User onboarding is the art of engagement. It’s about getting your users to engage with your product or service in a way that will make them want to come back for more.

New users are the lifeblood of any organization, and user onboarding is how you keep them engaged long after they sign up.

However, it’s not that easy. New users are unfamiliar with your product or service, which means you must be sure that their first experience is a good one.

The following are some reasons how the right user onboarding strategy can contribute to your business’s growth.

• By increasing product adoption
• By increasing customer retention
• By forming a loyal customer base
• By Increasing lifetime value

Right user onboarding has an exponential effect on customer retention. In addition, it opens the door for increased revenue potential by developing a loyal customer base.

This article provides information about how the right user onboarding can contribute to your business growth and how to do that.

So, let’s get started.

1. By increasing product adoption

Every entrepreneur fears whether their product will be adopted by the users or not. However, this fear can be mitigated by the right user onboarding.

According to Appcues, user onboarding is vital to improve product adoption, and product adoption contributes significantly to your business growth.

How?

Firstly, as the users adopt your product, they will get used to it over time. As a result, they will be reluctant to switch to any substitutes. It means that they will continuously renew the subscription of your product; hence, you’ll witness significant growth in your business.

Secondly, the users who will have adopted your product will talk about it more often. It means they will spread word-of-mouth for your product.

A study concludes that 92% of the customers trust recommendations of products from their families and friends.

Fascinating. Isn’t it?

So, as per the statistics, much of your efforts must be on the earned media, i.e. delighted users who spread word-of-mouth.

It all sums up to the conclusion that right user onboarding will increase product adoption, which in turn will increase your Word-of-mouth Marketing (WOMM). Since WOMM attracts the newest customers, you will see significant business growth.

What right thing should you include in your user onboarding to increase product adoption? Read on to know about it after we mention all of the reasons how right user onboarding contributes to business growth.

2. By increasing customer retention

Another benefit of right user onboarding is that it increases customer retention. When you retain customers, they will keep buying from you, increasing business growth.

According to a study, 8 out of 10 users deleted an application because they couldn’t use it. Here, the flaw is in that application’s user onboarding process.

The right user onboarding strategy includes teaching the application to the users, so if you are doing that, you’ll be able to retain customers and grow your business.

3. By forming a loyal customer base

Right user onboarding makes loyal, delighted customers. Of course, loyal customers would always prefer you over the substitutes, no matter the price.

Also, loyal customers bring in new customers through their natural word-of-mouth.

To sum up, the loyal customers, because they won’t leave you, will generate revenue for you for an extended period. Also, because they will do word-of-mouth, you can expect significant growth in your business.

4. By Increasing lifetime value

Usually, businesses take into account their customers’ lifetime values when making strategic business decisions. Lifetime value is the number of expected cash inflows from a customer during his lifetime. Lifetime value can increase with the increase in customer loyalty.

Since the lifetime value is all associated with the cash inflows, we can conclude that increasing lifetime value leads to increased business growth.

Alright, so these were some reasons how right user onboarding contributes to your business growth, but what is included in that right user onboarding? Let’s find:

A. Know your user’s needs

Before crafting your user onboarding strategy, you must know your users. Once you know their pain points, you can craft a better user onboarding experience for them.

For example, suppose a new user is having difficulty finding their way around your website because there are too many menus or different interfaces on the site. In that case, the first thing they need might be some help navigating the site.

Knowing your users and understanding their needs will help you create the best user onboarding experience possible.

B. Create a personalized onboarding experience

When onboarding a new user, be sure to personalize the experience. This will help ease users into your product or service and set them up for success.

You can do this by letting them know what to expect or offering tutorials or even a video showing them how to use the software they signed up for.

For example, consider what would happen if you used an application to manage your finances. If you were using that app before receiving a call, you might get a notification informing you that it’s time for your lesson about budgeting and saving money.

When the user clicks on the notification, they’ll see a pop-up with information about the lesson and how it will work in their app.

Then, when they complete their first lesson and click “finish learning” on the pop-up, they’ll get to take a short quiz about what they learned and how successful it was in helping them save money.

Another way to personalize an onboarding experience is by giving users personalized recommendations after every activity they do in your product or service.

For example, if users are taking notes in Evernote during their onboarding session, Evernote can recommend relevant material according to notes.

C. Find the right balance of guidance and autonomy

To have a successful onboarding experience, you must find the right balance between guidance and autonomy. When users are guided through the process, they usually feel like someone is watching over their shoulder, making them uncomfortable.

If your goal is for new users to come back to use your product or service regularly, you should empower them with autonomy as soon as possible so they can explore and get comfortable with it on their own terms.

This will encourage them to return again and again, rather than looking for guidance from outside sources.

You should also give them a clear plan of how things work to know what to expect when they sign up. This will help them understand the process and eliminate any confusion that might arise in the beginning.

D. Provide an integrated chat feature

Integrated chat is an excellent way for your users to feel comfortable in your platform. With this feature, you can add an easy and direct line of communication between your new users and staff members, which helps it feel more personal.

It’s also an excellent way for you to collect feedback from your users about the experience they had with your platform so that you can make improvements.

An integrated chat feature will help new users find their footing in the platform and stay engaged long-term.

E. Allow for comments or reviews on your site

One of the best ways to get people to engage with your product is to allow for comments or reviews on your website. Then, after they’ve engaged, you can ask them to share their thoughts on social media.

Not only will this help you build a strong relationship with your customers, but it will also encourage others who are considering the same product or service to go ahead and sign up for it.

F. Offer ways to be social

Social media is a great way to make people want to be social. It’s also a great way to get in touch with potential customers on their terms.

Make sure your social media content is engaging and offers ways for people to be social. Make it easy for people to share, like, comment, and engage with your content so they will think about it when they log in again.

It can also help you monitor how your content is performing by seeing which posts are getting the most likes or comments.

Wrapping up

In conclusion, you should consider user onboarding from the very beginning of the conception of a product.

Making the signup process and first use enjoyable, the introduction tutorial presented in the first interaction with potential customers is the first test for your product that will determine if it will succeed or fail.

Presented in this article were the reasons how right user onboarding contributes to your business growth. Also, we included some of the ways you can improve your user onboarding process.

By now, you must have cleared up the doubt about how the right user onboarding can help you grow your business. So, if your user onboarding process isn’t already right, we advise you to make it right.