Once you have tempted users to download your mobile app, it’s important to make them familiar with your app with a good onboarding experience. Your immediate question would be – how do I keep them engaged and make them understand the simple workflow of the app navigation? Once you make a striking first impression on fresh users, it becomes natural to make them feel good about your app.
But what is this onboarding? It is the process by which we make a new user familiar with the app. The main purpose of these onboarding screens is to let the user walk through the app and demonstrate the different features with simplest of introduction.
Since the onboarding screens are the first set of graphical elements which users interact with, it’s imperative that they set standards to what a user expects out of an app. So a developer must take care when creating the product and give sufficient time for development to evaluate whether onboarding is necessary for the app, and if so, find out the best way to do it.
Mobile analytical research has shown that 22% of downloaded apps are only used once. This is why exceptional first-time user experience is crucial for the viability of the app.
Without any guidance on the usage of your app, many users can feel lost in a new space without any purpose or direction. They don’t understand what they’re supposed to be doing with your app sometimes.
If you don’t captivate your new audience from the time they arrive and guide them on their starting journey through app, they won’t understand that the profit your provide outweighs the cost – their time and effort to take part in this endeavor – and as a result, they get confused and delete the app. Worse than that, they leave negative feedback and tell their friends not to bother downloading your app either.
The most dominant example of user onboarding is to first launch a tutorial to walk your users through the app’s features and functionality.
Onboarding is the process by which you can solve the user’s cold-start problem – a blank profile, an unfamiliar interface, confused state of “what do I do now?”. Many websites and apps force users to start from scratch and build up content over time. Social apps are more tending to this approach because much of their innovation is derived from one-to-one interactions and user generated content.
Why it is needed
Every app is unique when it comes to what it does, how it does and who uses it. These subtle changes make onboarding a reliable, practical and user-friendly feature in certain instances.
As an app developer, you may be asking yourself when you need an onboarding process. Most often this will happen when your app works differently from the way your user perceives it. This happens a lot on mobile – you may be introducing a fun and interactive feature, like swiping to see a hidden item or you may be introducing enhancements that users have never seen before.
What you need to do is to make it easy for your user and get him use your product easily within a short span of time. It’s crucial as emphasized earlier to make a first impression and carefully guide your users within your product.
How to do it flawlessly
Possible the simplest way to develop your own onboarding skills is to learn from the big brands. Take a few minutes and observe how popular sites are doing it.
Notice what techniques they are using. Which apps or sites use social sign-ins and which don’t? How secure you feel during each sign-up? How is the user experience of the screens? By taking some notes, you’ll be able to see the UX strategy that the developers of those sites or apps have gone to grab user’s attention.
Make an easy sign-up process
See that the sign-up is smooth. Don’t bother your first-time users with long screens and detailed information to sign-up for your app. Follow the KISS standards. Otherwise, you will be losing customers.
Think about the data you need to collect from the users – the basics. It should be like a familiar sign-up process. Give helpful text in understanding the text-fields you have put up in the sign-up fields.
You can use social logins to make the user skip the boredom of sign-ups. By letting them create an account with an existing social profile from LinkedIn, Facebook or Twitter you will have a lot to gain from your users.
Use a good call to action button
Competition is tough and it doesn’t matter what kind of app you are designing, the sure thing is that you will have competition and if you don’t design the app well, the users will redirect their attention towards apps that will deliver a better user experience. This is why you will have to take care even of the smallest element, but especially of the important ones, like the call to action, for example.
Put into your call to action button a copy that will determine the users to use your app and not your competitor’s. Try to use a concise tagline near the call to action button and respect the basic call to action guidelines.
Have a clear path to completion
The more transparency you provide to a user before he registers, the more successful you are. Offering users a structured set of steps to guide through helps reduce the so called bounce rates.
Don’t make it time consuming for the users
The user’s time is invaluable. The time taken to fill information on your registration page should be minimal and make use of shortcuts. Many times, users are uncomfortable sharing mobile numbers and personal data. Social logins are much appreciated and are a great time saver.
Generate value before asking the user something
If you expect a user to register, you need to provide some benefits first. Don’t splash a register page from the start. First, give a taste of your app’s functionalities and make it worth for the the user to register in order to get more of your app.
Deliver a great experience to the user
After putting a lot of effort to instruct the user on how to use your app, it would be foolish of you not to deliver a great experience continuously. There are a great deal of apps who go through the trouble of onboarding users only to offer them lousy experience afterwards. This is a waste of resources and you should pay attention to it.
Try to deliver a great user experience from the start and you will only have to gain from this. Half measures are a quick way to create a mediocre app. Plan from the start what your users can get from you and what you can get in return as well.
Use the power of referrals
Make sure the referral programs are made a key strategy for your business expansion.
During the sign up process itself you should make it available for your users to invite contacts to join as well, in return for various benefits. Think of a form of payment within the app in the form of a few premium services for the users who refer others.
If the users are not keen in getting their contacts, you should make them easy to share and tweet about your product with their friends. The extra benefit of a referral step in the onboarding process is that it goes back to your growth funnel.
Ending thoughts – Test everything
Getting the onboarding experience correct on the first try is not that easy. Let the beta testers have a taste of your app and come with suggestions. They might see a few things that you are not even thinking of.
You will definitely like these articles
Source: http://ift.tt/1qEb2dR
No comments:
Post a Comment