Daniel's notes on Product-Led Onboarding

“Retention is the foundation of sustainable growth, and it starts the moment someone perceives value in your product. Optimize and build on that moment to raise the odds of people making your product an integral part of how they achieve their goals." - ANUJ ADHIYA, Author of Growth Hacking for Dummies

The product team is preoccupied with releasing new features, while the marketing and sales teams are consumed with acquiring more customers. Everyone is busy, so most new users fall through the cracks; for most software products, 40% to 60% of users will sign up once and never come back.

Successful users go through a series of "Aha" moments before, during, and after they sign up for a product. With each "Aha" moment, users receive increasing value from a product in a series of steps; they jump to a higher value as they perceive and experience a product's capabilities.

when there's a mismatch between what users think your product is (a.k.a. the product's positioning) versus what they experience after signing up: Suppose someone completely messes up the positioning and messaging of a product, so users think that the product is a project management software when it's actually a bookkeeping tool. No product tour, in-app messages, or other onboarding tactics can save this situation.

To be successful in onboarding, you need to plant the seed of future value at the very first touchpoint — whether that's in a Facebook ad, a referral from a friend, or an invite email from a colleague. With crystal clear product positioning and messaging, you can screen out people who shouldn't be signing up for a product early on and be able to focus more time and resources on providing incredible experiences for people who should be using it.

Another common misconception is that user onboarding ends the moment they become a paying customer. The problem with this is that users could be paying for a product even though they're not getting any value from it. don't assume a paying customer equates to a happy customer. For subscription businesses like SaaS, you know you've encountered this problem if you see a high volume of new, paying customers cancel their account soon after their first payment.

The end goal of user onboarding is not only to convert users into paying customers but to make sure they stick around for a long time. The initial user onboarding experience ends when a signal is received that the user is gaining meaningful value from a product and is likely to continue using it.

The End Goal of Onboarding The goal of the entire onboarding experience is to help users improve their lives. It's important and helpful to view onboarding not as an exercise in teaching users about a product but rather how it makes them successful. For that reason, onboarding shouldn't be defined by how many features users have adopted. Instead, it should be determined by how much their lives have been improved.

To successfully onboard new users to a product, they have to achieve three key milestones: 1. The Moment of Value Perception (MVP): This is when users first visualize a product in the context of their situation. For the initial onboarding of new users, the MVP usually occurs before signing up. 2. The Moment of Value Realization (MVR): This is when users first experience a product's value and achieve their desired outcome with the product for the first time. 3. The Moment of Value Adoption (MVA): This is when users start using a product regularly and integrate it into their life or workflow.

User onboarding is not a linear process. Instead, it's cyclical. Because it never actually ends. After the initial onboarding experience for new users, they can (and should) go through a new cycle of perceiving, experiencing, and adopting additional features, capabilities, or use cases of your product.

Much like a flywheel, gaining momentum to start requires considerable effort. New users have to overcome friction, such as letting go of old habits or moving past the anxiety of change. But once users complete each cycle of perceiving, experiencing, and adopting, they achieve an increasing level of value over time.