12 Companies Show You How To Perfect Your Onboarding UX

Last updated on June 10th, 2023

Minh Saggers
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

Read more: User Onboarding: The UX Behind Our Magically Extending Free Trial

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.’

img

Read more: A Deep Dive Into Our New User Onboarding Process

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?’

img

Read more: We Made The Decision To Add Six More Steps To Our Onboarding — And It Worked. Here’s Why.


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’

img

Read more: Unifying Mobile Onboarding Experiences at Uber

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.’

img

Read more: Fomo UX Audit

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.’

img

Read more: From onboarding to churn, our UX expert shares it all

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.’

img

Read more: Onboarding + Videos + A/B Testing = Happier New Users

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

img

Read more: 10 Fixes For Improving Your Product’s User Experience

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.’

img

Read more: UX Experts Share Insider Design Tips for Creating Top User Onboarding Experiences

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.’

img

Read more: How better onboarding cut our drop-off rate dramatically

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.’

img

Read more: The Quintessential Guide For Building An Unforgettable First-time User Experience

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](/helloscreen).

Related: See the Best Onboarding Emails of 27 Companies

Also see: 25 SaaS Pricing Models that Worked

Minh Saggers
Minh Saggers

Minh Saggers is Upscope's Head of Operations