Onboarding is an Overlooked Goldmine

Originally published as part of, “The Day Before Digital Transformation” by Phil Perkins and Cheryl Smith

Onboarding is the most underappreciated factor for driving long-term retention.  The longer customers stay engaged with your digital offerings, the more opportunities you have to monetize them through revenue generation or cost savings.  When Facebook received its initial round of investment, it had no profits.  The investors were investing in the fact that Facebook users were extremely engaged with the platform and there were minimal signs of attrition. 

The probability of retaining a user is directly related to how well the user understands the value they can get from your digital solution.  Many organizations gloss over this step, which is a major reason why 25% of all mobile apps are only used once.[i] According to Gartner, only 1 in 10,000 mobile apps offered to consumers in 2018 were financially successful (revenue-producing or cost-saving).[ii]  A high-quality, phased onboarding experience is one of the most effective tools in maximizing the number of time users will stay with your product, service, or platform.  It is also one of the most overlooked aspects of digital engagement because it has not traditionally been a requirement requested by the business, and it is too often the first capability to be deprioritized in early launches. 

For example, registering is critical to ensure your ability to contact and interact with your customer. Most applications today ask the user to create an account as soon as they open the website or mobile app. This creates a massive drop-off in the activation rates. Think of the experience from the user’s perspective.  They have just downloaded your app or visited your website.  They are curious about the value that you can provide, and they do not fully understand what you do yet.  If you ask for an email address, and they are not sure you can create value for them, they worry that you might sell the data you have about them without them being a satisfied user.  They leave your site. You lose.  Leading digital solutions allow users to experience value and build a connection with the application before asking them for anything.

After a user understands your value, they are more likely to enter an email address or other personally identifiable information.  During onboarding, you want to build the user’s enthusiasm and trust during each interaction so that they eventually are willing to become a registered user who has voluntarily provided you with the information you need to convert them into a regular customer.

It is critical to provide a carefully designed onboarding process that coaches new users on the benefits of your offering and helps them experience the value they can expect to receive. The onboarding process should incrementally coach the user on how to perform the key functions of the app. The user should not be considered “ready” until they have completed all onboarding steps. During onboarding, you also want to make sure that it is increasingly hard to abandon using your solution. We provide approaches to make the solution difficult to abandon later in this section.

[i] “Why Smart User Acquisition Starts with User Retention,” Emily Bonnie, www.clevertap.com, August 8, 2019.

[ii] “9,999 in 10,000 Mobile Apps Will Fail: Here’s Why,” Peter Daisyme, www.startupgrind.com.