User onboarding is firstly about teaching users how they can use an application or product to achieve success at a faster rate. It is also focused on helping them reach the moment of activation and comprehend the product’s value. Optimal user onboarding is much more than getting users into your product quickly. It is also about directing them to the functions and features that can help them find solutions to their problems. It is also about teaching them how to find value in the shortest possible time. It is an integral part of pleasant UX.

Explore the latest trends in user onboardingand what they can mean for your business.

There are many advantages of user onboarding software. Some of the most notable ones include the following:

• Increased Engagement Levels: It helps in proving your application’s value instantly by demonstrating the benefits and features.

• Reduced Churn Rate: It costs much less to retain your existing customers than acquiring new ones. An optimal onboarding process can help your customers master your application or product.

• Improved Product Adoption: It also helps retain your users because they become habituated to your application. They are less likely to choose a competitorproduct even when it has a few more new features.

Another important benefitis reduction in customer support costs. It is also important to know that designing effective user onboarding processes is much easier and simpler than you may have thought.

Latest Trends

Some of the biggest current trends that are shaping and re-shaping this area of product implementation are as follows:

Once your user onboarding flow has been mapped, it will become easier to improve it. This is the reason this has become a widespread trend in recent times. 

• Find out if there are steps that are not required during the first session

• Determine the ways your new users can reach their ‘wow’ moment at the earliest

• Steps that may need some kind of action can be seen as hurdles that they need to go around

Look at how real users to through your onboarding to determine which steps are creating problems. 

Your product may provide a value proposition that seems to be easy to understand and personable, but only for a short moment. If this perfect value proposition leads to a poor experience, such as the subscription or sign-up process, onboarding is going to get adversely affected. 

It is not always possible to eliminate user friction, but better design can be helpful in overcoming such challenges and can encourage more subscriptions or sign-ups.  Some of the reasons user frictioncan be experiencedinclude:

• Landing pages being too complicated or long

• The brand may not be able to send out trust signals

• There may be cognitive dissonance, causing lack of alignment between the promotional messages and the landing pages

The new trend is to overcome user friction by creating a balance between promotional goals and user flow design. Keeping things simple is an effective strategy in this regard.

70% of companies claim that it is their top priority for the year to improve onboarding. A quarter have indicated that they seek to develop a highly focused high-tech or self-service model. More and more companies that desire to better scale their onboarding are resorting to automatingcertain areas. This helps them find out what works best for their users and then they expand from there. 

The onboardingstage is where the first and most important impressions are made. If you want to succeed, avoid making onboarding to be focused on the product but on the customer.