Guide to User Onboarding in SaaS Products
For Software as a Service (SaaS) products, user acquisition and retention are at the center. It would be unrealistic to expect to retain every user who faces your product because there will always be users that you cannot acquire as customers.
The reasons why the users churn vary. While some of those reasons are beyond your control, some of them are in your control.
We present you to one of those in your control: user onboarding.
While an excellent user onboarding experience minimizes the churned users, a mediocre or bad user onboarding causes you to lose many potential customers. At the end of this article, you will have a better understanding of why that is.
What Is User Onboarding?
User onboarding is the process by which the customers start to receive value from your product. In other words, user onboarding leads the customers to solve their problems with your product.
User onboarding is about presenting the product’s full potential so that the users can use the product effectively to solve their problems. While showing what your product is capable of, you also teach how to utilize the product and benefit from it.
A user onboarding is not always a short process. Depending on the complexity of your product, It can take up to a couple of months to adapt the users to the product to make sure they receive the product’s value entirely. However, even minor improvements on user onboarding have a positive impact on ROI.
Why Is User Onboarding Important?
User onboarding explains to users what the product is about and how it fulfills the users’ needs. Therefore, user onboarding has many responsibilities, such as leading the customers to buy the product, subscribe, and adopt the user to the product faster.
When the user onboarding is effective, the users understand the value of the product and how to resolve their issues via using it. Consequently, it helps your users to think your product is worth paying for.
Why Is User Onboarding Crucial for Your SaaS Business?
The reason why user onboarding is crucial for SaaS business is that poor user onboarding causes users to churn. Therefore, new customers cannot be acquired due to an unfulfilling user onboarding in a SaaS product. Considering there might be many options for your product, once the users go for the alternatives, they never return. In addition, SaaS products are sustained by monthly recurring revenue, so a fulfilling onboarding process is also important to keep the customers subscribed.
Therefore, a successful user onboarding is crucial to show the value of your product and convince the customers that it is worth paying for the next month.
How to Have a Good User Onboarding Experience?
To minimize the number of churned users, you have to focus on the shortcomings that cause you to lose potential users. In most cases, “not presenting a good user onboarding experience” is at the top of the list.
To prevent low retained users, it is important to provide excellent onboarding, as we have stated previously.
Here are some common elements that a good user onboarding has:
It shows the actual value of the product at the beginning
The customers understand whether they can solve their problems with this product or not right away. There should not be a false impression about the product because no one likes to be told lies. In other words, the product will lose trust because of having a value gap.
It shows how the product is utilized
You cannot hope the users would figure it out for themselves. It is not enough to show where each element in the application is. The onboarding should also explain how to use those elements and how they can benefit from them.
It is personal
Each user is different in the means of learning types, likings, needs, temperaments. While some users are visual learners, some others might be auditory learners. Or, the solutions they are hoping to find with your product may vary. Therefore, it is important not to treat users as they are alike. Instead, personalizing users’ journeys from the beginning of their onboarding process makes onboarding excellent.
It offers assistance 24/7
When the users have questions/problems with the product, they should be able to find help within the application immediately.
It is frictionless
A good onboarding process lacks distractions and unnecessary steps, so the users complete their sign-up process without spending vast energy and boredom.
KPIs and Metrics for User Onboarding
To decide whether your user onboarding operates well or not, you should measure user onboarding with KPIs and metrics. As a result, you should be able to make concrete decisions based on data rather than relying on your intuitions.
1)Completion Rate
It indicates the number of users who complete their onboarding process. To acquire high completion rates, the sign-up process should be frictionless and simple.
2)Completion Time
It indicates how much time it takes to complete the task for a user. This metric does not yield a direct conclusion because the time required to complete the onboarding might vary depending on the product. However, it is helpful to see a possible trend among the completion duration and tackle the issue.
3)Usage Time
It indicates how much the users use the product after they have accomplished the onboarding process. If there is a gradual decrease in the usage time, it might show that the users are distancing from the product, so some intervention is needed to invite them to the product.
4)Daily Active Users
It indicates the number of users who actively use the product daily. This metric should continuously increase for a SaaS product to thrive.
5)Churn Rate
It indicates how many potential users a SaaS product loses. There are several reasons why a user churns, and a poor user onboarding experience is among those reasons.
When the churn rate is high, it can be decided whether this is caused by bad user onboarding or not with the help of some other metrics, and consequently, the issue becomes solvable.
6)Time to Value
It indicates the time that passes for users to reach their Aha moment. Shorter time to value is desirable because it shows that users can better understand the product’s value sooner.
SaaS User Onboarding Checklist
So far, we have presented you with a general idea about how good user onboarding looks like and which KPIs and metrics to measure user onboarding. Now, it is time to review how a complete user onboarding flow resembles.
1)Greeting the Customers
When the users sign up, they deserve to receive a warm welcome message. The message might involve a thanking for choosing your product besides a welcome.
The welcome message should appear both in-app and as an email. The in-app welcome message is a great way to appreciate the empty states. Also, an automated email welcome message is a great tool to keep the interaction outside the application.
2)Presenting the First-Run Onboarding Flow
When the new customers sign up for the product, the onboarding flow should channel them until they reach an Aha moment. Aha moment is the eureka moment when the users understand the exact value of the SaaS product. Therefore, the onboarding process should be designed to lead the users to their Aha moment.
Besides choosing which Aha moment you want your users to experience, you should also decide which onboarding model you present to the users. Is the process going to be self-serve, low-touch, or high touch? To choose between those options, it is important to consider the complexity of your product. While the simple products are compatible with self-serve onboarding, more complicated products are more suitable for high-touch onboarding.
Also, you can benefit from some other components to show up through the onboarding process- such as checklists, product tours, in-app tutorials, progress bars, walkthroughs, chatbots- that you should decide based on your product’s needs.
3)Presenting Onboarding Elements Outside the Product
The user onboarding process does not only happens within the borders of the product. There are some other onboarding elements you can offer to the users outside the product. For example, you can offer an FAQ page, getting started guide, tutorial videos, webinars, or workshops so that the education process of the users goes on outside the product. This is also beneficial for sustaining the users’ involvement with the product.
4)Providing Customer Support Channels
The customers might experience any problem at any time. When they encounter such a problem, they should find help immediately. To offer instant help to the users, there are several elements that you can present as easy-to-access: live assistance, help desk software, and email address for support, links for relevant help pages.
🔥 Key Takeaways 🔥
👉User onboarding is the process when the users adopt the product ultimately.
👉Good user onboarding is essential for SaaS products because it increases the number of users who see the product’s value and, consequently, subscribe to the product.
👉 Some qualities make an onboarding good:
- It exhibits the value of the product at the beginning of onboarding.
- It navigates the users through the application.
- It is unique to every user.
- It offers assistance at any time.
- It leads customers to the end of the desired task without obstacles.
👉 There are several KPIs and metrics to measure whether an onboarding operates on the right track or not:
- Completion rate
- Completion time
- Usage time
- Daily active users
- Churn rate
- Time to value
👉 There are several components necessary for every user onboarding process:
- Welcome message,
- In-app elements for first-run flow,
- Outside the application elements,
- Customer support channels.
