Discover how an effective onboarding process can significantly boost customer conversion rates in SaaS products. Learn best practices, actionable strategies, and real-world examples to enhance user engagement and retention, ensuring your customers realize the full value of your software from day one.
Every business strives to achieve long-term customer retention. But most of them fail at it because a substantial proportion of users find it difficult to understand how to utilize a SaaS product.
But what if I told you that simply increasing client retention rates by 5% could increase your profits by up to 25% to 95%? (Source)
And what if I told you that the client onboarding process is the key to winning them over?
This can be achieved by creating an easy and memorable customer experience from day one with customer onboarding software.
The general practice that SaaS founders follow for this is to create onboarding flows in their product only to realize that they can’t make changes as easily as they want. But with digital adaptation platforms like ProductFruits, creating custom flows gets easier. This is not only because it allows everyone to create amazing onboarding flows without IT but it also enables user segmentation and creation of custom flows for each segment.
In short, every onboarding step you create is customizable.
But the real challenge lies in learning to use such digital platforms. Its implementation requires an understanding of the SaaS product, UI/UX experience, and design to create an impactful onboarding flow.
When Sam, the founder of ARWorkflow, understood the significance of designing the right onboarding flow to boost customer retention, he wanted someone who could design and set up onboarding flows. This is where Optiblack stepped in.
Optiblack comes with expertise in creating properly designed workflows for SaaS founders, which helps the users comprehend how the product works. Only then will activations go from free to paid. It skyrockets the conversion rate of users.
We set up product analytics and designed the entire onboarding process to convert users and assist them in comprehending the product.
But before we dive into the details of the onboarding process, let’s take you through
For this, it was necessary to know what data was to be tracked, who should track it, and how it should be tracked.
1. Initially, workshops were conducted to identify what type of onboarding best suited the customers—is it benefit-focused, function-focused, doing-focused, account-focused, or an amalgamation of all of these?
2. Then came the identification of the core value to be delivered to the users through the product and the ease with which it could be understood.
3. The gap between the new users' understanding of the product and their familiarity with its usage was to be bridged.
4. Next, a setup was mapped to know what steps new users should take to receive the identified core values. (This will be discussed in detail in the latter part.)
With that in mind, the onboarding flow process design was carried out.
5. Additionally, the onboarding goals were connected to tours, knowledge bases, and checklists. Any potential trouble spots within those steps where customers might stumble and require assistance were handled to encourage new users to take the same steps as long-term users.
6. And the implementation part involves enriching your online applications with interactive tutorials, creating tours, quick-start videos, checklists, hints, tips, tricks, and user feedback.
7. The entire process, starting from the onboarding email to sending out trigger emails at every step not taken by a customer, was designed cautiously.
8. The entire dataset of how the users are interacting with the platform is captured by Mixpanel, which is a product analytics tool. Contrary to others, product analytics tool enables a deeper analysis of user behavior through Event-based tracking.
From a technical standpoint, everything had to be implemented with a tool that doesn’t require any. We simply couldn't rely on the IT resource as none were allocated to the project.
As soon as a new user joins ARWorkflow, the onboarding happens sequentially. As part of the onboarding process, the customer is given a checklist to complete before starting to use the product. This helps in making the user familiar with the product so that they can start using it seamlessly when the workflow is ready.
This comprises:
As soon as a new user joins ARWorkflow, the onboarding happens sequentially. As part of the onboarding process, the customer is given a checklist to complete before starting to use the product. This helps in making the user familiar with the product so that they can start using it seamlessly when the workflow is ready.
This comprises:
Now that we know what steps a new user has to take to have a seamless onboarding experience, let’s see
When developing user onboarding for the very first time, it is more efficient to start with the less complex touchpoints to see a significant and quicker impact on the KPIs. These touchpoints developed by ProductFruits played a crucial role in customer conversion for ARWorkflow when built in the right order.
This gives an overview of the application. It helps welcome new users, explains the benefits of the application, and highlights its main features to the users. A slight personalization goes a long way in taking the user to progress to the further steps of onboarding
These accessible, tiny boards appear to hover at the click of a button. This perfect self-help tool delivers highly contextualized information that enables the user to engage with it as and when needed. Thus, eliminating the need for customer care.
This can be accessed through the life ring button or a stand-alone feedback button. It allows the user to send their queries in the form of text, screenshots, or videos, which can be automatically forwarded to the help desk. The user does not need to wonder whom and when to contact to get their challenges dealt with.
This acts as the single point of contact for everything that the user needs. They can find tours, links to support documentation, YouTube videos, or even a meeting scheduler. It allows 3rd party chat integration so that users do not need to switch between multiple tabs while working.
It helps setup the application through guided tours. It takes the user through different features of the application in a step-by-step manner, ensuring they complete all the steps that inspire them to make the best use of the application.
Further, the hints provided as part of the implementation process ensure that the user is aware of using the product to its best capability without needing to seek the assistance of an external support provider.
This works on the principle that “the more invested you are in making a product, the more likely you are to use it for the long term.”
With the help of Optiblack, the clients were able to see significant improvements like-
all while lowering customer queries and IT expenses.
Changes to the onboarding procedure, no matter how little, can have a significant beneficial or detrimental effect on all other aspects of your business. Therefore, it's critical to make sure the procedure is successfully developed to fit the user's experience with the application.
Also you want to have flexibility in testing and iterating. Therefore, make sure to use a tool that will allow you to create onboarding flows without having to involve your IT. You know it better than I - they never have time for this.
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