Introduction
The process of assisting new users in utilising your product to accomplish their objectives and, as a result, rapidly recognise its value is known as SaaS onboarding.
Customer attrition is still a problem for SaaS companies, even if they provide excellent products and customer support.
Facing customer churn isn’t just about dealing with a few leaving customers; it’s about handling the concerning numbers and amounts of customers exiting.
A poor platform experience is a major cause of customer attrition and is frequently the result of a subpar user adoption plan.
Bad intuitive interfaces and poor adoption strategies, such as neglecting to prioritise a smooth onboarding process, can unintentionally give customers the excuse to leave, since 62% of customers now base their purchase decisions on the overall experience.
With insights into the struggles of new users, strategies for building a winning onboarding experience, and the importance of in-app guidance and support, this blog provides actionable tips for any design agency or UI/UX focused design company to enhance their clients’ UI UX design for SaaS products.
The Struggles of New Users: Why Onboarding Matters
When users first start using a SaaS product, they often face a steep learning curve. Without guidance, they can feel overwhelmed and frustrated, which may lead them to give up on the platform.
This is where onboarding comes in. It serves as a guiding hand, helping users navigate through the complexities of the software in a structured and supportive manner. By breaking down the process into manageable steps, onboarding builds users’ confidence and empowers them to use the software effectively.
Moreover, a good onboarding experience creates a positive first impression and fosters trust and loyalty towards the product.
When users feel supported and valued during their initial interactions with the software, they’re more likely to stick around in the long run. Onboarding isn’t just about teaching users how to use the software—it’s about setting the stage for a successful and fulfilling relationship between the user and the product.
It ensures that users start their journey on the right foot and have the tools they need to succeed. In essence, onboarding is the foundation upon which user adoption and retention are built, making it an indispensable aspect of the overall user experience.
Building a Winning Onboarding Experience
Focus on User Needs:
Understanding the pain points and goals of your target audience is essential for designing an effective onboarding experience. Tailor the onboarding process to address specific user requirements and guide them towards achieving their objectives. By empathizing with users and anticipating their needs, you can create an onboarding journey that resonates with their motivations and helps them overcome challenges.
Clear Communication:
Communicate instructions, tips, and information concisely and clearly throughout the onboarding journey. Use language that resonates with users and avoids technical jargon that may confuse or alienate them. By prioritizing clarity and simplicity in your messaging, you can ensure that users understand how to use the product and feel confident in their abilities.
Seamless User Interface (UI):
Design an intuitive and user-friendly interface that simplifies navigation and reduces friction. Minimize the number of steps required to complete essential tasks and ensure consistency in design elements across the platform. By prioritizing ease of use and consistency in your UI design, you can create a seamless onboarding experience that guides users effortlessly through the product.
Engaging User Experience (UX):
Create interactive and engaging onboarding experiences that captivate users’ attention and encourage active participation. Incorporate animations, gamification elements, and multimedia content to make the onboarding process enjoyable and memorable. By making the onboarding experience engaging and interactive, you can keep users motivated and excited about exploring the product.
Personalization:
Tailor the onboarding experience to each user’s preferences, behaviors, and past interactions with the platform. Use data-driven insights to customize the onboarding journey and deliver personalized recommendations and guidance. By personalizing the onboarding experience, you can make users feel valued and increase their likelihood of continued engagement with the product.
Gradual Feature Introduction:
Avoid overwhelming users with a barrage of features and functionalities upfront. Instead, introduce features gradually as users progress through the onboarding process, allowing them to master each aspect of the platform at their own pace. By pacing the introduction of features, you can prevent information overload and ensure that users feel confident in their understanding of the product.
In-app Guidance and Support:
Lets understand this through an example
It is commonly known that Asana is an excellent project management tool. However, it can be challenging to learn, just like the majority of project management SaaS products. Because of this, Asana provides its users with a self-serve guide that is prepared to address any inquiries they might have.
The Asana Guide is the company’s centralised, fully searchable content hub for best practices designed to help teams become more proficient with the product. It is an expanding resource that offers a variety of instructional materials to assist teams with Asana onboarding.
Users can quickly identify themselves as “just getting started with Asana” or “helping my team learn Asana” on the Asana dedicated Search page, and then receive pertinent, contextual help outside of the app.
During the product adoption phase, one of the most difficult aspects of retention is user drop-off. To address common causes of user drop-off, Asana offers checklists, templates, webinar links, and detailed instructions. One excellent example of how Asana assists new users with product adoption is the brand’s considerate “Help your team adopt Asana” guide.
Asana’s Guide can also link colleagues to live Q&A sessions with trainers or self-paced online courses that take the fear out of implementation for those who have teammates who learn best by doing or by talking things through.
What Asana’s SaaS onboarding teaches you
Asana is aware that not all onboarding experiences are frictionless. Distracted users may exit the onboarding process momentarily or, worse, permanently. Asana uses straightforward prompts to encourage users to finish the onboarding flow.
A prompt (such as a team onboarding checklist embedded into an Asana adoption guide) can entice users to return to the app as active users in the event that they lose patience and navigate elsewhere on your product.
Whether a customer follows an Asana Tip to create their first in-app collaborative workflow or watches an Asana Lessons series as a team, Asana helps users return to their workspaces with fresh insights and reaffirmed confidence in their ability to navigate.
Celebrating Success:
Acknowledge and celebrate users’ achievements and milestones throughout the onboarding journey. Use positive reinforcement techniques such as congratulatory messages, badges, and rewards to motivate users and reinforce their progress.
Conclusion
To sum up, optimising outstanding onboarding experiences is essential to increasing SaaS product user adoption and reducing customer attrition. Design agencies and UI/UX design companies can empower their clients to create compelling onboarding experiences that drive user engagement and retention by emphasising user needs, clear communication, seamless UI, engaging UX, personalisation, gradual feature introduction, in-app guidance, and celebrating success. In addition to improving the user experience overall, investing in onboarding UX helps SaaS companies remain viable and successful over the long run.
