Onboarding is one of the most important parts of launching a successful mobile app, especially if it’s a critical update or brand-new app.

Depending on the nature and design of the app, if your users aren’t already familiar with what you’re offering, getting them engaged or committed to your app can be difficult.

That’s where the user onboarding experience comes in.

As your user’s first point of contact, your onboarding process establishes the tone, impression, and ease of use of your mobile app. Your user onboarding process should wow the user and have them thinking about how easy to use and useful your app is.

A smooth, frictionless onboarding process that delights and informs a user is going to get them to commit to your app. A confusing, bland onboarding process will have them hitting uninstall before you have the opportunity to show them just how valuable your product really is.

 Essentially, great user onboarding is concerned with three things:

  • Educating and informing a user about the value of the app and its potential benefit to the user
  • Obtaining registration and sign-in details
  • Collecting data that can be used for personalization or marketing 

There is no end to the research done on the impact of user onboarding. One report found a 50% increase in retention rates of users after developing a quality onboarding process. That’s important because as many as 25% of users abandon an app after one use.

With almost 7 million apps available for Android and iOS, if you manage to get a potential user to invest their time checking out your app, only to be put off by your onboarding process, your odds of getting them back are slim to none.

Incorporating the 7 tips outlined below to improve your user onboarding experience is going to ensure your app doesn’t become another statistic.

How to enhance your brand’s mobile user onboarding experience

One in five users drops a mobile app after only one experience. If you can’t engage your user and show your value during the onboarding phase, your app may find itself uninstalled sooner rather than later.

To help your mobile app live up to its potential use some of the following techniques as you go about creating your onboarding experience.

  1. Brag about your value

If you’re launching a mobile app, odds are you’re pretty proud of it and the value it provides. 

Use this to your benefit by showing your users how your app can add value to their lives.

This is a key principle when it comes to creating quality user onboarding experiences that don’t come across as pushy or salesy. Rolling out every feature you have can be overwhelming for a new user. It’s much better to entice them.

Remember, every single user chose your app for a reason

Living up to that and showing users how is a key factor to a successful user onboarding experience.

Conveying what’s known as your value proposition is even more important than shoving every feature you have to offer. Your users care just as much about what you can do for them and how you’ll improve their lives as how many features you have.

2. Highlight important features

Note: This doesn’t mean just throwing all the cool, nifty features your app has to offer at your users. 

Your user is looking for something specific. That doesn’t include the kitchen sink.

Just because your app can do 8 different things, does not mean they all need to be a part of the onboarding experience

Rather, your onboarding should take a focused, direct approach when it comes to showing (not telling) your users about the features of your app.

Immerse your users in the user onboarding experience. Allow them to try and test your apps best features while simultaneously highlighting your value proposition. 

Your users need to not just be aware of your most important features but how they can add to or change the way they live life. 

3. Don’t sweat the details – yet

Collecting user information and data is important. Very, very, very important. 

Just not at the beginning of their user onboarding experience.

When users sign up, it’s a great thing for your brand. Unfortunately, it can also be a major barrier to app adoption. If you can simplify this process, you have a much higher chance of getting those details. 

If possible, consider allowing users to sign in via other apps like Facebook, Google or even LinkedIn. Simple and to the point, users tend to feel an inherent sense of trust signing in through this method rather than filling in the details themselves.

A/B testing also can help you figure out the perfect method for your app specifically. 

You may even want to get rid of the signup process altogether (at least for now).

Remember for your mobile onboarding process to be successful the signup process should be as fast, simple, and easy as possible.

4. Utilize progress bars or checklists

Progress bars or in-app checklists that track how far along you are, are some of the easiest and simplest ways you can improve your user onboarding.

7 Ideas to Enhance the User Onboarding Experience for Mobile Apps

 

The need to complete something is one of the most reliable aspects of our psyche as human beings. Knowing how far away we are from completing a task is a key part of enabling us to be able to complete a task.

Visual cues that allow the mind to identify how close to completion a user is, is a great way to convince them to stick out your onboarding process. Combining this with friendly, human-sounding messages of encouragement can help nudge them along that path.

Keep your onboarding as simple as possible and make sure your users know it. 

5. Keep it short and simple

If we could, we’d end this point there, just to emphasize its importance.

People today have increasingly short attention spans. That’s something you need to take into account when creating a user onboarding experience for a mobile app. 

7 Ideas to Enhance the User Onboarding Experience for Mobile Apps

 

While the goldfish example is a bit of an exaggeration, various studies confirm a trend of increasingly shortening attention spans globally. 72% of users say that being able to complete onboarding in under a minute is essential in terms of deciding whether to continue using an app. 

Minimalism and simplicity aren’t just trending design terms, they’re great guiding rules when it comes to your mobile app’s user onboarding process.

Ask for only the most basic information you need, use short words and sentences, and don’t provide too many options. 

In short, keep the process as slick as possible, wherever possible.

6. Let users skip parts of the process

It may sound counter-intuitive, but allowing your users to skip parts of your onboarding is an incredibly effective way to retain them.

Sure you want to explain every part of what your app has to offer, but sometimes this just isn’t necessary. 

Not every user wants a helping hand. Specifically, tech-savvy users or users that have dealt with a previous version of your app. Diving in and exploring what an app has to offer on your own can be just as fun as having it explained to you.

Especially with today’s increasingly internet-oriented Gen Z and Millennial generations.

It’s important to remember that this will differ from app to app. Using A/B testing can help you decide whether or not this is the best idea for your particular app and its users.

7. Gamify the process

Gamification is one of the most popular terms out there when it comes to UX/UI design. It’s incredibly effective and encourages engagement by teaching users how an app works through fun, entertaining techniques and interactions.

Duolingo is probably the most well-known example of gamification at its best.

7 Ideas to Enhance the User Onboarding Experience for Mobile Apps

Gamification allows users to experience your app through fun, game-like experiences, and guides that encourage them to complete tasks. This helps users feel like they’re choosing to learn about your app and how it works while rewarding them for doing so.

Incorporating a points collection system, token rewards or even motivational animations and messages will allow your users to be more engaged with the onboarding process.

That alone should encourage you to consider incorporating gamification into your user onboarding experience. 

After all, user onboarding, engagement, and conversions tend to go hand in hand.

Why onboarding matters

If your users aren’t already familiar with your app, it can be difficult for them to know how to use it based on intuition alone. As natural and UX/UI orientated as you’ve designed it to be, it is still going to require a user onboarding process.

Creating a user onboarding experience that excites and delights a first-time user while conveying how brilliant your app is, can be difficult. Even more so when all you’ve got to go on is gut instinct and guesswork. 

Unfortunately, getting this wrong can have a major impact on the success of your app.

In principle, that’s because users tend to lose interest in an app when it takes a long time to figure out how to use it.

A great user onboarding experience will ensure this doesn’t happen. Your first-time users have a frictionless experience that will reduce user drop-off, increase engagement and help convert once-off users to loyal customers. 

This not only sets your app up for future success and growth, but will link your brand to a  feeling of ease and convenience that’s going to impact your entire business for the best.