The goal of onboarding isn’t to show new users where features are, it’s to guide users towards their “aha” moment, the moment of delight where the value of your product becomes immediately clear. Find out how to help your users reach their “Aha” moment.
Get to Know Your Customer’s Needs
Understand what actions users should take and how to motivate them
- What do you need to know about your users to provide them with a great experience?
- Users need to do to get value from your app.
- At what point in your users’ lifecycle does onboarding need to be completed? What actions must your users take regularly?
How Product Tours Leverages User Context
With Intercom’s Product Tours, you can leverage the powerful user context provided by the Intercom platform to make those critical moments of first use really engaging.
- You can trigger tours based on who your users are, where they are in your product and what they’ve done to customize your tours to make sure that the tours you send are always in context and triggered at just the right time.
Useful UI design patterns
The first time someone uses your product, they’re likely a little disoriented
- Use these simple design patterns to help them familiarize themselves with the new environment
- A considered welcome message can make or break your tour
- This is your first opportunity to greet your new user
Tooltips
Text labels that appear when a user hovers over a field, link, or UI element and disappear when the user moves their pointer away
- Useful for explaining a feature a user may use or an action they might take
- Use these sparingly and keep them subtle
Modal
A large window that takes priority on your screen, most often dimming the background, the modal is an effective design pattern for focusing the user’s attention.
Interactive product tours
Point out critical UI areas that the user needs to interact with to achieve their goal
- Make sure the tour is relevant to getting the user started in the product and set expectations correctly
- Give your users the option to start the tour at a later point
Empty State
How the app or product looks on first use before it’s filled with user content
- Prompts the user to fill in the content rather than leaving an intimidating void
- Include sample content to illustrate the app’s value and help the user feel more confident about taking the next step
Inline Hints and Tips
Subtle and look as though they fit in with the rest of the content on the page
