Designing for User Onboarding: Focus on crafting a smooth and engaging onboarding experience for new users

You have just downloaded a new app eager to explore all that it has to offer. Rather, you are presented with a smear of garbled guidance hinting that things in fact could be better.

At this point you just get frustrated and then may never use that again. This is why user onboarding — the process of walking new users through how to start using your product or service-is vitally important.

In this newsletter, I explore the craft behind designing delightful entry-points that enlighten and seduct users into experiencing all your product has to offer.

Why User Onboarding Matters:

Higher User Retention: With a good onboarding sequence, user quickly understands what they are getting and less in doubt about functionalities of the product which results with more maintenance.

Better User Experience — well-designed guidance and intuitive navigation enable users to complete a task on their first try, making an excellent first impression.

Improves Brand Perception: Good and smooth on-boarding reflects your brand to be more professional, user-oriented.

How To Design An Effective User Onboarding Journey

Simplicity: Do not burden user by chaining information and data points as this is a humane-human. Zero in on what really matters, taking them down the things that they have to focus with instructional exercises.

Personalisation: Pay attention to user insights and possibly personalize their onboarding journey. Provide tutorials that are relevant to their specific situations and pinpoint the best features for them

Interactive Elements: Include interactive tutorials, guided tours or micro-animations to keep users engaged and directly participating in the learning game.

Milestone Celebrations: Recognise and celebrate user achievements at each milestone in the onboarding process. This gives a sense of achievement and motivates users to explore more.

Feedback: Gather feedback regularly from users — Use surveys or in-app prompts to get input directly. This allows you to understand points of friction and reiterate your onboarding for the future users.

Did this take away give you a fresh perspective on your productivity?

Use the power of storytelling! Tell a story as part of your onboarding to highlight why people actually use it and how this can change their experience for the better!

User Onboarding: The Art of Turning New Users into Engaged Customers by UserLeap — https://www.chameleon.io/blog/what-is-user-onboarding

UX Booth: User Onboarding

NNGroup — Best Practices for User Onboarding

The best way to make sure that new users become lifelong fans of your product is by making onboarding as user-friendly and enjoyable experience.

Do you have any favorite user onboarding experiences?