Customer onboarding – creating a successful start

When reviewing your onboarding you will often need to streamline steps both before, during and after the introduction. To succeed with that you need to create the right conditions - here we give you 3 simple tips and 6 effective methods!

What is onboarding?

Onboarding, or customer onboarding, is an introduction process that ensures new users quickly learn and get accustomed to a product/service or a particular interface. The process involves the activities required to introduce a new customer to the company's product or service - from the first encounter in the customer journey to actual usage.

Why is onboarding important?

Visitors who come to a website for the first time don't know exactly where the information they're looking for is. Even if you think the content is logically placed, there's a risk users will feel lost or perceive a poor user experience. If they don't understand or don't see the benefit of the product, they may leave the site and never return.

That a sale doesn't happen or that customers don't return is therefore often due to them having had a poor user experience. Good onboarding is therefore about reviewing these aspects. If you fail to create effective onboarding you risk losing users to competitors who don't have the same usability issues.

3 tips for getting started with your onboarding

1. Assess the current situation

To begin with, you need to establish the current situation. You want to understand what your customers' needs are and how well you meet them. If customers drop out of the flow before completing a task, see if you can streamline any step so that more of them finish. Maybe you ask for too much personal information that customers are unwilling to provide — see if you can remove something. If it's about developing an entirely new product or service, you may need a solid introduction process both for customers and internally among employees.

2. Make a good first impression and create a good user experience

In HR and recruitment, onboarding has long been a hot topic. Here it's about the introduction process you give new hires to welcome them. How you make them feel at home in your organization or give them the knowledge they need to join the company and settle into their new role. The process starts at first contact with the company and continues through the entire recruitment process up to hiring and introduction to the job.

In the same way, an onboarding process works for your digital product or service — from first contact with the company into using the product or service. When users arrive at your website, app or service, it's therefore important to give them a good first impression. You want them to find the information they're interested in, that things are placed logically, that they get answers to their questions, and that purchase and sign-up flows are simple and smooth.

To create a good introduction, you need to start from the users and ensure they have the right conditions to perform their task and reach their goal. This can, for example, mean facilitating users' interactions or providing them with enough information so they understand where they are and what they should do.

”Onboarding is a crucial process for creating a good user experience”

3. Review the entire process and live up to the expectations that have been built up

To succeed with your onboarding it is not enough to just make a good first impression. Your visitors gather a lot of impressions that will affect how they perceive your product, digital service, company and your brand. Existing and potential customers google and gather information, they read up on social media, and they talk with friends and acquaintances. Your customers and visitors must receive a coherent experience across multiple channels. The continued user experience then needs to match the image the user has formed of the company, product or brand.

When you take care of your employees they are more likely to be satisfied and stay with the company. In the same way you must take care of your customers and visitors even after the onboarding process. Consider how your onboarding is set up. Are you living up to the expectations that have been built up during the onboarding process? Do you give users a good first impression and a good user experience?

6 onboarding methods

1. Map the customer journey and tailor to the target audience

The more you understand the customer and their journey before, during and after conversion, the better experiences you can create. Mapping the customer journey, segmenting the audience and then tailoring information to the target audience is therefore a good first step. Marketing automation may be worth implementing. It is often an effective way to provide the customer with the right content throughout their customer journey.

2. Simplify processes

Try to create a smooth customer experience by digitizing and automating as much of the process as possible. Try to see things from the users' perspective. Is there anything you can make easier in the users' interactions in any way? For example, if you have the user's information saved—help them avoid repetitive steps by automatically filling in details. To be able to start a change journey for your customers you may need to simplify internal processes within the company—do you have the right tools and processes, or do you need external help?

3. Educate users

Use introductory videos or a digital walkthrough to educate users. If you have an advanced product/service that requires more in-depth knowledge to master, you can offer a personal demo. This can work especially well for B2B products. You can also show what type of content should be filled in or included through your content. "Learning by doing" is another option where you let users test features and actions while you explain how a specific function works.

4. Explain benefits

Your service may have super-cool features but if users don’t understand how they should be used or how they benefit from them it doesn’t matter how many features you have. Make sure to clearly explain the benefits to users.

5. Highlight new features and explain how they work

Use contextual tooltips to explain how the user can interact with a specific feature or perform a particular task. With notifications that highlight new features you can help users discover and use the service effectively. Demos can provide more in-depth descriptions of features.

6. Make the process pleasant

A welcome message with a brief introduction can give the user a good first impression - this can, for example, be sent via email, appear in the interface or in an introductory video. As well as being factual, you can lighten the tone by using gamification and offering praise when a task is completed. In e-commerce many focus on the checkout flow itself but often forget the thank you page or the confirmation email - so remember to review the entire flow.

In conclusion

There are many ways to work with onboarding. You don't have to use all the methods we've mentioned in this article. Which ones you choose depends on your budget or the type of product, service, tool or system involved. We're happy to help you choose the right method to create the best possible onboarding. Contact us and we'll tell you more!

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