💌 The Delightfulness Project: All aboard with user onboarding!
How to delight & engage users in the first 3 days
Welcome to the latest issue of The Delightfulness Project, a monthly write-up exploring what makes products delightful. If you were forwarded this issue, you can subscribe here.
Happy October, readers! 🎃
Before we dive into today’s issue, a quick celebration. This month, we officially hit 100+ subscribers! For new readers, thank you for joining, and for those that have been reading for a while, thank you for continuing to learn with me.
This month, we’ll be experimenting with a slightly different format, with more practical tips and examples to really level-up your product game. And as we wrap up this year and into 2021, you can expect a line-up of fascinating topics, such as iteration, flow state, and minimalism.
Now without further ado, let’s get started with our latest issue ⤵️
Sometimes, I feel like I’m drowning in apps 🥺
Is it me or is everyone launching products these days?
In August alone, Statista reported 📈 31,800 new apps released through the Apple App store. It made me wonder- how many of those apps are actually effective at keeping people around? 🤔
According to Andrew Chen, a partner at Andreesen-Horowitz, the average app loses 77% of its daily active users 😱 within the first 3 days after installing! In comparison, the top 10 most popular apps lose less than 30% of their daily active users in that same period.
So what are these top app makers doing that we're missing? 🔎
The answer: onboarding. When most users try your product for the first time, chances are, they need a little guidance. Poor onboarding means that your user must spend more time figuring out where things are and how to use them. Good onboarding makes products feel simple, allowing users to rapidly get to that critical “aha!” moment.
In this month’s issue, we'll be digging into user onboarding and how to help your users find value within the first 3 days of usage.
But first, what is user onboarding?
The word onboarding is said to have originated in the 1970s, although it started becoming popular in business jargon in the last decade. It's inspired by novice sailors learning to get comfortable on board a ship! 🛳️
Similarly, user onboarding describes the process of helping your users get comfortable with your product. Usually this step starts right after users download 📥, purchase 💰, or open your app 📱 for the first time. It ends when your user finds value in your product, understands what it's about, and is motivated to keep using it. 💪
Designing a thoughtful user onboarding experience is critical because it helps your users master your product faster than they would on their own. This means users can focus on using your product instead of struggling to understand it, resulting in higher satisfaction 💖 and lower churn. 📉
In This Issue
We’re deep-diving into user onboarding and how to drive user engagement in the first 3 days. Today, you’ll discover:
4 ways to drastically improve your user onboarding: Clear, tactical steps you can take to revamp your onboarding and drive user engagement.
3 helpful resources to up-level your onboarding knowledge: From UX/UI patterns to empty states, these wide-ranging articles are chock-full of onboarding inspiration.