User onboarding

Onboarding covers everything between creating an account and the first result: the fields asked for at sign-up, the setup the product cannot work without, the empty screens before there is any data, and the help offered along the way. In a team product it happens more than once. The admin who signs up meets one version, and a colleague who arrives from an invitation weeks later meets another, in an account someone else has configured.

Nielsen Norman Group sorts onboarding into three kinds: feature promotion, customisation, and instructions such as tutorials and walkthroughs. Its research found that deck-of-cards tutorials did not improve task performance. It recommends help that appears at the step where it is needed and can be dismissed and found again.

A new user decides early whether a product is worth the effort. A setup that asks for everything up front, or makes an optional step look required, loses people before they have seen anything the product can do. A short route to the first result means fewer setup questions for support. It also gives the team one event to measure: how many new accounts reach that result, and how long it takes them.

When we audit or redesign setup, we treat it as one task, from wherever people arrive to their first result. We test it in the states people arrive in: a valid invitation, an expired one, a link opened while signed in to another account, an empty account, and someone who leaves halfway and comes back.

We separate what the first task needs from what can wait, mark prerequisites apart from optional steps so neither passes for the other, and check that unfamiliar terms are explained where they appear. Help goes at the step it explains, and we check that someone can dismiss it, return to the task and find it again.

Say a reporting product asks new admins for company size, role, team members and a data source before it shows them anything. Only the data source is needed for the first report. The redesign keeps that one step, shows the import’s progress on screen and by email, and opens on a first report built from the admin’s own data. The invitation to colleagues moves to after that report, when the admin has something to show them.