Best Practices for UX Onboarding

Onboarding is traditionally a human resource related-term borrowed by UX designers to reference the touchpoint where users first start using and interacting with an app or website. It’s purpose is to guide and educate new users about the product, going through aspects such as its benefits, features, and a basic guide on how to navigate around.

Research conducted by UserGuiding.com has shown that up to to 97% of companies say that good user onboarding is necessary for a company’s growth. So what exactly makes onboarding so important and why is it so highly prioritised amongst companies? This article will talk about the importance of onboarding as well as 5 key practices to create a strong and effective user onboarding experience.

2. Having a focus

With so many different categories of digital products nowadays, creating an onboarding session that matches the product’s functionality and userbase does wonder for user engagement. Onboarding can be categorised into three main types: benefits-oriented, function-oriented and progressive onboarding.

Focusing on one key aspect can allow onboarding features to better draw in their users. This can be achieved through looking at the user persona, user experience journey, gaining insights into what they want from the app. For example, a stock trading app would focus more on showcasing its functions as most of its users would already know what they are using the app for and are sifting around for one with the best features.

3. Show user progress

It can be easy for new users to get impatient or distracted during the onboarding phase. Besides ensuring that the process is concise and engaging, having progress bars or a task list can be very helpful in setting user expectations and letting them know which stage they are currently at. For example, if the user expects the task to be completed in 3 minutes but it actually takes more than that, they will not have a positive experience. Showing user progress also helps them to establish a logical flow and understand how the different features introduced are linked together.

4. Keep it engaging, fun, and casual

Although onboarding is necessary to teach new users about the app, most users are not looking to attend a lengthy lesson or lecture on it. It is better to show, don’t tell, keeping onboarding digestible, interactive, and fun for the users, making it more like an engaging activity instead. Some good practices are to add engaging graphics, interactive features for users to try out, and concise yet useful texts.

The example below uses bold colors, beautiful graphics, and engaging texts to help users easily understand its 3 key app functions and benefits.

Another example shows how they engage users by providing them with activities that users can interact with while onboarding, such as moving the cursor. It also breaks down their onboarding lessons into different parts so users save time by only picking the ones they need.

Slack uses simple yet effective popups to introduce their different functions and corresponding buttons, teaching users how to navigate through the actual app.

5. Bring in that WOW moment

With so many tasks and activities for users to try, remember to also celebrate their successes and emphasise the key moment where it finally clicks for them. The moment where the users successfully complete their tasks provides a great opportunity to establish a positive emotional connection with them. Celebrate their success and encourage them! Users that experience positive moments during their initial usage would have a higher chance of staying with the app.

Notice how MailChimp adopts a casual and friendly tone to speaks to its users at every step, encouraging their users as they successfully complete a task. This is a way of adding fun and positivity throughout the process.

Be it a website or mobile onboarding UX, the process should be a priority for companies hoping to improve profits and stand out from the competition. It is the first step of the customer journey and key to providing a good user experience. We hope that this article has provided better insights into the importance of onboarding in digital products and some ideas on how to better implement it.

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