The Digital Onboarding Best Practices 2020 research stands out as a crucial document dissecting the utilization and efficacy of onboarding practices within digital services across multiple industries. Conducted in the latter half of 2020, this comprehensive analysis explores onboarding techniques through a lens of 212 digital services, focusing on how these practices enhance user engagement and fulfill various business goals like improving conversion rates and retaining customers. The research is particularly insightful for digital businesses intent on refining their user onboarding process, offering over 90 best practices tailored to specific stages of the customer lifecycle and backed by real-world data from ten diverse industries. This review not only sets benchmarks for effective digital onboarding but also furnishes detailed strategies to foster user loyalty and operational effectiveness.
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This detailed exploration of digital onboarding practices not only answers the "what" of the strategies but also delivers a blueprint for digital businesses aiming to optimize their user onboarding processes. The insights and data provided in the research are crucial for any digital platform looking to enhance its user experience and operational efficiency.
The Digital Onboarding Best Practices 2020 research offers an in-depth analysis of how digital onboarding techniques are applied across a wide range of industries to improve user engagement and business outcomes. The study meticulously evaluated onboarding methods in sectors as diverse as financial services, healthcare, retail, and education, among others. This broad spectrum analysis underscores the universal relevance and adaptability of effective onboarding strategies across different digital platforms.
One of the crucial insights from the research is the identification of specific onboarding techniques that significantly enhance user experience and facilitate better business metrics, such as conversion rates and customer retention. The research details various approaches like interactive tutorials, personalized user journeys, and targeted notifications, which help in effectively engaging users right from their first interaction with the service.
The study categorizes the best practices into eight distinct stages of the customer lifecycle, including initial attraction, first login, and the completion of the desired action. This structured approach not only helps businesses understand where to implement specific onboarding practices but also how these practices can be tailored to address the unique needs of each stage, maximizing their effectiveness.
Through the analysis of 212 digital services, the research provides quantitative insights that help businesses gauge the effectiveness of their onboarding strategies. It highlights how the right onboarding techniques can lead to higher user activation rates and lower churn, providing a clear pathway for businesses to enhance their digital service offerings.
Another significant takeaway is the set of actionable recommendations for businesses looking to either implement new onboarding strategies or refine existing ones. The research stresses the importance of a comprehensive customer journey map and advocates for a blend of different onboarding mechanisms to create a synergistic effect that boosts user engagement and satisfaction.
Well-crafted digital onboarding experiences are pivotal in transforming user engagement and boosting retention, creating a seamless journey that captivates users from their first click across a diverse array of industries.
The Markswebb Digital onboarding best practices 2020 report offers substantial practical benefits for businesses aiming to refine their digital services and enhance user interaction. Here’s why integrating these insights into your business strategy can be transformative:
For industries ranging from financial services to healthcare, implementing the highlighted onboarding techniques can significantly increase user engagement levels. Engaged users are more likely to explore additional features and convert into loyal customers.
By applying tailored onboarding practices at different stages of the customer lifecycle, businesses can see marked improvements in their conversion rates. The research provides proven strategies that guide users to complete desired actions more efficiently.
Effective onboarding ensures that customers understand and value your service from the outset, which is crucial in reducing early churn rates. This research gives you actionable strategies to keep users interested and invested in your offerings.
With the detailed onboarding practices outlined, companies in educational technology can particularly benefit by making complex subjects accessible and engaging through strategic onboarding processes.
Understanding the impact of various onboarding methods allows companies to allocate resources more effectively, focusing on strategies that yield the best return on investment.
The research analyzes diverse industries, offering insights that are adaptable to various market needs and user expectations, ensuring that businesses can tailor their onboarding processes to meet specific audience demands.
At the beginning of the research, we defined the boundaries of onboarding, which included:
We did not consider marketing campaigns, advertising mechanics, and service messages in our study.
We selected 10 industries actively developing digital channels:
The sample consisted of 212 digital services, including applications with the largest user base and services featured in business media digests.
In our user research we went through 9 user scenarios ourselves and conducted 10 interviews to understand how businesses approach onboarding. Based on this, we formulated heuristics for each identified tool and selected the top 90 practices out of 650 solutions. We classified these practices into 22 business objectives across 8 stages of the customer journey.
Using the obtained data, we prepared universal recommendations for developing onboarding in various digital channels.
While services have become technologically advanced, not all of them are proficient in interacting with customers in a digital format. Onboarding can address this issue. Based on our research, we have formulated a set of recommendations that will help maximize the potential of onboarding practices.
This will allow you to choose the appropriate solution that seamlessly integrates into the service, provides value to users, and avoids causing annoyance.
Different mechanics complement each other, leading to a synergistic effect and improving the quality of communication.
Timely onboarding does not overwhelm users by presenting them with excessive information or bombarding them with prompts. Information should be provided in small portions, precisely when it is needed for the next step or feature activation.
For a product entering a new market, a well-designed interface alone is not enough. A good onboarding process is necessary to adapt new users to the service’s tasks and features, helping them derive value from them. In contrast, in services that are widely available on the market and solve similar problems, intrusive onboarding is redundant since customers are already familiar with alternatives.
In services with a wide range of user scenarios and complex feature sets, it is possible to design an interface specifically for beginners, showing only the buttons necessary for the main objective. This helps reduce frustration caused by an overwhelming number of functional elements. Conversely, in widely available services that solve similar problems, intrusive onboarding is unnecessary.
In services with complex user scenarios, it is possible to facilitate learning about features by solving a trial task. For example, completing a non-real order in a gig economy service or purchasing a test security in an investment app. This mechanic helps users familiarize themselves with the interface practically and minimize errors when solving real tasks.
No onboarding mechanic can fix errors from the sales department when customers are forced to adopt a product they do not need just to fulfill Key Performance Indicators (KPIs).
In the full report, we described the best solutions for onboarding that are ready to be implemented in a digital service. The practices are organized according to the 8 stages of the customer lifecycle:
The map will help the product team shape the product vision more easily, spend less time testing hypotheses, and implement new onboarding mechanics more quickly.
We identify 6 business objectives in the process of educating the customer:
To illustrate, let’s consider a brief part of the study on one of the practices.
Customers do not use a feature if they do not understand its value. Many services address this issue inefficiently by using generic message templates.
The most common onboarding mechanics for this business objective include:
Describing the missed benefit is a better way to demonstrate the value of the feature.
Good implementations are rare, and it cannot be said that any particular industry has advanced further than others in this regard. An example of a successful implementation is found in one of the investment applications examined. In the auto-top-up settings, there is a hyperlink «How does rounding work?» located right below the feature. Users can conveniently access slides that visually explain the value of the feature and the benefits the user could gain by using rounding.
The Digital onboarding best practices 2020 research offers a roadmap for mastering digital onboarding across various industries. By applying these insights, businesses can significantly enhance user engagement, improve conversion rates, and reduce churn. The Markswebb team invites you to collaborate and integrate these practices into your digital strategy. Partnering with us means not only accessing a wealth of industry knowledge but also tailoring onboarding solutions that are optimized for your specific business needs. Let’s work together to transform your digital onboarding approach and achieve remarkable business outcomes.
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