SaaSquatchRadio Episode 2 – Samuel Hulick – User Onboarding Guru
Samuel is an Onboarding specialist. It’s a critical aspect of building products. He understands why getting your users to the ‘aha’ moment is a huge factor in product development. He’s a UX designer who wrote “The Elements of User-Onboarding” and runs UserOnboard.com
Content Breakdown:
0:00 – Intro
0:30 – Origin Story – How he got into UX
1:55 – Why User Onboarding is so important
3:03 – Best Practices of User Onboarding
3:53 – Common mistakes in creating first-run experiences
5:22 – Company Examples – Basecamp, Slack and Shopify.
7:18 – Slack and the value of creating human interaction and memorable products.
8:07 – Mailchimp and how you can’t satisfy all of your potential users.
9:33 – Should User Onboarding ever stop?
10:45 – Company Examples – Wistia and Mailchimp
12:14 – Representing the User in a Quantitative and Qualitative Way.
13:22 – Value of LiveChat in the Onboarding Experience.
14:38 – Quantitative Measurement Examples.
16:55 – Tools to use in your own tests. Intercom, KISSmetrics, Mixpanel, OLark, Qualaroo, SurveyMonkey, Customer.io and Sendwithus.
19:01 – Final thoughts – Think about User Onboarding earlier in your product development cycles.
Key Insights
Mailchimp – Show your users the value of your product right away. Create a human and memorable product experience.
Basecamp – Pre-fill content to give users your product ‘aha’ moment when they sign up.
Wistia – Onboarding should never stop. Create educational content and show your users how to become power users.
Essential Quotes
“Onboarding can become a blind-spot within your company and design team.” Tweet this!
“A lot of SaaS strategy is growing your users into the ones you want them to be.” Tweet this!
“Create a human-like interaction in your onboarding experience.” Tweet this!
“Think about user onboarding earlier in your product development cycles.”Tweet this!
Recommended Tools
KISSmetrics and Mixpanel – For product usage analytics.
Intercom.io and Customer.io – For behavior-driven email and in-product messaging.
SurveyMonkey and Qualaroo – For user feedback and surveying.
Sendwithus – For a/b testing transactional email.