🏆 Optimize the onboarding process for your users

How to do this Growth Hack and what can it do for you?

There are a number of reasons that can be considered to explain why users uninstall applications:

Poor user interface and browsing experience,

• applications that are not relevant
• users who are unable to find an interest in using the application.
• of users are unable to take advantage of the application.

Expected results of this Growth Hack

• Growth Hack Type: Combination of 2 of the best marketing channels, SEO and Email Marketing
• Expected result: Increase in your revenue (+ conversions)

To help you, find dozens of Onboarding examples by clicking on this link: USER ONBOARD

Why do this Growth Hack?

When users don't realize how your app meets their pain point and the value proposition provided, they'll simply stop using the app.

When users start using a new product, they go through several cycles:

1. The height of excessive expectations : they hope that your product can solve their problems
2. Hollow of disillusions : the experience often worsens and the user ends up reaching the “trough of disillusionment”, due to poor on-boarding
3. The maturity curve : the user continues to learn new features
4. The Productivity Plateau : the user is master in the use of your products and becomes a promoter of your brand

Creating a good Onboarding means succeeding in jumping into 1 and 3 while not approaching 2, which is the phase where we lose the majority of all users!

Let's take a look at the different steps you should not forget to successfully complete onboarding.

How do you do this Growth Hack?

A common theme across all of these best practices is a product-oriented approach to growth.

Each point on this checklist aims to ensure the long-term growth of applications by putting the product first and putting the product experience at the heart of each strategy. Here's what a product-focused growth strategy looks like in action.

Onboarding is definitely the first step, and most importantly, the implementation of a product-oriented strategy.

1. Reception equipment

• ❏ Create a detailed help center that describes your functionality and answers all common questions.
• ❏ Write a few use cases about your customers and their success stories
• ❏ Shoot a short introduction video that you can use later on at different stages of your onboarding process.

Email sequence

• ❏ Gather basic customer information during the registration process, such as an email address, name, business.
• ❏ Set up an automated welcome email that is sent after a customer signs up for your product. May include a short video introduction.
• ❏ Set up an email follow-up for customers who have not completed the first key product adoption stage.
• ❏ Set up a short email sequence encouraging customers to use more advanced features and offering corresponding educational materials.
• ❏ Set up an email report celebrating the important milestones achieved by a customer.

Guided tours and product tooltips in the app

• ❏ Create an initial welcome window that will welcome new customers once they sign up for your product and briefly tell them what the status is. May include a short video introduction.
• ❏ Create modal windows or feature calls that are automatically displayed and support a new customer in the early stages of product adoption.
• ❏ Set up an in-app checklist that will show customers their onboarding progress.

Personal reception assistant

• ❏ Track customer progress in completing previous onboarding steps
• ❏ Schedule an onboarding call between a new customer and your customer success team
• ❏ Gather detailed information about the customer, such as goals, objectives, and use cases.
• ❏ Give personalized recommendations about your product.
• ❏ Follow up by email after the onboarding call with the required documents.

Tips for setting up a successful onboarding

Tip 1: keep simple checklists for setting up your products

The advantage of a checklist is that it allows you to break down a fairly complex and time-consuming concept into a series of simple tasks.

For a marketing automation tool, for example, the checklist can help guide users to send their first email. This task can be quite complex if you are new to the subject.

A checklist breaks the process down into different steps.

Here's what that might look like:

• Import your contacts
• Choose a model
• Create your email
• Program your email
• Send your campaign

In dDividing big goals into less complex tasks, you make it easier for your users.

It should also be remembered that at this stage, your user does not have much experience with your product at this early stage. It is therefore all the more important that you keep it simple.

In this example below, you can see how each of the items on the checklist is simple and clear.

All of these steps allow the user to fill in their profile and start using the platform.

Ask users to simply”Complete their profile. “and of stopping at that point would not be as effective.

Breaking onboarding down into simple tasks helps the user understand what they need to do and makes it much easier to manage.

Tip 2: Give your users a head start

There is an expression that says you should start every to-do list with”Create a to-do list.”

Well, it turns out that there is some truth in this sentence.

There is a psychological phenomenon called the”progression bias“. Simply put, this means that people are more likely to complete a task (or a series of tasks) if they feel they have already made progress.

Use this Growth Hack to improve your onboarding.

Simply checking off the first item on the list is enough to motivate users to take the next step.

Below is an example:

When you first sign up for PayPal, the first step”Account created“is already checked.

Even though this first step is literally creating the account, it's enough to motivate you to take the next step.

If you intend to use a progress bar, just make sure that the bar starts at 10%, for example. This gives your user the feeling that they have already made progress.

Here is an example of a progress bar for a crowdfunding campaign:

If someone sees that the bar is already near the end, they will be more likely to invest in the project.

Progression is a powerful medium to improve the effectiveness of your Onboarding for users, let's see now how.

Tip 3: Add a progress bar to your Onboarding

If you have way too many steps during your onboarding, it can become demotivating for your users.

A good way to make things clearer for your users is to add a progress bar to your onboarding.

This gives your users a clear indication of the status of your product. Seeing that you have completed 50% of the Onboarding is much more motivating than seeing that you have completed 5 tasks out of 10.

In addition, it is an additional motivation. As the bar gets closer to the end, your users are encouraged to continue. They see a direct change in response to their actions.

If you have LinkedIn, you must have already seen or be familiar with this progress bar, which indicates the quality of your page, which is filled in each time you fill in the different categories of your profile.

The progress bar is prominently placed above all categories and shows you through a checklist which items you still have to complete.

Progress bars allow your users to measure their progress, and encourage them to continue towards the goal.

Tip 4: Turn your onboarding process into a game

Everyone likes to feel like they're playing a game, especially when they're at work.

When a user starts trying out a new SaaS application, the last thing they want is a checklist with even more tasks to do.

In some cases, a checklist can even put off your users. They can see the tasks and immediately decide that they can wait another day.

Sometimes these users never come back.

To combat this, you can use gamification to turn the most mundane checklist into something fun for your users.

Gamification is, as the name suggests, the process of turning something into a game.

You can do this in a number of different ways.

One way is to literally turn your app into a game.

Habitica does it perfectly. It may seem like a standard task management application that helps you build good habits.

Beneath the surface, however, is a role-playing game where users can collect items like armor or gold to level up and become more powerful.

Users get these gifts by completing tasks In the real world and by engaging in the application.

It's a great example of how gamification can influence the behavior of your users.

The other way, more commonly used, is to gamify the user's Onboarding checklist.

You can do this by adding badges, points, or even cash to each task. When a user completes a task, they receive a prize.

Here is an example taken from my profile on the Growth Hacking FR forum:

This solution consists in allowing users to level up as they use the application, as does Discourse :

Depending on your level of activity, new features are offered to you on the platform.

Everyone loves the idea of rising through the ranks, and it's a great way to combine personal development with extended product use.

Transform your Onboarding into A game is a fantastic way to encourage your users to complete a variety of tasks.

Tip 5: Offer a quick win

How many times did you put off a task only to realize that it wasn't that difficult?

If you're like me, you do it way too often.

People often have trouble getting started on new tasks or projects because they think it will be difficult, that it will take time, or because they don't see the point in doing so.

Your onboarding is no different.

A lot of users will take a look at it and say, “It's There's no way I'm going to do that now! “. Then they disconnect and never come back.

The onboarding steps can be too long, especially for more complex products. That is why he is mandatory to provide your users with a quick win from the start.

If you can, make quick wins an integral part of your product.

At Evernote, for example,”Create your first note“is the first item on the checklist.

They then make it incredibly easy to do just that.

This allows Evernote users to quickly understand the gain in the ease of taking notes in the app.

By having this pleasant experience from the start, your users are more easily involved in your onboarding process. 

Tip 6: Use the right words in your onboarding process checklist

The copy you use in your user onboarding checklist is one of the most important aspects to consider.

She has to do several things at the same time while having very few words.

Use action-oriented words

The aim is to get your users to take action when they use the checklist, so you need to be clear about what you want them to do.

If you want them to add a profile photo, don't beat around the bush.

• If you say something like:”Personalize your profile” -> That doesn't mean much.
• It's much better to be specific and say something like:”Add a profile photo” -> So the user knows exactly what to do.

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Educational objectives should be described with action verbs, the use of Bloom's taxonomy, generally used for educational contexts, can help you in this sense.

Give a reason for each action

If you simply ask your users to do something without explaining how it helps them, they will be less motivated to do it.

Let's continue with the profile photo example above. Adding a profile photo may not be very important for our users. So we need to explain why adding a photo is a good idea.

You could say:”Add a profile photo. Profiles with a photo receive 30% more engagement. “

This way our users will understand how completing the task will help them.

Finally, your words should reflect the personality of your brand.

Looking like a robot is not going to work. Unless that's what you're looking for, of course.

Feel free to use informal language, or even emojis, to make your checklist as user-friendly as possible.

Here is a fantastic example of Skedsocial:

Their target users are Instagram influencers, so they have a fun and lighthearted tone. You can see how they use emojis to inject some fun into their checklist.

Use your words wisely and your checklist will be much more effective.

Summary of the perfect user onboarding checklist

A great checklist of a user onboarding process guides them through the various key parts of the product, providing value along the way and as quickly as possible.

The various tips I gave you will help you maximize the effectiveness of your onboarding

To summarize, you need to:

• Keep it simple.
• Give your users a head start.
• Measure the progress of your users.
• Make onboarding a game.
• Provide a quick payoff.
• Use the right words.