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Making mistakes is one of the quickest paths to knowledge. But there is a faster route: learning from other people’s mistakes. When it comes to user onboarding, knowing what not to do will give you a huge advantage.
So, let’s take a look at the 10 most common SaaS user onboarding mistakes and how you can solve them with an onboarding solution like Usetiful.
Mistake #1: Overly general onboarding
Some products are so simple and intuitive that even a child can pick them up straight away. However, in most scenarios, your users are coming at your problem with a diverse range of needs, experiences, and goals.
If your onboarding is too general, it’s hard to engage all your users. Furthermore, if you can’t communicate the value of your product to each individual, they’re probably going to churn quickly.
Solution: The solution to overly general onboarding is user segmentation. If you collect the right information from your users, you can segment tours based on job role, use case, company size, and so on. Then, you can personalize your onboarding content to meet the needs of each user and underline why your product is the solution for their pain points.
For extra points, you can promote specific product features to users based on their needs. It helps them understand and get value from your product immediately. Then, they can fall in love with your other features in time.
Mistake #2: Information overload
One of the worst mistakes you can make during onboarding is to dump a load of information on your users. If they’re completely overwhelmed, they won’t remember much, and the excessive content will act as a barrier that stops them from achieving their goals with your product.
Instead, user onboarding content should be brief and to the point. Remember, the goal is to give users just enough information so they can use the product confidently. You want to guide rather than lecture your user.
Solution: Focus on the key features or use cases for your product. Boil it down to the most essential information and break it down into bite-sized chunks. Checklists are a great way to handle more complex onboarding flows. For example, you can build a short, punchy product tour for each feature.
Otherwise, progressive disclosure is the best bet here. Tease out information gradually, supported by tooltips and hotspot beacons for a bit of unobtrusive knowledge sharing.
If you need some onboarding inspiration, take a leaf out of Slack’s book. Their onboarding flow is a masterclass in simplicity. Read this article to see how it's done.
Mistake #3: Complex signup processes
Signing up or creating an account for a product should be as frictionless as possible. And yet, too many software solutions place barriers in the way of their users.
While capturing zero and first-party data is a big priority in the post-cookie world, any additional onboarding steps (like asking for excessive information) can harm adoption. Striking the right balance is essential.
Solution: The best onboarding flows are streamlined and focus on pushing the user toward the value of your product. So, make account creation simple, and, where possible, offer low-friction options like social logins.
Implementing progressive profiling is another good solution for businesses that need user data to deliver on the promise of their product. If that sounds like your product, only ask for the minimum amount of information and request more when your user is comfortable with your product.
Mistake #4: Not funneling toward the aha moment
The aha moment is a crucial onboarding junction where your user understands the value of your product and how it can make their life easy. It’s a pivotal moment that the best onboarding flows use as their focus point. However, too often, user onboarding content is messy and directionless and overly concerned with promoting a wide amount of features.
Solution: Your onboarding flow should gently guide your users toward realizing the core value proposition of your product. Now, there are two primary ways that you can do this.
Value-driven onboarding focuses on the key features or actions that demonstrate why your product is special. It prioritizes the outcomes and results that are possible with your solution rather than functionality.
The other way you can funnel toward the aha moment is through personalization. That means delivering dynamic onboarding content based on each user segment's particular goals within your product, which could be saving time, reducing costs, hitting new productivity heights, or more.
The idea here is that there are certain patterns that lead to long-term, loyal users. Cut away all the fat and offer them the quickest path to realizing how your product can solve their problems. The rest can follow later.
Mistake #5: Failure to measure onboarding success
If you want to know if your onboarding content is achieving its goals, you need objective metrics to track and measure. Without these benchmarks, it’s really hard to know what changes or alterations are guiding you in the right direction — or which are leading you astray.
So, if you want to know where you’re having successes or failures, ensure you connect some metrics to your onboarding efforts.
Solution: You can avoid this problem with a few simple steps.
Firstly, establish clear goals for your onboarding, such as user retention, user satisfaction, time to value, feature adoption, or whatever is relevant. Then, use your analytics tools to track users' behaviors. You can even A/B test different onboarding flows to see which has the most impact.
From there, just keep measuring and experimenting. Analyze the data you collect and look for positive patterns or insights. When you refine your approach with this information, you can combine intuition with data-driven insights.
Mistake #6: Lengthy, complex product tours
Product tours help users understand what your solution can do for them. Instead of reading a manual or watching a tutorial, you users can fast-track their product adoption in an engaging manner. However, if your product tour is too long or too complex, it defeats the purpose.
There are two big risks here:
Users become bored.
Users exit the product tour without acquiring the necessary information to use your product.
In both scenarios, the user is less likely to use or return to your product, and they might even develop bad feelings about your brand.
Solution: The only solution to this problem is to keep your product tours tight and helpful. Try to whittle your tours down to the most helpful information. If your product is complex, break your tours down into a checklist.
Finally, a good onboarding solution offers plenty of different approaches, such as tooltips, hotspot beacons, and in-app widgets that direct users to knowledge base articles. So, mix it up and provide contextual help, and your product tours won’t be dull.
Mistake #7: Not getting feedback
The biggest mistake any SaaS team can make is not getting feedback. That’s true for the usability of the product and for any onboarding flows they employ. Your users are the source of rich and varied insights about their onboarding experience. There is really no excuse for leaving this resource untapped.
So, if you want to make your onboarding as good as possible, your ears are your greatest asset.
Solution: Getting precious onboarding feedback doesn’t have to be complicated. For starters, you can implement in-app surveys within your product via Usetiful, allowing you to get feedback right after users experience your onboarding. These surveys allow your users to rate your overall onboarding and highlight any problems they’ve encountered.
Additionally, you can always reach out to new or existing users and ask them for their thoughts. If you want to get granular, you could target users who don’t use particular features and find the reasons why. If it’s because they find them too complex, then it could be a sign that your onboarding content needs more work.
Final thoughts
While following user onboarding best practices is a great way to get a source of inspiration, you can learn just as much by figuring out what not to do. If you recognize any of these common mistakes in your own user onboarding flows, the solution is right there in front of you.
If you need an onboarding solution that does it all, start for free with Usetiful today.