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Why most product tours get skipped

productonboarding.com

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Re: Why most product tours get skipped

#81

Post by dnnddidiej »

christophilus wrote: post #15
blanched wrote: post #10

Personally, I generally dislike product tours. On the other hand, I think it's interesting to compare the dislike in these comments (and elsewhere) to "RTFM" culture. What's the primary difference? That you can read the manual or use the product at your discretion? e.g. `ls` doesn't forcefully open the man page when you run it for the first time? (I'm aware of the goomba fallacy and that these are likely two differen…

The difference is TFM doesn’t pop up in my face without me asking for it while I’m trying to do something basic.

Yeah product tour is like a popup or cookie banner you just wanna close that shit down. It is something that seems like a good idea and maybe even required for polish, like a 3 column pricing page and an oauth login, but think we are better off without it.

Instead add the killer feature: a feature search box ala Google Docs.

Re: Why most product tours get skipped

#82

Post by chromacity »

michaelt wrote: post #6

It's pretty simple to understand - when a user opens a tool, it's because they want to do the thing that tool does, now. If someone opens my videoconferencing product 98% of the time it's they've got a scheduled call to join within the next 20 seconds . They're not going to be late for their meeting so they can read my release notes. If someone opens my PDF viewer, 99.9% chance they want to view the PDF they just ope…

Another reason why I often skip them is that for "tech" products, the tours almost never cover how I want to use the product. Instead, they tell me how the vendor wants me to use the product.

Browsers are especially notorious for this. When I get a tour for a new feature, it's almost always just some new, tacked-on junk to disable. "Check out our bundled VPN", "Use Copilot to shop for socks", "You now have more privacy choices" (meaning we opted you into some invasive data-collection feature). I just want to browse the internet.

Re: Why most product tours get skipped

#83

Post by hirako2000 »

zerkten wrote: post #62
faangguyindia wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've never liked those "focus hijacking guided tours" and never really followed through any such onboarding process. But they are so common, i don't know who designs them and makes me feel like 5yo. You gotta understand, people will use the product you made, in a way that makes sense to them, not according to your devised "one way". And that's fine because it allows user to own his workflow using your product. I like…

>> But they are so common, i don't know who designs them and makes me feel like 5yo. Often these are the product managers building follow-on features that don't get the usage they want. Users aren't using them, but monthly usage is the currency of so much PM work that they have to try to draw attention to it.

It's a race to the bottom, for any tool out there the negative reviews boil down to complexity. If not: no instruction.

Some people don't know how to operate a TV remote controller, unless it has 1 or 2 buttons.

It's protection against the frustration that a few experience: ultimately unable to use a thing or jam it. At the expense of the majority bugged by mild distraction.

Re: Why most product tours get skipped

#84

Post by Groxx »

michaelt wrote: post #6

It's pretty simple to understand - when a user opens a tool, it's because they want to do the thing that tool does, now. If someone opens my videoconferencing product 98% of the time it's they've got a scheduled call to join within the next 20 seconds . They're not going to be late for their meeting so they can read my release notes. If someone opens my PDF viewer, 99.9% chance they want to view the PDF they just ope…

100% this.

If you want to offer a product tour, then offer it as a small dismissible notification-thing in the corner of the normal UI. Otherwise you run into this situation while also constantly being annoying to everyone who has used your product before.

Product tours and tutorial wizards and all those educational experiences can be excellent, but they must not get in the way. Visible is fine, interruptive is not.

Re: Why most product tours get skipped

#85

Post by Groxx »

faangguyindia wrote: post #44
michaelt wrote: post #6

It's pretty simple to understand - when a user opens a tool, it's because they want to do the thing that tool does, now. If someone opens my videoconferencing product 98% of the time it's they've got a scheduled call to join within the next 20 seconds . They're not going to be late for their meeting so they can read my release notes. If someone opens my PDF viewer, 99.9% chance they want to view the PDF they just ope…

I've never liked those "focus hijacking guided tours" and never really followed through any such onboarding process. But they are so common, i don't know who designs them and makes me feel like 5yo. You gotta understand, people will use the product you made, in a way that makes sense to them, not according to your devised "one way". And that's fine because it allows user to own his workflow using your product. I like…

I don't like the focus-hijacking things because it tends to obscure the parts of the UI that you will have to deal with in the next experience. You are given an accelerated tour that does not match the muscle-memory that you will need when you actually use it.

Raising the visibility of something, or pointing an arrow at it is fine, but don't dim and block the rest of the UI immediately because I might need it for context to understand what the hell you want me to click next and why. If I can't do that, then it's just a forced speedrun of 20 steps that I will immediately forget.

It feels like many of these forgot that the point is to teach for the future, not to boost extremely short term interaction metrics. Showing (much less a single time) is not usually enough to teach, you need to establish context so they understand why instead of just what, and generally offer repetition.

Re: Why most product tours get skipped

#86

Post by ninkendo »

blanched wrote: post #10

Personally, I generally dislike product tours. On the other hand, I think it's interesting to compare the dislike in these comments (and elsewhere) to "RTFM" culture. What's the primary difference? That you can read the manual or use the product at your discretion? e.g. `ls` doesn't forcefully open the man page when you run it for the first time? (I'm aware of the goomba fallacy and that these are likely two differen…

> That you can read the manual or use the product at your discretion? e.g. `ls` doesn't forcefully open the man page when you run it for the first time?

Correct, yes.

Re: Why most product tours get skipped

#87

Post by ninkendo »

hatthew wrote: post #43

This is a bit of a tangent, but cookie consent dialogs have exhausted my will to navigate anything blocking the content I care about. If I go to a new website and encounter any sort of popup, modal, or large banner, I will reflexively feel an urge to close the page unless there is an obvious dismiss button. I often need to see the content on the page and resign myself to navigating the dialog, but just as often I dec…

Yeah, cookie banners, newsletter signups, “please disable your adblocker”, etc are the ultimate “hmm maybe I’ll just do something else” reality check for me.

Not only do I close the page but I typically lose interest in whatever I may have wanted to do on that page in the first place, and generally just put my phone down or close my laptop and do something else.

The web basically died several years ago for me. It was fun while it lasted.

Re: Why most product tours get skipped

#89

Post by tomwheeler »

wffurr wrote: post #18
debarshri wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thats true for point solutions. You often dont find a guided product tour there. Guided tour does have its place where the product is a workflow, a platform offering, has bunch of features and you want to introduce the feature to them. If you are paying 10-25k USD per year, you expect some onboarding specialist who gives instructions on integrating ACH and payroll systems etc. It is very common for non-technical folk…

Actually I get interrupted by a tour or popup when using a "point solution" all the time.

Right. It's self-indulgence by product managers and/or designers who think users are as interested in the software as they are.

Worse yet, sometimes these tours seem to be a band-aid for an unintuitive UX. If usability was the priority, I'd discover new features on my own.

Re: Why most product tours get skipped

#90

Post by tomwheeler »

blanched wrote: post #10

Personally, I generally dislike product tours. On the other hand, I think it's interesting to compare the dislike in these comments (and elsewhere) to "RTFM" culture. What's the primary difference? That you can read the manual or use the product at your discretion? e.g. `ls` doesn't forcefully open the man page when you run it for the first time? (I'm aware of the goomba fallacy and that these are likely two differen…

If only there was AFM to read these days.
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