9 Components of a Great User Onboarding Process

What happens when new customer signs up for your SaaS product or service?

For a lot of business owners and people, the signup is when they have ‘won’ the customer and added another testimonial to the growing bouquet. 

However, that is not true. 

Imagine if you sign into Dropbox and don’t know how to share a file. How will you navigate if there’s no customer experience process in place to guide you? 

By simply signing up users and not helping them understand what they can actually achieve and how as you’ve promised, you cannot prevent customer churn . Signups are not success yet. If your user cannot use the product to solve his needs, he will gradually see a fallacy in the signup and purchase. In a fast-paced world where almost 40-60% of software users open an app once, and never log in again, it’s difficult to avoid customer churn and a great customer onboarding process. 

User onboarding best practices are ones that understand customer motivations and pains and satisfy that new user’s desires and requirements

9 Components of a Great User Onboarding Process

A great user onboarding is one that needs to shorten new users’ time to product or service value, direct them to their aha! moment, and get them to activate the product faster. 

Onboarding is one of the primary aspects that will turn beginners into advocates of your product or service. Every onboarding must be unique and aligned with providing the first Aha! Moment to the user. 

Set Expectations

Starting a journey without knowing the process or destination is difficult to understand or complete. So, it is important to set expectations first itself to so that users understand the process and what they will be knowing. Having a timer or progress meter can help set customer expectations and improve user experience. 

Simplify

The most common onboarding mistake is asking users to work on too much from the beginning. Making the process simple and easy to understand at every step is important to avoid onboarding overwhelming. Small tasks are faster, simpler, and less overwhelming so its better to ask the user to do less. Keep ‘less is more’ in mind here. 

Information

Is the customer credit card info really important? Is the whole mailing address essential? While some requirements of information can be important, there is no need to go for an overload. Withholding the need to ask more info can be helpful since it gives customers a sense of privacy and promotes them to continue with the more important aspects. Reducing onboarding time is crucial. 

Directed messaging

Calling attention to important elements helps customers understand what and where exactly one should go. With simple messages, its better to help the customer navigate between various components and create a seamless experience. 

Show off

How about a user guide made using product features? Sounds amazing right. See how Trello, a project management tool that built their user onboarding guide via the product. 

Credit: Trello

If your product is something that can be used like this, go the extra mile, and explain. Reinforce your value by simplifying the process. 

Video support

Many new-age companies use videos or visual aid to walk new customers through a product or service. Using videos for onboarding, marketing, self-service support, and more is highly effective to walk new customers through a product. 

Its ok to Skip

A skip button works wonders. Something that users can click when they download on another device using the same ID and reduces the effort of onboarding again. Users do not need to be onboarded every single time, they try to access the product or service. This will help users avoid extra work when they want to explore on their own. 

Build a relationship

To give your customers the best, it is important to understand what success means to them. Ask the customer what they prefer and try to deliver that. Be personal and upfront when asking them what their idea of customer success is. Getting an idea of this will help you focus on their requirements in the long run. 

Customer Experience

Onboarding is not a one-time part, it’s a process that includes your entire customer experience. Reach out to your customers, make a connection, provide value, and establish the foundation for great support. 

Bottomline: Crucial and Continuous Process

Customer onboarding is a continuous process and is extremely crucial for customer success and company growth. Testing, learning, improving, and understanding the ideas that work for your customer base is important to ensure the process is durable and reliable. Customer onboarding is not a single act of helping the customer start using the product or service. It is about delivering the value promised to the customer at the time of sale. 

Author Bio: Niyathi Rao

Niyathi Rao is a content creating specialist at Smartkarrot Inc., a customer success software platform.  She worked for Univariety and OpenText previously. She majorly writes for SaaS tech products. She is a bibliophile and listens to podcasts and music when she isn’t doing any of these.