to set up hours of meetings before sending us an invoice.

Re: Don't Waste Time on User Onboarding

#83

Post by DanHulton »

arkitaip wrote: post #78
ddebernardy wrote: post #6

My 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.

Came to write this. Companies forget that their product isn't evaluated in a vacuum, that for any serious business need, a person or an group is going to evaluate multiple products for a extended period of time. Having no trial period or a very short one means losing out of business simply because of short term greed. Also, it doesn't help that psych pop is used to arbitrarily justify any conversion tactic.

It's an optimization problem - you lose X% of people if your trial is long enough that they don't prioritize evaluating it before it expires. You lose Y% of people if your trial is too short for them to evaluate it against competitors. If X > Y, shorten your trial. If Y > X, lengthen it.

The problem comes in the fact that it's really hard to identify what X and Y are - there's some voodoo involved in properly attributing actual reasons for not converting a trial.

This is why I like the idea of going immediately paid with a very-long money-back guarantee, though that comes with its own optimization problems.

Re: Don't Waste Time on User Onboarding

#84

Post by ddebernardy »

DanHulton wrote: post #83
arkitaip wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Came to write this. Companies forget that their product isn't evaluated in a vacuum, that for any serious business need, a person or an group is going to evaluate multiple products for a extended period of time. Having no trial period or a very short one means losing out of business simply because of short term greed. Also, it doesn't help that psych pop is used to arbitrarily justify any conversion tactic.

It's an optimization problem - you lose X% of people if your trial is long enough that they don't prioritize evaluating it before it expires. You lose Y% of people if your trial is too short for them to evaluate it against competitors. If X > Y, shorten your trial. If Y > X, lengthen it. The problem comes in the fact that it's really hard to identify what X and Y are - there's some voodoo involved in properly attribu…

In my mind, there's more to it than a metrics-driven optimization in isolation from the rest of the company.

In your example, the Y% of people you might lose if your trial is too short may very well turn out to be higher paying and/or lower churn customers. What you suggest in your post is the marketing equivalent of sales and support ignoring the colloquial small fry, without realizing that the latter might be sitting on company boards and referring large clients.

Also, if they bookmark the service until they can set aside a time to sign up and evaluate (which as an occasional buyer of SaaS products, I can anecdotally report that some do), you'd have no way to reach out to them and build a relationship unless they contacted you.

By contrast, if you have a free tier, and/or make it clear from the outset that when your trial expires you'll be able to do new ones when the product hits major milestones, then you have the end-user's email, you're building a relationship, you can interview the end-user to understand why they didn't convert, you can try to rescue trials that didn't move forward with a sale for a reason or another, etc.

Re: Don't Waste Time on User Onboarding

#85

Post by Frondo »

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…

I'm going to present an alternate take on "how to live" from you and several other people who replied, not to say your way is wrong, but to say that others live other ways.

I like hearing about cool stuff, I like sharing it with friends. I like style, looking fashionable, and being apprised of trends. I don't plan to die with savings.

You wouldn't trust me, because I often tell my friends about things they should know about; not because I have anything to gain, but because we all do this in all of my social circles. If I hear about a nootropic they might like, I tell them. If they know of a bar I should try, they tell me.

I like a lot of ads because I like knowing what's going on in the world. Even in a post-capitalist Star Trek world, I'd want people who made stuff to tell me.

Neither way of living is wrong.

Re: Don't Waste Time on User Onboarding

#86

Post by [deleted] »

miguelmota wrote: post #80
revvx wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

SEO, good content marketing, sponsoring blogs and videos (when done tastefully), product placement, engaging with communities, talking about it in HN/ProductHunt/etc. All those things are acceptable to most people who block ads, IMO.

Some of those things still sound like ads. I’m not convinced that a company, for example one that sells shoes, would not profit from running ads everywhere

[deleted]

Re: Don't Waste Time on User Onboarding

#87

Post by rfwhyte »

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…

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.

Re: Don't Waste Time on User Onboarding

#88

Post by dhimes »

dotancohen wrote: post #38
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'm not the OP, but I'll answer the question anyway. When I'm not specifically looking for something, then I don't find out about them. My attention is limited, I don't have enough to give to every little outfit interested in taking my money. I don't need a new shirt, or car, or coffee or trip. And when I do, then I'll google it and I'll happily see all the ads that Google will show me. The ads are blocked until then…

OK- so ads, then. At your convenience, to be sure, but ads nonetheless.

Re: Don't Waste Time on User Onboarding

#89

Post by DanHulton »

capkutay wrote: post #5
nathan_f77 wrote: post #3

This 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 don't know that we have much to disagree about. Absolutely users will get more value from seeing their data, but there are situations where it can take a while to get "their data" visible, like if you're waiting for people to answer a form that they created with your software. Instead of having them wait a day, it can help prove the value of your service to show them what data will look like, once it starts coming in.

Re: Don't Waste Time on User Onboarding

#90

Post by virgilp »

dlanouette wrote: post #71
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…

> About 50% of our users completely skip the onboarding altogether. How is this different than when you had no onboarding? (serious question) Did you make other changes that made the onboarding process less important to end users?

The glass is half full, not half empty. About 50% of users DON'T skip onboarding - and for those users, it really matters.
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