12 Companies Show You How To Perfect Your Onboarding UX

Last updated on June 10th, 2023

Minh Saggers

The need for effective UX Onboarding is essential for your company's
reputation and growth. In this roundup you will learn valuable advice from
companies that have tried and tested different approaches to achieve the best
onboarding UX.

Essential read: The One Simple Way to Reduce Customer Churn
Rate?
Netflix

Also see: Correct Your Positioning To Make Onboarding
Work

1. Prodpad created a magically extending free trial and saw speedy sign ups

Prodpad began with halving their trial period to 14 days — this doubled their
conversion rate.

Then they had a new idea….

‘’So what if we offered 7-day trial…but the more you use ProdPad, the longer
your trial becomes?’’

In doing this they found that by the end of the trial users knew their way
around Propad and were ready to use it — woalah their work is done!

mockups-600x450

2. Proposify created a guided tour of the entire workflow

‘We already know that users who send a proposal during their trial are 2x more
likely to convert to a paid account.

And what we’re finding is that a user who completes our new tutorial is 3x
more likely to send a proposal, and those who complete it are 7x more likely
to become a paying customer.’

3. For Drift, ease of use and low effort got their users raving

‘We asked ourselves.. “How can we make sure each step (no matter how many
there are) has such a low threshold of effort that users will fly through it?’

Have you ever onboarded a TOUGH non-tech user?

cat_type

Less technical users need one to one onboarding.

They'll spend a 30 minute call asking you about basic features.

They'll struggle to install screen sharing if you ask them.

What if you could instantly, without downloads, see what they see AND
click for them?

Show users your website like never before using
co-browsing

4. Uber focus on mobile onboarding to retain their users

Studies have recently found that 51.2% of people use a mobile or tablet to
access the internet compared to 48.7% of desktop users.

The need for excellent mobile design is essential now more than ever.

Uber are ahead of the game with a new an improved streamlined design which
allows their users to navigate their way around effortlessly.

‘We simplified the core design of the information collection process, leading
to reduced cognitive overload and improved overall UX’

5. Darvinder Kochhar helped Fomo with their onboarding by putting a

creative spin on things

He carried out analysis on why Fomo saw a drop in retention and onboarding
during the sign up process.

‘Fomo is a SaaS platform which helps eCommerce platforms improve their
conversion rates by using the concept of Fear Of Missing Out.

I helped them by leading a UX Design project to improve upon their onboarding
flow and fix other ux related issues I found along the way.’

6. UX expert Sarah Leigh is WalkMe’s secret weapon for success

‘Feedback is probably the most important aspect of creating great
UX. We talk to our
customers often to ask them about their experiences, in addition to performing
usability testing for all our new features.’

7. Wistia humanised onboarding with a user video experience

‘After a month, we pulled the data. Our new video had increased our main
metric by 30%. Holy smokes. We were thrilled.

We ran the numbers through a statistical significance calculator and shared
high-fives after we saw the numbers were valid.’

8. Should that feature be in the onboarding experience? [Craig

Morrison](https://usabilityhour.com/hey-im-craig/) reflects on UX mistakes.

‘You can apply UX best practices, and build your design to the best of your
ability, but you’ll never get it right on the first try.’

‘Positive user experiences lead to increased word of mouth, higher engagement
rates and faster growth’

9. Smartsheet experts explain how to use psychology but without ‘dark

pattern’ trickery

Ahley Karr and Andy Cargile, the UX Principal and UX Senior Director at
Smartsheet give us an insight into how they shape their UX from the ethics
they practice to their new design strategy.

‘Often overlooked, Karr thinks ethics are an important design consideration
and key to building customer loyalty over time.’

You can use human psychology triggers to shape human — meaning buyer —
behavior, and I think it is important to be careful about separating people
from their money using trickery. In UX, they are called dark patterns, and it
is possible to to use deceptive behavior in interface design.’

10. Twine focused on the dialogue of their onboarding to instantly minimise

their dropout rate

‘Bad UX was hurting our revenue.

So, we got to work and re-designed the onboarding process from signup to
support. Since launching the new onboarding, we’re now running at a 30%
dropout rate.’

11. Crashlytics built a product that people loved by a UX that evoked

emotion

‘Our first-time experience was like nothing developers had seen before. They
Tweeted about it. They told their friends.

Eventually, by the time Twitter acquired us, we were already on 300 million
devices. Today, we’re on almost 3 billion monthly active devices.’

‘People are very aware of time … which means, if you’re able to have the
user’s mind focus on something else, time will move faster. And boring things
like waiting — for a dashboard to populate, for example — will feel much
shorter, which makes a user feel engaged and more likely to stick around.’

12. For users where even a perfect UX doesn't work?

Some users rush through your onboarding steps.

They ignore your onboarding emails.

They won't watch that superb explainer video you made.

Yet, they're willing to pay for your product.

They need to be onboarded one-to-one. See how you can show them your app
like never before using co-browsing

Here's a 30 second overview

Learn more by visiting Upscope co-browsing.

Related: See the Best Onboarding
Emails of 27
Companies

Also see: 25 SaaS
Pricing Models
that Worked