Don’t Make Your Customers Think: I Found These 10 Onboarding Techniques from Successful Products

I want to build a user onboarding flow for our product, LiveAPI.
I’m not interested in using traditional product tour modals with continuous "Next" buttons. Personally, I find this approach difficult and unfriendly to follow, and I believe many users feel the same.

Instead of a theoretical, step-by-step approach, I’m exploring alternative methods to help users onboard to the product and learn our features more naturally.

To gather ideas, I’ve reviewed a few popular apps to understand how they handle smooth user onboarding.

In this article, I’ll share some techniques I discovered that can be used to introduce your features to new customers in a more engaging way than traditional, lecture-style product tours.

Let Users Learn by Doing

Grammarly, a popular grammar-checking tool, includes a dedicated demo section where users can "try" its features on sample text.

Providing sample data can be helpful, especially since new users may not have their own documents ready to test the product. A demo document lowers the barrier to entry.

By offering sample content — in Grammarly’s case, a few paragraphs with intentional grammatical errors — users can experience the tool's features and effectiveness firsthand. This approach encourages them to try the product on their own documents.

Mini To-Dos to Ensure Completion

Providing a checklist is an effective way to help users navigate the product thoroughly.

Loom, for instance, includes a "Get Started" checklist to guide users through key features and ensure they complete the onboarding process.

A checklist guides customers along a specific path to help them become familiar with core features.

Continue reading the full article here: https://journal.hexmos.com/dont-make-your-customers-think-i-found-these-10-onboarding-techniques-from-successful-products/