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User Onboarding

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Why is User Onboarding Important?

5:41 with Hope Armstrong

Learn about retention, churn rates, and why making a good first impression is important.

Why is User Onboarding Important?

  • First impression is important and impacts user retention
  • User acquisition is costly
  • Low feature adoption
  • To explain redesigns

New terms:

  • User retention: The percentage of users who are still using a product after a certain number of days since their first experience with the product.
  • KPI: Key Performance Indicator, a popular success metric for team goals
  • Churn rate: The percentage of users who stop using a product. It's sometimes referred to as the attrition rate.

Resources:

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    There are several reasons why user onboarding is important. 0:00
    First, products need to make a good first impression, or 0:04
    else they risk losing the attention of their users. 0:08
    The metric that evaluates this is called User Retention. 0:12
    It is a major KPI, or Key Performance Indicator for 0:15
    a product, and it's a term you'll encounter as a UX designer. 0:20
    User Retention is the percentage of users who are still using a product 0:26
    after a certain number of days since their first experience with the product. 0:30
    There are various ways to measure retention. 0:34
    But I won't go into these details, it can be quite complicated. 0:37
    The take away here is to become familiar with this term. 0:42
    Let's look at some data to understand retention rates. 0:46
    Adjust is a mobile analytics company and 0:49
    they included retention benchmarks in their 2019 global app trends report. 0:52
    In this report, they found that the average app loses 79% of 0:58
    its users in the first week after it is installed. 1:03
    But this varies greatly based on the type of app. 1:06
    For instance, casino games, dating apps and news apps have the highest 1:10
    percentage of users returning to the app a day after installing it. 1:15
    On the flip side travel and food delivery apps have the lowest. 1:21
    After 30 days have elapsed the average retention rate for apps is 14%. 1:26
    News, communication and 1:32
    comics apps have the highest retention rate for this time period. 1:34
    You can see that travel booking apps and 1:39
    food delivery apps still rank low on retention. 1:42
    But that is to be expected, 1:45
    given that people use these types of apps in infrequent intervals. 1:47
    The takeaway here is that a lot of users become inactive after the first week. 1:53
    This drop in active users is referred to as churn, 1:58
    which is basically the opposite of retention. 2:01
    A churn rate is the percentage of users who stop using a product. 2:04
    It's sometimes referred to as the attrition rate. 2:11
    So be sure to prioritize a user's first experience with the product your 2:15
    designing to minimize churn. 2:20
    Digital products have a lot of competition. 2:22
    If a user is not quickly satisfied with one product, 2:25
    they'll move on to try another product. 2:28
    This raises the bar for products to be high quality and 2:31
    instantly serve their audience. 2:34
    Secondly, it's difficult and costly to acquire users. 2:36
    Companies allot a certain amount of advertising money to go towards each 2:43
    user acquired. 2:47
    So if a user continues to use the product, that's a win for the company. 2:48
    If they churn, or in other words stop using the product, 2:54
    then that advertising money may not result in a profit for the company. 2:58
    Great, so user onboarding is great for optimizing a new 3:03
    user's experience with a product but onboarding goes beyond that. 3:07
    You may notice that a product you're working on has low 3:12
    feature adoption in a given area. 3:17
    A low feature adoption means that a small percentage of people are using a feature. 3:20
    Perhaps it's a new feature that users haven't discovered yet. 3:26
    Or maybe they need help understanding how to use it. 3:29
    And once they do, they'll find it to be valuable. 3:33
    You can design an onboarding experience to help users find the feature and 3:37
    understand how to use it. 3:42
    This will keep existing users engaged in the long term too, 3:44
    as they can continue finding new benefits from the product. 3:48
    If you're wondering how exactly to do that, 3:52
    don't worry, I'll show you some examples later. 3:55
    Lastly, onboarding is needed as part of major redesigns. 3:58
    Let's say you've completely revamped the user experience in an app. 4:04
    Perhaps you've moved the UI around, added new features, and so on. 4:09
    Yes, it greatly improves the user experience, but it's a sudden change. 4:14
    From your user testing, you've seen that users do like the new experience. 4:20
    It just takes some getting used to. 4:25
    You'll want to ease the transition to this new UI by 4:27
    designing an onboarding experience. 4:31
    Slack recently underwent a redesign and they provided onboarding for the changes. 4:34
    All right, now, you know a bit about user onboarding. 4:46
    Before we move on to user onboarding patterns, 4:50
    let me show you a couple of resources where you can go for inspiration. 4:53
    Useronboard.com is a helpful website that shows the entire 4:58
    onboarding experience for several apps. 5:03
    You can click through and read the commentary. 5:06
    It's usually a good critique that includes compliments as well as 5:09
    missed opportunities. 5:13
    Some of the examples are a bit dated, so 5:14
    know that some screenshots will not match the current products. 5:17
    Reallygoodux.com also has a collection of onboarding experiences for 5:24
    various products. 5:29
    Using these resources, 5:30
    you'll be able to see screenshots without signing up for the app yourself. 5:32
    Check out the links in the teacher's notes. 5:37
    I'll see you in the next video. 5:39

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