A study by Appcues finds that 50% of user retention can be increased with an effective app onboarding experience. Onboarding is the process of introducing new users to the app and explaining app navigation. Simplifies usability and offers a welcome note.
Creating a smooth onboarding process requires proper brainstorming. Much of it lies in behavioral science analysis.
Sounds complicated? We have made it easier for you. As a trusted mobile app development company, we have taken it upon ourselves to come up with some best practices for designing an engaging and flawless app onboarding experience. Read the blog till the end to find out everything about it.
Improve your app onboarding experience: a detailed outline
Enable personalization
If your app is aimed at a broad audience (say, from different parts of the world) or contains numerous aspects, you may want to have people select their preference. For example, they can select their preferred language or the items they are interested in.
Let's say yours is a music app that contains different genres and popular songs from different places. Allowing users to choose their favorite genres will help them personalize the feed.
Through this element of incorporation, you can also become rich. It will help you collect user data and get an idea of your audience's preferences. You can figure out what aspect of your app your audience is most interested in, what your users' preferences are, etc. Later, if you consider hiring professional digital marketing services, you can use these insights to attract more audience.
Simplify the process
Onboarding is the process of introducing people to your app. If it's complex in itself, people will just jump. To avoid such a scenario, it is highly recommended to keep your app onboarding process simple.
Make sure the process can be completed within one minute; yes, it should be that simple!
Collect only useful data
In the first pointer, we mentioned how the app onboarding process helps you collect user data, but don't go overboard. Make sure your app collects only useful data. For example, if yours is a photo editing app, you can request access to a camera at the beginning, but requesting users' location is irrelevant.
It can also include additional access, such as logging into the social network later, when users have finished editing their photo, but the onboarding process doesn't need to introduce that.
Let them opt out
Today's tech-savvy users are often familiar with the features and functionalities of applications. Therefore, they may not be interested in wasting time on the onboarding process and dive right into the application.
Therefore, you can include a skip button so that users can easily opt out of the onboarding process.
Promote activity
Passively showing how your app works may not be ideal during onboarding. Instead, encourage user activity by allowing them to interact with your app from the beginning.
For example, the app may prompt users to drag an item, swipe a feature, tap an option, etc. It will give them a hands-on introductory experience to the app. This also helps improve user engagement.
eliminate friction
The onboarding process should be as simple as possible. Even signing up is an introductory element and can be considered part of onboarding.
If the registration procedure takes a lot of time and effort on the part of the users, they may invariably bounce. Try optimizing your app with a single tap, sign up with social media/mail login credentials or OTP verification. Your goal should be to deliver a seamless user experience from the start.
Indicate progress
Today's users are impatient, let's get that straight. The last thing they would want is to wait a long time before they can get started. A progress bar indicating how many steps remain to complete the onboarding process will encourage them to stay engaged.
Many apps use dots to indicate progress at the bottom of the screen. You can also try it for your application.
A/B testing
The best way to find out what attracts your users the most is to listen to them. This is why mobile app development services experts recommend A/B testing as the optimal way to make any changes to the app.
It will help you discover which variation generates the most user engagement, whether they find the onboarding process easy, and more. You can also monitor user activities on your app. If you find that most of them are overwhelmed at any point, consider showing a tutorial on onboarding steps.
While A/B testing is a great way to analyze user preferences, you can learn more about how to track user behavior in your app here.
Embrace multiple channels
We know that the onboarding process is specifically about your application, but you can always use additional channels to support it. For example, welcome emails, in-app messages, push notifications, etc. They will be great plugins to introduce users to your app.
However, be sure not to overwhelm people with lots of messages or push notifications.
