Designing An Engaging Onboarding Experience For App Users

17/08/2023, 13:01 (1) Designing an Engaging Onboarding Experience for App Users: A Guide for Product Owners | LinkedIn
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Designing an Engaging
Onboarding Experience
for App Users: A Guide
for Product Owners
Neeraj Dev 1 article Follow
Operations Director at Intelligaia, India
January 30, 2023
My experience in both enterprise and startup organizations

has taught me the significance of creating a compelling
onboarding experience for acquiring and retaining users.
That is one problem every business is attempting to tackle
as it is crucial to the success of their product. Here are some
of my big takeaways from the experience.
Importance of Customer Onboarding
Collecting User Data Points for Onboarding Experience
Onboarding Phases
Onboarding Patterns
Onboarding User Journey Points
Building Effective Onboarding Experience
Onboarding Checklist
Success of a Customer Onboarding Experience
If you need help with any of the steps in your product's
onboarding experience, DM me or send a note to us via the
Intelligaia contact us and we'll be happy to help you out.
https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/designing-engaging-onboarding-experience-app-users-guide-neeraj-dev-1f/ 1/10
Overview
Onboarding plays a crucial role in the overall user journey of

an app. It is the first interaction a user has with your product
and sets the tone for their entire experience. It’s where you
convert users who don’t know about your product into
committed users who will use it regularly.
By using the proper onboarding process, you can explain the
benefits of your product to users and demonstrate how to
use its features. By providing an introduction to the
advantages of your product, you can now set up your
customers for success.
Your onboarding process should be centered on guiding
customers toward their "wow moment" in the most
effortless manner possible. Create a strategy to express the
primary value proposition for your user.
Importance of Customer
Onboarding
With increased market rivalry, every firm must demonstrate
its value to users and board users as soon as possible. A
good onboarding experience can help set up several key
factors for your app, including:
Setup the Brand and First Impressions
Onboarding is the first experience a customer has with
your product or app.
Its crucial for customer success, and it’s one of the
most important phases in a customer’s journey with
your brand.
Increases Adoption Rate
A good onboarding experience will help new users
understand how to use your product and make it more
likely for them to continue using it.
It helps you build a successful business in a competitive
market and make sure that customers are sticking
around long enough to get the most out of your
product.
Increase User Engagement and Trial Conversions
Give users a sense of what they’ll need to do to get

what they need from an app or product.
Winning back your users is a difficult undertaking, and
the first user onboarding experiences are quite
important.
Setup Product understanding and Customer Satisfaction
A well-designed onboarding process can help users
understand the benefits of the product and how to use
it effectively, reducing the learning curve and increasing
overall satisfaction.
A good onboarding experience can play a critical role in the
success of your app and is an investment in the long-term
success of your product.
Collecting User Data Points for
Onboarding Experience
With so many options to choose from, it can be difficult to
know what to prioritize when designing an onboarding
process for your product.
Key questions to consider while developing the effective and
memorable customer onboarding experience.
What are the areas where we are seeing the most drops
in the flow?
What are the things that build the most empathy with
your core audience?
What are the most common major support cases that
we are receiving right now?
What are the requirements and expectations of the
users?
What are the major touch points for the user journey?
What are the pain points in the customer journey?
Tailoring your onboarding experience to user personas can
be achieved through the use of user personas. By
understanding the needs and goals of different user
segments, you can create an onboarding process that is
customized and optimized for each group.
Stick to user onboarding, which focuses on the insights you
got from your user research and user testing.
Onboarding Phases
Onboarding can be broken down into two phases:

acquisition and engagement.
Acquisition is when you convince people to download your
app and engage with it.
Focuses on
Create a sense of scarcity and urgency.
Showcase the user's benefits or values.
Offer bonuses for early adopters.
Provide social proof from previous customers.
Free Demos or Videos showcasing the product value
Engagement is how you keep them using it after they have
downloaded it for the first time.
Focuses on
User values for completing tasks and directing the next
step.
Tutorials
Interaction Walkthroughs
Guided/Product Tours
Help
How to do videos
Chatbot
Customer Support
Onboarding Patterns
Common patterns used for the onboarding experience
The Nickel Tour
The app shows a couple of screens (Shows 3–5) with brief,
polite sentences describing what the program is for; the
user is likely to feel a bit familiar with what to expect before
even starting to use it.
It's one of the most commonly used patterns.
Coach Marks, Guidestones, Tooltips, or
Contextual Onboarding
It consists of basic user interface devices that draw

attention to locations with interactivity, buttons, menus, and
assistance notifications.
These are useful in complex interfaces where the items may
not be immediately visible or the features and sections are
difficult to understand.
Hotspots and tooltips are ideal for small details that were
missed during your initial product tour, whereas pop-ups are
the way to go for an announcement.
To prevent over-explaining, try to direct users to only one
piece or action at a time.
Tour Onboarding
Tour onboarding is widely considered an effective technique
for onboarding new users unfamiliar with your product. This
approach often uses checklists and progress indicators to
minimize the perception of a lengthy process.
Typically, they are long.
Guided Task Completion
The method involves guiding customers through a series of
stages to encourage interaction with the product. This is
especially effective when a product requires customers to
focus on completing specific tasks during the onboarding
process.
Guided tasks help you assist the user in achieving an early
"win." You considerably increase the likelihood that they will
desire to use the product again.
Goal-Based Onboarding Approach
Goal-based onboarding involves setting clear goals for
users to achieve and providing them with the necessary
tools and guidance to reach those goals. This method helps
users understand the benefits of the product and how to use
it effectively.
Goals also bring the time to value proposition to the user
Gamification Approach
Gamification onboarding involves incorporating game-like

elements into the onboarding process, such as points,
badges, and progress bars. This approach makes the
process more engaging and can encourage users to
complete the onboarding process to unlock rewards or
reach the next level.
Video Tutorials & Help
Video tutorials can be a valuable tool in the onboarding
process as they provide a visual and interactive way to
explain the product's features and benefits.
Videos provide a multi-sensory experience, combining
visual and auditory elements, making it easier to retain
information.
Onboarding User Journey Points
There are three key touchpoints in the user journey that are
crucial for implementing an effective onboarding experience.
Out of the Box Onboarding
Making a strong first impression is crucial for any business's
success. Your onboarding user experience should aim to
quickly bring users to a delightful "wow moment". To
achieve this, prioritize determining the core value
proposition for your user and finding the best way to
communicate it upfront.
Onboarding is an opportunity to remind customers why your
software or service is the best fit for their needs. Non-
essential information or instructions can be presented later
in the app or through lighter onboarding methods, after the
user has been introduced to the core value proposition.
Progressive Onboarding
The goal of this strategy is to prevent users from feeling lost
after completing the initial onboarding sequence.
Incorporating onboarding reminders at regular intervals will
help remind users to complete more advanced activities
they may have missed.
New Feature Onboarding
Tooltips and coach markings, which help direct the user's

attention to the location of their new app superpowers, are
excellent ways to highlight new capabilities.
Building Effective Onboarding
Experience
Here are the key steps to building an effective onboarding
experience:
Define your value proposition Begin by identifying the
unique problem-solving capabilities of your app. This will
serve as the foundation for your onboarding communication.
Determine user goals Identify the goals users have in mind
for using your app. This will assist in crafting an onboarding
experience that guides them towards their desired
outcomes.
Streamline the process Keep your onboarding process
simple and straightforward. The goal is to get users up and
running with your app as quickly as possible. Avoid
overwhelming users with too much information or too many
steps.
Personalize the experience Incorporate personalized
messaging and visuals to create a custom onboarding
experience for each persona. This enhances their
connection to the app and increases the chances of regular
usage.
Build On top of onboarding Experience Patterns Select
and build upon established onboarding patterns to enhance
your app's user experience
Test and iterate Test your onboarding process with real
users to identify any pain points. Then, iterate on your
design to make the experience as smooth and seamless as
possible.
In conclusion, building an effective onboarding experience is
crucial for an app. It can help you convert users into loyal
customers and increase the overall success of your app. By
following these key steps, you can create an onboarding
experience that guides users towards their desired outcome
in the most effortless manner possible.
Onboarding Checklist
Creating a fantastic onboarding experience is a difficult task.

Teams tend to overdo things or overdraft the onboarding
experience. Here are a few things to consider as we develop
our experience.
How long does it take to complete the onboarding? We
should keep it short. Avoid confusing or lengthy
instructions or too many steps
What is the user's mental and emotional state?
If the user reaches the end goals easily
How readily users are accomplishing the required
results?
Is there anything you can do to improve the onboarding
process?
Which UX patterns are triggered and which are not?
Create a skippable experience and compare it to a non-
skippable flow to evaluate which performs best for your
consumers.
It is critical that the user immediately feels rewarded for
their confidence in the product; otherwise, they are
perfectly justified in quitting it to try something else.
It should be easy for the user to close and restart the
onboarding experience.
Success of a Customer Onboarding
Experience
There are many factors that contribute to the success of a
customer onboarding experience.
Always plan your onboarding experience early in the
stage.
The onboarding experience needs to be designed in
such a way that it makes the customer want to come
back and use the product again.
The onboarding process should motivate the user to
make their first move and guide them to the next step.
It should also provide an overview of what they can
expect from your company and how it can help them.
Always build onboarding experience tailored to user
activities and not time-based.
The onboarding experience needs to be designed to be as

simple and as effortless as possible for the user. If it’s not,
there’s a good chance that they will abandon your product at
this point. For this reason, you need to make sure that you
are investing enough time and resources into designing a
great onboarding experience for your customers.
We must do periodic user testing and usability analysis to
improve the overall design and identify areas for
improvement with user onboarding.
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Published by
Neeraj Dev 1 article Follow
Published • 6mo
My experience in both enterprise and startup organizations has taught me the
significance of creating a compelling #onboarding experience for #acquiring and
#retaining users. That is one problem every business is attempting to tackle as it
is crucial to the success of their product. Here are some of my big takeaways
from the experience. Importance of Customer Onboarding Collecting User Data
Points for Onboarding Experience Onboarding Phases Onboarding Patterns
Onboarding User Journey Points Building Effective Onboarding Experience
Onboarding Checklist The success of a Customer Onboarding Experience If you
need help with any of the steps in your product's onboarding experience, Direct
message(shorturl.at/mqCHN) or send a note to us via the Intelligaia contact
us(shorturl.at/jNORT) and we'll be happy to help you out. #useronboarding
#onboardingexperience #onbardingpatterns #customerexperience
#timetovalue #onboardingphases #successfulonbardingexperience
#userengagement #useradoption #useracquisition
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Yogesh Singh • 3rd+ 6mo (edited)
Design Director @Intellligaia | Experience Design | Service Design
Onboarding fundamentals are the essential part of the onboarding. It is
the very first stage of customer churning. Enterprises, who seek the
PLG approach never should avoid the effective onboarding experience
with other value factors.
Like · 1 Reply
Neeraj Dev
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17/08/2023, 13:01 (1) Designing an Engaging Onboarding Experience for App Users: A Guide for Product Owners | LinkedIn

My experience in both enterprise and startup organizations

Onboarding plays a crucial role in the overall user journey of

Give users a sense of what they’ll need to do to get

Onboarding can be broken down into two phases:

It consists of basic user interface devices that draw

Gamification onboarding involves incorporating game-like

Tooltips and coach markings, which help direct the user's

Creating a fantastic onboarding experience is a difficult task.

The onboarding experience needs to be designed to be as

Like Comment Share 31 1 comment

About Accessibility Talent Solutions Questions? Select Language

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