As an experienced SaaS founder, I know firsthand how crucial user onboarding is for the success of a product. In fact, I would argue that user onboarding is just as important, if not more so, than the product itself.
But, creating a great user onboarding experience can be a daunting task for new SaaS founders. That's where 3rd party user onboarding tools comes in.
In this blog, we'll go over them in detail. Because there are a lot of way to onboard users, you should pick the one that matches best for your product, team size, user persona, budget, and technical effort you can spare for this process.
But first, what is user onboarding and why is it so important?
What is User Onboarding?
User onboarding is an evergoing process to educate & train your users so that they'll get more value from your product.
Setting up segmentation (based on user states, personas, retention, etc) will help you make your user onboarding process contextual. This way, with segmentation and personalization, you'll be able to onboard right users at the right time for the value they'd like to get.
It can be divided into two big parts: new and existing user onboarding. I'll explain differences in detail below:
Onboarding new users
This process is introducing new users to your product and helping them understand how to use it effectively.
The goal of new user onboarding is to increase user engagement and adoption, which ultimately leads to increased retention and revenue.
A poor user onboarding experience is one of the main reasons users will abandon a product. Because in this case you'll lose those users that you've worked so hard to bring to your product (hey, I'm a marketer as well, I know!). Some experts give the example of "leaky bucket" for such poor new user onboarding process.
On the other hand, a great user onboarding experience can lead to increased engagement, adoption and revenue. Because first impression really matters.
Making the first experience with the product as smooth and intuitive as possible, and providing users with the necessary information and guidance to understand how to use the product effectively, will eventually boost your time to value and conversion metrics.
Onboarding existing users
After a great "new user onboarding" process, now that you'll have more active, paying users that frequently use your product to get more value, it's time to build a new process to guide them to the next and more intermediate steps.
Existing user onboarding will help you keep users engaged and up-to-date with new features and capabilities. It's important to communicate these updates in an easy-to-digest and timely manner, and to make sure that the users understand the benefits of these updates and how to use them.
Some examples for User Onboarding tools
Appcues
Appcues is a software tool that helps companies improve user onboarding and engagement by creating in-app user onboarding experiences, product tours, and feature announcements.
It allows companies to create and deliver targeted and personalized user onboarding experiences without the need for developer support. And your team can track user engagement and measure the success of their onboarding efforts.
UserGuiding
Very similar to Appcues, UserGuiding is also an interactive product walkthrough software to build your whole user onboarding process that help you accomplish almost everything you can do with Appcues.
The main differences are; UserGuiding is cheaper, more non-technical friendly, and works better with complex dashboards while Appcues has more integrations, analytics insights with a/b tests, and enterprise-ready for bigger teams.
Loom
Loom is a screen recording and video messaging tool that allows you to easily create and share videos of your screen, webcam, and audio.
As a SaaS founder, you can use Loom to create video tutorials and walkthroughs that guide new users through the product, and help them understand how to use it effectively.
This is a great way to provide a more engaging and personal onboarding experience for new users.
You can also use Loom to create video updates and announcements for existing users, which is an effective way to keep them engaged and up-to-date with new features and capabilities.
This can also help you to increase adoption of new features, by showcasing their benefits and how to use them.
Help Scout
Help Scout is a customer service software that allows you to easily manage customer interactions and communication. And it can also be an effective way to do build a great user onboarding process.
As a SaaS founder, you can use Help Scout to provide a dedicated onboarding support for new users. You can create automated email sequences that guide new users through the product, and answer common questions about how to use it. This can help to ensure that new users have a smooth and successful onboarding experience.
You can also use Help Scout to create a knowledge base that existing users can access to find answers to their questions and learn about new features. This can help to keep existing users engaged and up-to-date with new features and capabilities, and increase adoption of new features.
