The first-run experience isn't the appropriate place for any design showcase.
Any user onboarding is all about psychology: the early feeling of success and accomplishment will make the user come back. This feeling is a strong psychological bond that works much better than any email reminder.
No matter what, remain human and remember that the learning curve can be steep for anyone.
Analyze any classic introductory tour, and you'll find that the messages there fall into 2 categories: Messages that illustrate truly complex situations Messages that are slapped on just to say something or add visual interest
You can gamify the experience using the natural human desire to accomplish things and compete with others. Here's what you can do here: Show leaderboards, scores, and badges Use wizards that promote a sequence of in-app goals Unlock some pleasant perks as users achieve these goals Automatically give your users significant progress credit upfront. People are much more likely to complete something that's already done by 60%. This initial 60% can consist of something as simple as “Log in, register, and input your name.”
Instead, we should focus on making the UI itself as self-evident as possible, and subtly guide the user into learning it on their own
Your core usability goal: make everything so obvious it doesn't require any tricks to remember.
Ideally, you should ditch your FAQ pages once and for all. Instead, sprinkle useful bits of microcopy exactly where it's needed. Vent doubts and reduce frustration with clear labels, obvious icons, and simple workflow.
“These little devils have regrettably become deeply associated with user onboarding, to the point where many companies have come to believe that this UI technique is onboarding. This is flat-out incorrect. It is also, ironically, a strong indicator that the onboarding experience was tacked on as an afterthought.”
Here's what you shouldn't do for user onboarding: Introductory slideshows Wizards Coach marks UI tours
As users, we can't wait to get our hands on the actual product. We can't wait to see the UI and start playing with it. While these nicely designed bits of information just annoy us and prevent from getting there. Imagine yourself going to a new gym. You're standing there awkwardly in your street clothes, and a polite sales rep is showing you around. Are you listening to her carefully, or would you rather change into your brand-new fitness attire and try out that shiny elliptical?
Your goal is to evoke that positive feeling of accomplishment as early as possible. It's got to happen during the first visit.
Here are the questions you can use to qualify new features: Does this feature serve your exact ideal customer, or does it make your product interesting to new customer categories? Does this feature serve the user’s big goal, or does it add other goals to their plate (even if solved successfully)? Does this feature facilitate the user’s most important daily tasks, or does it add other tasks to their plate? Does this feature breed new objects to be managed with the app? Does this feature solve a pain, or does it merely add an extra layer of polish? What are the development and support (!) costs of building this feature? Can this feature be easily replaced by building an integration with another software product? What part of the existing user base will benefit from this new feature and start using it immediately?
But that's not true. What a user really buys with any solution is a real-life situation where they feel good. Any user wants to feel successful, stress-free, and socially comfortable. Your app just facilitates the process—they’re buying into being successful as a result.
Email reminders are a strong tool that make the user remember and come back to the app. Even though email sequences aren’t precisely a subject of UI design, you should keep this scenario in mind while developing your onboarding strategy. Your goal is to include as many wins as possible into the first visit in order to boast about these achievements in the upcoming email reminders.
The first-run experience isn't the appropriate place for any design showcase.