Getting Started with Product-Led Onboarding

These past few weeks I have been focused on designing an onboarding experience for BrandBird. We are following a PLG strategy for BrandBird, so a well-structured onboarding process is crucial. And as always, I felt it would be important to do some research before I work on it, to ensure I am on the right path. In this article I will sum up some of the information I found important for someone just starting out with a product-led onboarding strategy.

TL;DR

When implementing a PLG strategy, onboarding is one of the most important tools in your toolbelt. Introducing an onboarding process for your product can significantly reduce customer acquisition costs, enhance retention, and overall, promote business growth. A successful onboarding strategy should be personalised, concise, and focused on delivering value to your users. And it should not stop right after a user becomes a customer; onboarding should be a continuous journey for your users. Make sure to set up metrics to measure the success of your onboarding, and adjust to achieve the best results.

Why onboarding is important

It’s widely known that PLG places the product as the primary driver of acquisition, conversion and retention. And this is why effective onboarding plays a pivotal role in this approach. It's your product’s first impression and the first opportunity to showcase the value of the product and convert users into loyal, engaged customers.

To speak in business terms, onboarding can shorten your product’s Time to Value, and consecutively increase retention, reduce your CAC (Customer Aquisition Cost) and overall, promote business growth. Let’s see how:

1. Drives Retention

Retention is crucial for sustainable growth and profitability, as retaining existing customers is often more cost-effective than acquiring new ones.

It has become apparent that users that get value from a product early in the process are more likely to engage with the product long-term and stay as loyal customers.

A smooth onboarding experience can help your users learn the ropes of your product faster, making it easier for them to find value early on, thus driving retention.

2. Lowers Customer Acquisition Cost

Unlike traditional sales and marketing-led strategies, in PLG, the product is the driver acquisition. Having a good user onboarding experience can not only help you turn your users into customers, but also reduce the cost of acquiring them as customers.

An efficient onboarding flow allows your users to use your product without the need of extensive training, thus reducing CAC. Moreover, users that have a positive first impression are more likely to recommend your product to other users, making the acquisition process even easier.

Plus, a stable onboarding process can be effective even as your business grows, without you having to invest more time or resources to it, keeping the CAC low even at higher revenues.

3. Promotes Growth

As I mentioned above, a successful onboarding experience can help you acquire long-term customers easier, without investing tons of resources. It can be the foundation of a strong relationship with your customers, leading to greater development and business’s growth long-term. Plus, keeping the acquisition cost low, and a high retention rate also means an increase in revenue. Summarising this in one sentence, a well-structured onboarding experience can be the key to sustainable growth and profitability.

Product onboarding types

A product onboarding can take many forms. It starts from your marketing strategies where users first learn about your product. This includes your landing page, social media campaigns, articles and posts. Then it can continue as platform onboarding in the form of product tours, checklists, tooltips, videos, welcome messages, etc. Lastly, the onboarding process is completed through an email campaign that includes all information for a user to successfully use your product. You can adjust each one to your product’s needs, to make an onboarding process that will work for your product.

Characteristics of a successful onboarding strategy

We have seen the reasons why an onboarding strategy is important and also the forms an onboarding strategy can take. But which are the characteristics that make an onboarding strategy successful?

1. Personalised

A successful onboarding strategy should be personalized. It begins with knowing your users’ needs and pain points. This is usually implemented through a survey at the beginning of the onboarding.

Having more information about your users, you can construct an onboarding experience for each cohort, targeting the features they will use more heavily and they will get more value out of. Users going through a personalized onboarding experience tend to have a higher engagement rate and be more satisfied with their experience right from the start, thus making your onboarding more successful.

2. Short & Consice

Another characteristic of a successful onboarding strategy is that it should be short with clear, concise steps. Usually three to five steps are enough for your users to understand the core features of your product. Any more could lead to users feeling overwhelmed and leaving the flow.

The steps should be small, manageable and in a logical sequence, gradually introducing users to the features of your product. This way users can learn at their own pace, in contrast to having to consume a barrage of information in one go.

Users are more likely to stick to a short and manageable onboarding, making this an important characteristic for your onboarding strategy.

3. Get users to their Aha moment

Even though your onboarding should be short, you should not forget that within this short sequence you should help your user’s reach the value in your product, or as we say an Aha moment. A successful onboarding strategy is one that focuses on getting users to see the value in the product quickly. Meaning that your onboarding should demonstrate, to each cohort, how your product will help them solve their issues.

By driving your users towards their Aha moment, you can get them through adoption early on, making it more likely for them to convert and engage with your product long-term.

4. Allow users to skip

Getting your users through the onboarding flow is important; but not if they are forced through it. Forcing users to go through an onboarding flow usually has the opposite results; them quitting the flow and possibly leaving the product altogether.

This is why it’s important to not only allow the users to skip the onboarding completely, but also give them the option to just minimize it and get back to it later if they want to. This gives the users the freedom to explore on their own, and view the onboarding if (and when) they feel they need more context.

Giving users an option makes them feel in control, thus making it more likely for them to engage with the flow and appreciate the experience.

5. Easy to try and sign up

You may think that an onboarding strategy only includes showing your users how your product works. But it’s not just that. The onboarding starts from the time a user first sees your product, and it only stops when they stop using it. And them signing up is a crucial step of their onboarding.

Your sign up process should be easy and straightforward. Having a lengthy sign-up process where the users need to fill in tons of information before using your product, may lead them to leave and never come back. Consider having a quick sign-up process, like a Google sign-up, and only requiring the very least information for your users to start using the product.

Another way you could go is allowing the users to try your product without having to sign up for their first use, and only requiring them to sign up if they need to move forward or use the product more. Both options are good for keeping users engaged and through your onboarding flow.

6. Continuous journey

As mentioned above, a user’s onboarding journey only stops when they stop using your product. So you should not forget about a user’s onboarding right after conversion. On the contrary, you should focus on giving the users information relevant to them at every point of their journey.

For example, a newly converted customer needs to know more about the additional value of your product, and any additional features coming with their plan. And of course, all our users should be aware of any new features you introduce to your product and may bring them more value.

This continuous onboarding journey is key to retention, and having happy and engaged customers.

Measure and iterate

As every successful business strategy, an onboarding should not be a one time implementation. To make sure your onboarding flow is working you need to set up metrics, measure it’s performance and adapt to make sure you are getting the best results.

Specifically for optimising your onboarding strategy, you can try measuring the following metrics:

• Onboarding Completion Rate: Percentage of users who completed their onboarding.
• Retention Rate of Onboarded Users: Percentage of users who completed the onboarding and continue using your product.
• Average Time-To-Value (TTV): The average time it took new users to reach value in your product

Conclusion

When implementing a PLG strategy, you should make sure to introduce an onboarding process for your product. A well-structured onboarding strategy can have lots of benefits for your business, the most important one being sustainable growth and profitability.

A successful onboarding strategy should be personalised, concise, and focused on delivering value to your users. And it should be a continuous journey for your users. Metrics should be set to measure the success of your onboarding, to make sure it’s efficient and successful.

And don’t forget, onboarding can take a lot of forms; you can use these tips to help you get started, but make sure to adjust your onboarding to what works for your product and your business!