The main problem with SaaSWhat is SaaS? SaaS is the abbreviation of Software as a Service, and refers to a software licensing model based on user subscription with monthly or annually payments. The model… products is retentionWhat is retention? Retention refers to a customer continuing to use a business’ product or a service and to pay for the said product or service. It is a key….
I’m here to tell you that there is a simple yet demanding way to improve retention quickly; onboarding users effectively.
Turning new users into fans of your product is a great way to keep your users paying and increasing the possibility of making upsells and adopting a user onboardingWhat is user onboarding? User onboarding is the crucial process that starts from the first login of a new user and ends up in their aha moment, and usually beyond…. software can help you do just that.
In this article, we go over why SaaS businesses need a user onboarding tool, and what the best tool to use is; but first, let’s see what makes retention so important:
Why retention is important for SaaS?
SaaS, and retention.
I’m pretty sure you are aware of the relation between these two, yet there is no harm in repeating the basics.
A SaaS is based on a subscription business model; you have to sell your product every month, not just once. In SaaS, it is much cheaper and easier to keep your existing users than acquiring new customers.
The Real Value of Onboarding
In order to keep getting payment from your customers each month, you have to make sure that they are using your product and keep getting value from it.
Only when you have the best onboarding possible for your product can you manage to do that.
Fast-growing companies that are trying to reach product-market fit has 20% 8-week retention rate while the top SaaS companies have around 38%. The well-designed onboarding process for the new users makes the difference.
For metrics, examples, guidelines, and checklist; check out our HUGE guide to SaaS Onboarding.
Why every SaaS product needs to use an onboarding software?
I am not going to lie, there is no shortage of developers in 2020. If you want your own product tour and checklist, you can find a freelancer or hire a developer in a matter of hours!
Yet you have to ask yourself, do you really want to be that dependant on developers?
The questions don’t stop there:
Do your developers have better things to do that would benefit your company more?
Do you have enough resources to build an insource user onboarding?
Will you have all the features a user onboarding tool offers, is it worth it?
Developers are always busy creating, maintaining, updating, improving products. It would not be wise to spend precious developer time that could be used to polish your product on creating an interactive product tour.
Your SaaS business needs an onboarding tool because there is a high possibility that you can’t afford to create an onboarding flow in-source.
If you still have doubts, make sure you check our article Developing Onboarding Walkthroughs Insource is Hard written by our CTO and Co-founder.
So, which SaaS Onboarding Tool should I use?
There are so many user onboarding tools that assist you in different aspects when attending new users but I’ll try to provide you with just the right tool for onboarding users inside your product.
I’d rather tell you what to look for in your user onboarding tool than giving you a name directly.
Let’s see:
There shouldn’t be any technical knowledge needed to use, not even a bit
You are selecting a user onboarding tool because you don’t want to bother a developer in the first place.
So, why would you select a tool that requires coding or any technical knowledge?
“No-code” means no code. The tool that you are going to pick should be so simple that anyone from any department in your company should be able to create, maintain, and edit guides as they see fit.
With UserGuiding, creating an onboarding element is as simple as dragging and dropping.
Users should be offered personalized experiences via SegmentationWhat is User Segmentation User segmentation refers to the practice of dividing users based on common characteristics. This can help businesses in creating more optimized and personalized user experiences. To…
One size does never fit all.
A user might have a different native language, might have a different traffic source, might be a different type of user in your websites with different permissions.
The user onboarding tool should allow the SaaS owner to choose which guides will work for which segment of users.
With Userguiding, you can easily create segments and access the exact group of users that you want to target.
Various onboarding elements should be utilized together to create the best experience
Here is one of the main advantages to using an onboarding tool, they offer various features.
If you have a product that has more than a single feature, just a single product tour will most likely be insufficient to fully onboard a user. This is where checklists, tooltips, hotspots, surveys, and help centers come in play.
UserGuiding offers various onboarding elements to complete your user onboarding process.
It should offer you the ability to fully customize every element to fit them into your product
Yes, you are using a 3rd-party tool to create your onboarding elements, but those elements have to look like they are a part of your own product.
You most likely have a brand identity; flashy colors that match each other and a classy style. If the tool that you will use to create an onboarding checklist with, for example, has its own uncustomizable design, it will not be that pleasing to look at.
Most tools offer customization, but it is usually limited to a few options; whereas in UserGuiding, you can turn the onboarding elements you have created to actual parts of your product.
Users should be able to reach onboarding guides on-demand.
You don’t know when a user needs help. Immediate pop up when a user visit a webpage is generally considered to be a bad thing. Instead, user guiding tools should have an option to help users when they need.
That’s why we’ve developed UserGuiding Assistant, your users can search for help when they need it, and trigger the relevant guides. With this feature, your reusable guides will be able to help your users on-demand.
You should have access to in-depth analytics to measure performance
How can you improve something if you don’t count it? For SaaS products, onboarding guides’ completion rates give you a great insight to see the effect of the tool, and where you still have room to make improvements for your UXWhat is UX? UX is the abbreviation of User Experience and refers to an individual’s thoughts and feelings when using a specific product or a service. It aims to heal….
UserGuiding for a Better SaaS User Onboarding
Now that you know what to look for in a SaaS onboarding tool and how UserGuiding succeeds in those parts, it’s time to talk about how exactly UserGuiding will help you.
- it will help you create a unique experience for each user through user segmentation and various features such as interactive product tours, user guides, tooltips, onboarding checklists, NPSWhat is NPS? NPS is the abbreviation of Net Promoter Score, which is a measurement of your customers’ satisfaction with your product on a scale of -100 to 100. It… surveys, and self-service help centers.
2- since it does not require any technical knowledge, it can be utilized by any department of your company from marketing to customer successWhat is Customer Success? Customer Success refers to the approach that has your company in a position where it ensures that each customer is successfully connected to their desired outcome…. and not just in the onboarding process, it can also be used throughout the entire user journey to increase engagement.
3- last but not least, the in-depth analytics the product provides you with will help you which guides perform the best and what steps are the users having trouble in; which will enable you to make the most out of your onboarding.
Also, UserGuiding offers better pricing than most of its competitors, which you can find below:
- Start-up: $199/month
- Growth: $399/month
- Enterprise: Quotations must be requested
- And a Bootstrap plan for early stage startups
