What is user onboarding?
User onboarding is the process of getting a new user from their first session to the point where they get value from the product on their own. It covers account setup, the first valuable action, and the guidance that carries a user through both.
What user onboarding covers
In a user's first sessions they set up an account and whatever configuration the product needs before it is useful, such as connecting a data source or inviting a teammate. They take the first valuable action, the one that shows them what the product is for. And they learn enough of the interface to keep going on their own. Onboarding is whatever guidance the product provides across those steps.
productonboarding.com, a site we also run, has a longer primer at what is product onboarding that goes through each stage with examples from real products.
Different types of user onboarding
Product tours show the interface in a fixed sequence on first login. Checklists list the setup steps and track which ones are done. Empty states explain what a screen will contain once the user has added something. Walkthroughs take the user through a real task one step at a time. Concierge onboarding, where a person does it with the user on a call, covers high-value accounts. In-product assistants answer questions and complete tasks as the user goes.
Products usually combine several of these. The mix depends on how much setup is required, how varied the users are, and how often the product changes.
How user onboarding is measured
Activation rate, the share of new users who reach the first valuable action within a set window, is the number to watch. Time to value measures how long that takes. Completion rate for a checklist tells you whether users are getting through the setup steps. Completion rate for a tour tells you less, because a user can click through a tour without doing anything, and a high tour completion rate next to a low activation rate means the tour is pointed at the wrong thing.
Where onboarding goes wrong
Front-loading is showing the user everything before they have done anything. One size fits all is the same tour for an admin and a viewer. Staleness is a tour built in March that points at a button removed in June, and it is the failure that grows with time, because each release adds a little more of it. We put a price on the maintenance side of scripted onboarding in static onboarding tours break.
How Frigade fits
Frigade replaces the onboarding tour with an assistant that already knows the product. A new user asks what they need on the screen where they need it and gets the answer and the action. None of that is scripted, so there is no tour to rebuild when the product changes, and a user who skips the introduction loses nothing.
Common questions
- What is the difference between user onboarding and customer onboarding?
- Customer onboarding usually refers to the account level: contracts, implementation, training, and a customer success manager. User onboarding is what happens to each individual person when they first open the product. In a single-user self-serve product the two are close to the same thing. In an enterprise product, customer onboarding can be finished while most of the users have never logged in.
- How long should user onboarding take?
- As long as it takes to reach the first valuable action, and no longer. Good onboarding gets out of the way once the user has done the thing they signed up to do, and answers further questions as they come up rather than front-loading them.
- Product adoptionProduct adoption is the process by which a user goes from signing up for a product to using it as a regular part of their work. It is measured as the share of new users who reach a defined activation milestone and keep coming back, rather than as raw signups or logins.
- Product tourA product tour is a scripted sequence of in-app steps, usually tooltips or modals, that introduces a new user to a product's interface. Most tours are shown on first login and follow a fixed order regardless of what the user came to do.
- Onboarding checklistAn onboarding checklist is a short, visible list of the setup steps a new user needs to complete before a product becomes useful, shown inside the product and ticked off as each step is done. It gives a new user a to-do list to work through at their own pace instead of a scripted tour to sit through.
- In-app guidanceIn-app guidance is help delivered inside the product interface, where the user is working, instead of in a separate help center, email, or support ticket. It includes tooltips, walkthroughs, checklists, contextual hints, and in-product assistants that answer questions and complete tasks.