What's the number one goal of a SaaS product? To make a product easy and delightful to use for customers, of course! 

One essential way to achieve this goal is through software onboarding. Software onboarding is the process of introducing new users to a product and getting them up to speed quickly and easily.

Effective onboarding can have several benefits for a SaaS product, including increased user retention, higher customer satisfaction, and faster time to value for your users. 

In this post, we'll explore some advanced software onboarding best practices, metrics, and tools that can help you improve your onboarding process.

Top 5 software onboarding practices 

1. Create a personalized onboarding experience

One of the key challenges of onboarding is ensuring that each user has a personalized experience tailored to their specific needs and goals. To do this, you can use a combination of techniques, including personalized emails, in-app announcements, and interactive tours.

For example, you could send a personalized email to each new user introducing them to your product and providing a brief overview of its key features and benefits. You could also use in-app announcements to notify users about crucial product updates and changes based on user usage patterns and preferences. And you could create customized onboarding tours that walk users through a product's key features and functions in a way tailored to their specific needs and goals.

By creating a personalized onboarding experience, users will likely feel your product was designed specifically for them and can solve their problems. 

2. Use a step-by-step approach

Another practical approach to onboarding is to use a step-by-step approach. This involves breaking the onboarding process down into a series of smaller, more manageable tasks that the user can complete one at a time.

For example, you could start by providing the user with a brief overview of your product, followed by a series of short product tours introducing them to its key features and functions. You could give the user a checklist of challenges or tasks to complete, each building on the skills and knowledge they gained in the previous step.

A step-by-step approach can help users learn and retain new information at a manageable pace, encouraging them to keep using the product. 

3. Provide ongoing support and guidance

Onboarding doesn't stop once the user has completed the initial onboarding process. You must provide ongoing support and guidance to motivate users to continue engaging with the product.

One way to do this is to provide in-app support and guidance, such as tooltips or knowledge-base articles. For example, you could use tooltips to give users suggestions for using your product more effectively. You could also provide access to a resource page with articles, videos, and other resources that users can use to learn more about your product and troubleshoot any issues they may be experiencing. Include onboarding documents to improve the user onboarding experience exponentially. 

Ideally, SaaS onboarding flows should be self-serve. Users should be able to navigate your user onboarding flow without talking to a human. Product-led SaaS should be accessible to its users 24/7. 

4. Use data and analytics to track user progress

Effective onboarding is not a one-size-fits-all process. Every user is different, and they will have different needs and goals when using your product. To ensure that your onboarding process is seamless for all users, use data and analytics to track user progress and identify areas for improvement.

For example, you can use data and analytics to track how long users take to complete each step of your onboarding process and identify any actions that are taking longer than expected. You can then use this information to optimize your onboarding process and make it more efficient for all users.

You can also use data and analytics to track user engagement and retention over time. For example, you can track how long users spend using your platform and how frequently they interact with it using the onboarding process. This can help you identify any potential problems or areas for improvement, so you can change your onboarding process to address them.

5. Engage with users and gather feedback

Another essential aspect of software onboarding is engaging with users and gathering feedback. This can help you identify areas for improvement in your onboarding process and make changes can be made to determine how to meet your users' needs effectively. 

There are several ways that you can engage with users and gather feedback. One approach is using NPS surveys to collect user feedback at critical moments in their journeys. Some tools, like Lou, allow you to segment your users, taking complete control over who receives a survey. It even calculates your NPS score based on survey answers and organizes responses into Promoters, Passives, and Detractors. The three categories establish an NPS score.

By implementing this best practice, you can identify areas for improvement in your onboarding process and use critical insights to deliver a better user experience.

Metrics and KPIs to measure software onboarding and adoption 

To measure the effectiveness of software onboarding and adoption, employ a few key metrics and KPIs. Some examples include:

  • User retention rate: User retention rate measures the percentage of users who continue to use your product after the initial onboarding process. A high user retention rate is a good sign that your onboarding efforts are working and that users gain value from the product.

  • Time-to-value: This metric measures users' time to realize your product's value. A shorter time to value indicates that your onboarding efforts are helping users quickly understand and utilize your product's key features and benefits.

  • User satisfaction: User satisfaction measures how satisfied users are with your product and the onboarding experience. High levels of user satisfaction are a good sign that your onboarding efforts are successful and that users are happy with your product.

By regularly tracking and analyzing these metrics and KPIs, you can glean valuable insights into your software onboarding efforts and make improvements as needed.

How to create onboarding for any software with Lou

Lou is a platform for software onboarding that welcomes new users, directs them toward important in-product actions, and turns them into power users. Lou’s no-code approach speeds up onboarding, enables users to recognize a product's value quickly, and raises user activation and retention rates.

With Lou, you can build customized product tours, NPS surveys, onboarding checklists, tooltips, and in-product announcements that create self-serve software onboarding experiences. Because no code is required, you can create incredible experiences ready for production in minutes without taxing your very busy development team.

Lou enables you to combine unique templates with your own branding, giving you total control over color, font, size, placement, corner radius, etc. Additionally included is support for images, videos, and gifs, ensuring you always stay on-brand. 

Conclusion: Strategic software onboarding is a must

Strategic software onboarding is essential for SaaS products and can have many benefits, including increased user retention, higher customer satisfaction, and faster time to value for your users.

Implementing the advanced best practices discussed in this blog post can help your users get the most out of your product. Start improving your onboarding journey, and try Lou for free today.

Published on February 2nd, 2023