In marketing and product development, onboarding refers to the process of introducing a new user to a product or service and guiding them through the initial steps of using it. The goal of onboarding is to help users understand the product or service's value and encourage them to engage with it more deeply, leading to increased user retention, satisfaction, and user lifetime value (LTV). This can include tutorials, guided tours, welcome messages, and other resources designed to make the user's first experience with the product as smooth and intuitive as possible.
Onboarding Defined
How to Use it in a Sentence
An onboarding process can be used to help earn essential app permissions, improve key feature adoption, promote an app's value, educate users, and ultimately boost user retention during the critical period after download.
Common FAQs
Effective onboarding can increase user retention, engagement, and satisfaction by helping users understand the product or service's value and how to use it effectively. Studies show that apps with strong onboarding processes have 50% higher retention rates after the first month. In a survey by SurveyMonkey, 77% of users said that an app's onboarding process is important for determining whether they will continue using it.
Some best practices for onboarding include keeping the process simple and intuitive, providing clear instructions and guidance, and offering incentives or rewards for completing onboarding tasks.
It's also important to ensure the onboarding strategy you use fits your app experience and goals. Check out our article on how to build an effective onboarding process to learn proven onboarding approaches, actionable tips, and how to determine the best strategy for your app.
Tracking user engagement and retention metrics, analyzing user feedback and behavior, and conducting user surveys or A/B testing can help you understand what's working and identify areas for improvement.
Most onboarding mistakes are actually very intuitive and straightforward to solve once you're aware of them. The most common onboarding mistakes involve overwhelming users with too much information or too many tasks, making the process too complex or confusing, and not providing enough support or feedback along the way. User messaging tools can be used to build an effective onboarding process and provide essential communication touchpoints at pivotal moments in their user journey.
User messaging can be a powerful tool to help with onboarding by providing guidance, feedback, and encouragement to new users as they navigate through the app.
Some key messaging use cases include:
- Orientation: Messaging can help users understand the purpose and value of the app, as well as its features and functionality. This can be done through targeted welcome messages, tooltips, or interactive tutorials.
- Guidance: In-app messages can guide users through the app, highlighting important features or steps and providing helpful tips along the way. For example, a messaging campaign could highlight the benefits of creating a profile, show how and why to opt into push notifications, or explain how to access the help center.
- Feedback: Messaging channels like email and in-app messages can be used to gather feedback from users during onboarding, helping to identify pain points and areas of confusion. This feedback can then be used to improve the onboarding experience and overall app design.
- Engagement: Finally, messaging can be used to encourage engagement and drive retention during the onboarding process. By providing timely reminders, incentives, or personalized content, messaging can help users establish a habit of using the app regularly.
Overall, user messaging can be a powerful tool to help streamline the onboarding process, increase engagement and retention, and ultimately drive the success of the app.
OneSignal's in-app messaging tool makes creating and implementing an onboarding flow easy without writing any code. Our powerful platform allows you to manage all your user communication from one intuitive dashboard, so you can automate onboarding emails, push notifications, and in-app messages to scale with your user base. Learn more about why we're the preferred solution for most apps today.