Better Onboarding: Effective Strategies for Guiding New Users

A Book Apart #35

by Krystal Higgins

When users try your product or service for the first time, what encourages them to come back? Onboarding can make the difference between abandoned accounts and devoted use-if we design it as a holistic, ongoing process.




Krystal Higgins demonstrates how the best onboarding experiences guide people as they interact, helping them follow their own path to success. Gain practical strategies and techniques for designing effective guidance, whether you're working through a redesign, launching new features, rolling out service updates, or welcoming back returning users. Set aside the tutorials, manuals, and intrusive instructions of the past, and learn how to use guided interaction to help users find their way-and get value out of every step.




THIS BOOK

How to effectively greet, engage, and retain customersBest practices for mapping users' onboarding journeys from start to finishBringing research, content, design, and functionality together to support new usersSteps for breaking down onboarding actions for more efficient implementationTechniques for embedding guidance in the context of the full product experience

Genres: Design, Business, Nonfiction

193 pages, Kindle Edition

Published May 11, 2021

Reviews

[Allison · Rating 5 out of 5]

Definitely read this if you’re creating any kind of onboarding experience. Chock full of helpful information and gets directly to what you need to know without anything extra.

[Aline · Rating 4 out of 5]

Hyper intéressant !
Un livre que j'ai clairement lu seulement parce que j'en avais besoin sur le coup - comme le lire la si bien dit ...

Un plaisir de l'avoir lu en anglais - ce qui me donne envie de maintenant lire davantage en anglais

[Daeus · Rating 4 out of 5]

Very useful overview of user product onboarding, for folks who work in the tech product space. Great framing and useful examples.

Quotes
- "But onboarding isn't a single moment, or  single feature, or a single flow. It's the process that connects many activities, over time, to bridge the gap between trying a new product and becoming a core user of it. Tutorials, videos  setup flows, slideshows, and sign-up flows may all be part of that journey, but none alone are the journey."
- "... its a compliment if a player [of plants vs zombies] says they didn't notice the game had a tutorial."
- "Research and case studies have showed us we can't lecture our new users up front with passive instruction, but we also can't case then adrift, leaving them to sort everything out by themselves [unsupported immersion]. Instead, we need to weave guidance into the key interactions of our products so new users can immerse themselves in our experience, and have the support they need to be successful. I call this approach guided interaction."
- "The end state of onboarding is the point at which users are doing the activities that make them part of your core user base."

[Milana Stanic · Rating 5 out of 5]

As is with all abookapart books this is more of a handbook that is not required to be read cover to cover, with each chapter working on its own. I do recommend reading it cover to cover because, even though I was aware of the best practices it opened my eyes to the background behind them and provided context for mixing them up. Which is equally important when you are planning the process. It will be different for every app and every company but the sheer myriad of examples is providing a glimpse into the successful implementations which is easy to build upon.

It can be read in an afternoon and is totally worth the effort.

[Nathan · Rating 4 out of 5]

4.5. Very high production as expected from A Book Apart. A seemingly short read but dense with advice that has already had an impact on how I design. This is exactly what I love about these books. They are a very affordable design education.

However, despite the point of this series being its brevity, I would have enjoyed more suggestions and examples throughout the middle sections on guided interaction. More demonstrations of bad practices would also be desirable. It’s as useful to learn what doesn’t work as well as what does.

[Jacklynn · Rating 5 out of 5]

Practical information and tools with lots of examples! A helpful change of perspective of thinking about the problem space. Lots of information and research that could help you could advocate for more onboarding and use education attention/care to your team too!

[Jørgen · Rating 5 out of 5]

As a software designer, this book is already adding value to my day-to-day work. Higgins gives you tools to analyze your users' onboarding journeys, thoroughly explains the pros and cons of a wide range of onboarding techniques and strategies, and guides you from the beginning ("aligning your team") to the end ("presenting guidance") and beyond ("scaling onboarding").

I especially find myself returning to chapter 5, Presenting Guidance. She gives a fantastic run-through of the various ways you can provide users with Guided Interaction (the key to better onboarding, according to Higgins). Product Design can improve onboarding through affordances, information architecture, microcopy, animations, help content, and presets. If you can improve onboarding through changes to the product alone, you are on the right path. In addition, she discusses the Empty State, a hierarchical overview of Additive Guidance Patterns, and onboarding through external channels, like email and text messages.

Her describing onboarding as a prolonged journey, rather than just a first-time experience, is also another key takeaway.

All in all, for me this book is now a valuable analytical tool, a workbook, and a source of inspiration.

[Nico · Rating 4 out of 5]

As a digital product designer, I read countless books early in my career, always on the hunt for fresh insights. But in recent years, it’s been increasingly difficult to find books that truly offer new perspectives, techniques, or ideas that I can bring into my day-to-day work.

Better Onboarding was a happy exception.

I picked it up while working on an onboarding initiative at my current company, and it turned out to be incredibly helpful, not only in guiding the project, but in shifting the way I approach onboarding as a design challenge. It helped me adapt my product design mindset to a topic we often overlook, but one that deeply affects user experience and retention.

[Mike Zornek]

Got about halfway through. Did not grab me and so moving on. May return if I am actively working on an onboarding project but for now was not aligned with what I want to read.

[Daniel Noventa · Rating 5 out of 5]

Delightful surprise in user experience insights beyond the scope of User onboarding.

[Juan · Rating 4 out of 5]

Todo lo que se necesita saber para poner en práctica, en un libro lleno de detalles que facilitan su uso.