The Biggest Mistakes in App User Onboarding

Experiencing on my own, I can note the importance of user onboarding strategy for the app, which experience should be user-focused first.

However, there are still products/services that can turn users off of them by causing the following user onboarding mistakes:

• Highlighting product features instead of the benefits:

Focusing onboarding efforts on showcasing product features fail to demonstrate how the product will solve the user’s problem. While the connection between how the features will solve a problem may be clear to the company, it’s not always so apparent for the user.

• Sending emails written like by a robot, not a person:

Both the email sender and its recipient are people. It’s reasonable, to make emails more humanistic by:

1. Using a real name in the sender field, people like knowing who they are talking to.
2. Sending the email from a person’s email address, not some no-reply address.
3. Adding personality, don’t be afraid to express yourself. Add a P. S. with some handcrafted text to sound original and unique.

• Providing no information to educate a new user:

Just because the user has begun using the product or service doesn’t mean they know everything about it. It is necessary to continue to educate users through new content. This will allow them to learn about the product/services without asking directly by call or via the support field.

• Having no WOW effect:

Use WOW effect and take advantage of it. Think through your onboarding process to make your users think: “Aha! So this is how it works! I do need it!”

If it is not happening, it means you need to take some measures to rework your onboarding strategy.

• Showing too much information at once:

Providing too many details at one time won’t help users to memorize everything about all the app features.

Remember about contextual onboarding with its principle of timeliness when tips come at the right moment.

Just think of it. It is better if you provide details step by step to walk your user through the familiarization process.

Well, I hope that you prefer learning from others’ mistakes rather than from your own.

If you want to create user-friendly app onboarding first, go throw your app onboarding process applying the information mentioned above point by point to see if you have any aspects that might need some improvements.