UserGuiding Blog 2021 Recap - 20 best articles and top content

2021 is almost over.

It's been a great year for us here at UserGuiding and especially the blog: we've published over 200 new articles and 6 new ebooks, destroying last year's numbers with 5 new team members.

Yet it feels like I've spent most of it desperately waiting for the new Spider-Man movie. 🕸🕸

As a UserGuiding tradition, I'm going to provide you with the highlights of all the top-notch content we've created all year.

So here are 20 articles (and an ebook or two) we've published in 2021, that you absolutely need to read:

Most-Read Articles of 2021

We're starting with your favorites.

Yes, YOU.

These are the blogs that were visited and consumed the most throughout 2021, starting with our (arguably) best listicle:

1- 26 No-Code Tools You NEED to Try

Curated and created by one of our new team members, Serra Alban, this list contains the top no-code tools you need to give a try.

From tools that help you create complex web apps from scratch to platforms that analyze data and provide insights, this list has a tool for every aspect of a business that would normally require coding.

Give it a read here. 👈

2- Understanding Product Failures – Top Reasons and Examples

Failing sucks.

But spending hours creating and marketing a product just for it to become a failure sucks even harder.

So if you're looking to ensure product success and understand when a failure occurs, this article written by our product enthusiast, Suay Cakirca, is great for you.

Give this blog a read here. 👈

3- 9 Examples of Good UX Design Every Designer Should See

Google has come a long way from this ugly, outdated UI/UX.

And I can provide virtually infinite examples of products that dramatically improved their UX in time, too.

But for now, I'll keep it to 9; and give you the iconic examples of great user experiences in software design.

Just click here when you're ready to read. 👈

4- 4 Impressive Customer Retention Examples From Top Brands

Acquiring a new customer costs five times more than retaining an existing one.

A statistic most of us have been exposed to many times.

But it is true, customer retention is the bread and butter of top businesses.

And here are the top examples of it. 👈

5- 20 Proven Ways to Increase Your Conversion Rates

This extensive article written by Selen M.A.Saleh, one of the newest members of the team, gives you 20 proven ways to boost your conversion rates.

You might be using a majority of them already, but I'll bet you, you didn't adopt all of them yet.

Anyway, from basics to advanced tips, here are the 20 strategies you can apply today. 👈

To Skyrocket Your Business Growth

You might not recall, but you were the one who requested these articles from us.

From the surveys we've done and the feedback we've got from plenty of our blog readers and teammates, these were the articles we've created to help you grow your business.

Starting with the basics:

6- 15 Fundamental Startup Marketing Strategies + Examples and Ideas

First-time entrepreneurs usually know their products really well.

Given the time and the resources, they can guide their team members to perfect the product, too.

But marketing, for most, is learned through failures and time-consuming campaigns.

It doesn't have to be, though.

Hilal Yildirim, our team's very-own growth head, created this article to help startup teams understand the basic and advanced marketing strategies.

Just don't miss out. 👈

7- 12 Best Practices for High Converting Pricing Pages

Sometimes you ask yourself:

"What in the world are all these people doing on our pricing page, just taking a look and then leaving?"

We asked that a ton too, until we've made the right optimizations.

And from our experience, we've created this small guide that contains 12 great practices for making any pricing page of a product convert more.

Don't just stand there, come in. 👈

8- Best 25 Growth Hacking Examples Every Growth-Head Should See (CATEGORIZED)

Growth hacking is a popular term that refers to boosting your growth with minimum spending and little to no effort.

Sounds a little lazy, I know.

But looking at examples of such strategies used in Uber, Airbnb, or Costco; you get a new perspective to your marketing and growth efforts.

And that's why we've put together 25 fundamental examples of this innovative growth technique. Which you can find right here. 👈

The Future of Selling Software - Best of PLG

If you don't know what PLG is, you're a bit late to the party.

Emphasis on the "bit".

Many companies still transition from traditional business strategies to product-led growth and sorts, so it's still the perfect time to adopt PLG for yourself.

And I've got 3 very close friends that'll get you at least 10 steps ahead.

9- The Definitive Guide to Product-led Growth: From Beginner to Master

Want to learn what Product-led Growth is?

We've got that covered.

Also, one of our team members that joined in 2021, Serhat Erdem, went ahead and did extensive research and a couple of interviews to put this (and the following two) content together.

Everything you need to know, right here. 👈

10- How do I become Product-led? 20 Steps to adopt PLG in SaaS

Want to learn how you go from a traditional growth strategy to Product-led Growth?

We've got that covered, too!

Following up with the previous article, here's Serhat's (and PLG experts') 20 steps to becoming product-led 👈.

11- 8 Common Challenges of Product-Led Growth and How to Overcome Them

Want to learn what challenges you'll have to overcome when becoming Product-led?

Unsurprisingly, we've covered that also, and put a cover on that to make it an ebook!

In this ebook we've published in September, we've directly quoted and expanded on what the experts have said, with real-life examples and step-by-step guidelines on overcoming the most common challenges of PLG.

Interested?

Just a click away. 👈

User Education and Training

User education and user training, especially after the global pandemic, has become a priority for many businesses across the world.

While every business is looking to create the power user that knows everything about their product, they want to cut on costs and become as scalable as possible.

And we did our best to answer this need.

12- Self-Serve First - 5 Steps to Becoming a Self-Serve Business

Self-serve is a business method that has been around since 19th century.

You mostly come across it when you go grocery shopping at Walmart or getting a quick bite from McDonalds, but this approach recently gained a brand new meaning.

More and more software companies started to look for ways to turn all their user acquisition and training into a self-serve first model.

And as a strong advocate of the whole self-serve user training and onboarding approaches, we've created the step-by-step for the software business with Ideta.

In this ebook, you'll find everything you need to turn your product into a scalable and consistent solution that creates satisfied users and limitless growth opportunities.

A click here will be more than enough. 👈

13- The Definitive Guide to SaaS User Adoption: Strategies, Trends, Best Practices

The average SaaS company struggles to get their product adoption where they want it to be and have engaged users that love their product.

Written by Hilal Yildirim, this article aims to help you understand what your priorities should be and how you should approach user adoption to achieve business goals.

It's an in-depth and insightful article filled with various examples.

Start reading by clicking here. 👈

14- End-User Training – Everything You Need To Do It Right

Making your users adopt your product is the first step.

And training them to create well-informed power users is the next.

This article focuses on the next step, and guides the reader as they understand the fundamentals of creating a capable end-user training strategy for the whole audience.

Give it a read here. 👈

And finally, our expertise - the 2021 of User Onboarding

The main purpose of the UserGuiding blog is informing our readers about the changes in product and growth and supporting them as they perfect their user onboarding.

This particular purpose makes us do a ton of research into what the trends are in user onboarding and product adoption, talk with numerous experts, create and conduct surveys, and analyze products and user experiences.

So it's safe to say user onboarding is our expertise.

And this year, we've created numerous articles and different formats of content to help our readers onboard their users better.

These are just a few of many:

15- Everything You Need To Know About User Onboarding – The Ultimate Guide

This article is the 101 class of User Onboarding.

From the basic terms to concept definitions, statistics to guidelines, examples to key tools, everything you need to get started is here.

It takes more than 30 minutes to just read this masterpiece of ours once, but I can assure you, every second will be worth it.

Don't take my word for it, get started and we'll see how it goes.

Start the Masterclass here. 👈

16- 11 Best Practices of User Onboarding You Need to Do

And this is where things get actionable.

This article provides you with 11 best practices about user onboarding, that you can probably adopt right now and benefit from.

Including practices such as simplifying your signup form, creating a user onboarding checklist, and making sure you're focused on the Aha moment, this article would be #1 on this list if I ranked them according to my liking. 🥰

Click to start instant benefits. 👈

17- 6 Examples of the Best User Onboarding Experiences

Want to build a great user onboarding, but don't know where to start?

Writing this article, I aimed to help inspire you for your next onboarding flow design.

Also, share the coolest user onboarding experiences I've had the pleasure of going through.

With 6 great examples each better than the other, hope this helps.

Ready to see real beauty? 👈

18- These 25 User Onboarding tools will 10x your product adoption

Just like Batman needed his gadgets (mostly kryptonite) to defeat Superman, you'll need yours to eliminate churn and save your product adoption from the cruel hands of terrible UX.

Seriously, though; if you want to create amazing and complete user onboarding experiences full of rich content and helpful resources, you'll need all the help you can get.

I've curated this list of the best tools that help put together a user onboarding experience together.

You might have a tough time deciding which you'll like the best. 👈

19- #1 Guide to Onboarding UX/UI Patterns – everything you need to know

And for the final spot on this list, I wanted to include one of the most insightful and eye-opening articles we've created so far.

This is a bit more advanced piece that dives into what each user onboarding UX element/pattern is and what they do, and where exactly they should be utilized.

It is a masterpiece that everyone who's serious about perfecting their user onboarding should go through, in my opinion. And Serra has done an amazing job explaining it in a well-structured manner.

Give it a read here. 👈

What You Should Expect from 2022

As the new and expanded team of UserGuiding, we'll keep creating better and better content that is fueled by in-depth research and expert opinions.

Content that will help you grow your business, perfect your product, and better onboard your users.

As we say goodbye to 2021, we thank you for reading the UserGuiding blog last year and hope to see you become a regular in 2022.