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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:
- Adjust Global App Trends 2019 - user retention data
- Slack Redesign - blog post
- UserOnboard.com - onboarding inspiration
- ReallyGoodUX.com - onboarding inspiration
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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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