What Is Onboarding and Why Is It Important?

Onboarding refers to the process of helping new users get acquainted with your website or app. It's all about providing a smooth transition so people feel at home from the get-go. 

Onboarding is critical because you only have one chance to make a good first impression. Do it right, and people will stick around to explore all you have to offer. But fail to properly welcome new users, and they may not come back at all.

Explain how your product can enrich people's lives or make their jobs easier. Help them get comfortable navigating the key features. And do it all with a friendly, helpful tone. Follow these best practices, and you'll turn new visitors into loyal users in no time.

Best Practices for Onboarding New Users

1) Keep It Simple

When creating an onboarding experience, keep it simple and straightforward. Don't overwhelm them with too much information at once. Focus on the key features and benefits. You can always provide more details and advanced tutorials later on.

2) Personalize the Experience

If possible, personalize the onboarding based on user attributes or behaviors. For example, show different onboarding content to new versus returning users. You can also detect the device or browser and adjust the experience accordingly. Personalization leads to higher engagement and satisfaction.

3) Make It Interactive

Interactive onboarding, like interactive product tours, helps users learn by doing. Let new users explore your product hands-on with guidance. They can tap through actual product screens while learning about key features. This approach is very engaging and helps users retain more information.

4) Provide Incentives to Complete Onboarding

Incentives motivate new users to complete the onboarding process. You might offer a discount, free trial extension, or other rewards for finishing the onboarding. Without incentives, many users may exit the onboarding experience prematurely and miss out on key education.

5) Track and Optimize

Continuously track how new users interact with your onboarding experience. See where they spend the most time and what causes them to exit. Then optimize the flow to better match user needs and streamline the process. Well-optimized onboarding leads to higher activation and retention rates.

Ways to Onboard Users: Checklists, Tours, Walkthroughs, and More

1) Checklists

Checklists are one of the simplest ways to onboard new users. Provide a list of steps, in order, that walk the user through getting started with your product. For example, have them create an account, upload their profile photo, fill in their bio, and explore some of the key features. The checklist gives the user concrete next steps to follow so they feel guided and accomplished.

2) Onboarding Tours

For a more interactive experience, create an onboarding tour. Use screens and modals to highlight key parts of your interface and show the user how to use them. For example, have a modal pop up when the user first logs in that spotlights the main propositions of your product. Let them click through the tour at their own pace. Onboarding tours are very effective at pointing out must-see features.

3) Walkthroughs

If your product has a lot of functionality or complexity, an in-depth walkthrough may be needed. These are multi-step, guided experiences using tooltips that literally walk the new user through your product, feature by feature. You can include images, videos, interactive demos, and "try it yourself" moments. For example, have a walkthrough for setting up a profile, adding money to a wallet, etc.

Using a combination of these methods—checklists to show the key steps, tours to highlight important features, and walkthroughs for streamlining—will help onboard your users in a simple yet impactful way. Nudge helps you meet them at their level of complexity and guide them into becoming fully onboarded, activated members of your product.