The Five Characteristics of Perfect User Onboarding

Today, SaaS products are more complicated in order to meet technological needs. That means using user onboarding tools to improve product usage and making it easier is a must rather than a choice. Because you don't want to waste precious development resources.

And also just as with every other particular mission in digital products, designing and creating perfect user guides requires much time and effort.

Previously, we mentioned about "Benefits of User Onboarding" in our previous blog post. This time, we will point out what you should pay attention to when preparing your user onboarding flow.

Common characteristics of best user onboarding practices

An awesome user onboarding helps new users to understand the core values of your product. While there are lots of different best onboarding practices online, you should understand the main characteristics and build your own product walkthrough based on them.

#1- Interactive product tours increase conversion rates

You can create different step types, such as tooltips, hotspots, and pop-ups, on most user onboarding software. All of them are like the building blocks of a user onboarding business. However, they do not offer fully interactive product tours on a step-by-step basis. In addition to using these essential elements, you need to feature some hover and click actions in order to open drop-down menus and hidden sidebars.

#2- Segmentation boosts user engagement

There is no one-size-fits-all solution. That's why you should create different product walkthroughs for different user segments. You can segment your users according to their location, browser language, user activity, user type (new or returning), and so on to boost user engagement.

Moreover, you can use your existing segments in your other SaaS providers such as Intercom. Suitable segmentation is playing an essential role in both a guide's quality and its effectiveness and users will have a much smoother onboarding experience.

#3- Timing is very important for onboarding flow

You need to be careful about when you show your product walkthrough to users. The untimely display of guides bothers your users and negatively affects the user's experience. You can trigger the guides to display by setting a timer, using the user's idle time, or through hovering or clicking of specific elements. Don’t forget, the best onboarding guides are only shown to those users which need the most support.

#4- Native design makes onboarding process much more smooth

Thinking that product guides are something outside of the product is untrue. They are an essential part of the user experience and are shown on the user's interface. They should be entirely compatible with your product. You need to customize the text’s font type and size, the media, the container’s background color, and the highlighting. Using a beautiful design makes your product guides native and more engaging.

#5- Count the success with analytics and A/B tests

Analytics is another significant part of user onboarding. You should analyze which product tours have been completed or abandoned as well as on which step(s) users tend to leave the guides. You can also improve your user experience according to guide analytics.

Additionally, you need to track how the guides help your overall product usage and performance. Because onboarding is not a one time process, you should always do A/B tests and improve the success rate for your KPI.

Stay tuned for better user onboarding!