One of the problems that has been causing people to abandon using their newly signed up web applications or SaaS products is this: The web application they started using doesn’t actually provide any instructions and guidance. The guidance such as a new member welcome process is useful to keep the user’s interest and allow her to continue using the application.
Imagine the first time you login and try using a more complicated CRM application such as Saleforce, there are so many features and so many ways of using them, it would be too confusing for the user herself to figure out what to do now, and what to do next, assuming her one simple objective is to find a lead and start contacting this lead.
The less complicated case may be when you newly signed up to an online notebook application such as Evernote. The first you do is to create a new note for note taking purpose. The steps are easy to figure out and may not even require additional instructions or visual guidance.
But when the user goes further with the product, she may need to create and manage multiple notebooks, and she may have to share some of her notes or notebooks with other users. That’s when you need to add visual guidance or tips for the users to understand what the possible next steps are.
A product walkthrough or introduction onboarding process that can be quickly created is ideal. A full power tool such as Walkme is capable to provide this. A simple tool such as Uengager is rather more suitable and ideal in this case because of its light and simple setup.
For a social network account, when the new member has signed up for the first time, she would feel she’s alone without any social activity. The introduction guide provided to any new member should be to give her the options to import all her contacts from her personal email account, her other social network accounts, etc. The user onboarding process should include different steps. The steps can be:
Step 1 – Import your contacts. Make emails and some of the other social networks available for contact import.
The members can actually send messages to invite their contacts to connect with the new social network account. This gives the social network another immediate advantage – It’s a function to help growing more new users for the social network.
Step 2 – Create your profile. Tell your new member to complete their profile. In all social networks, people who have completed much personal information in their profile get more attention from other members. In social networks, one main function is to connect with other people, usually friends or colleagues. But in many other cases, members also are benefited from connecting
The profile should contain information including member photo, nickname, etc. For a social network site that aims to grow bigger, members should display their real name, a short bio i.e. personal introduction tagline, etc.
