“The knowledge workers we spoke with felt offended with a heavy-handed approach to onboarding.”
Experience
“Should I be more hands-on with onboarding my users to my product, or should I take a more laid-back approach?”
We hear this question a lot. On one hand, you might annoy users with intrusive popups, videos, and endless product tours. On the other hand, taking a too laid-back approach could result in users being confused or (worst) overwhelmed.
Lucidchart, a tool enabling people to collaborate on creating, revising, and sharing diagrams and charts, found just the right balance with their onboarding experience.
Allen Liao, the former group product manager at parent company Lucid, says Lucidchart once used a 10-step onboarding process. However, this hyper-involved and lengthy product tour didn’t sit well with most users.
“The knowledge workers we spoke with felt offended with a heavy-handed approach,” says Liao.
Providing help without being too annoying 🙋♀️
That’s why Lucidchart chose to show a “Helpful tips” modal window to new users that is tucked away to the side of the screen and out of the workspace. The modal offers a more in-depth explanation of certain features without forcing them on users.
A different experience for trial versus paying users 💰
But Lucidchart had another dilemma: balancing onboarding for free and premium subscribers.
Ultimately, they reasoned that users who upgrade to a paid account need access to more robust or specific features—meaning they should probably get more onboarding assistance than a freemium user.
Lucidchart greets premium users with more options than those on a free account. A modal window greets newly upgraded users with several options, including whether they’d like to start with an existing template, create one from scratch, or watch a quick 60-second overview of Lucidchart before jumping in.
Templates galore for free versus paying users 🎨
The white-glove approach to onboarding doesn’t end there. Freemium customers who use an existing template will be greeted with a modal window containing several helpful options.
Meanwhile, premium users see a far more expansive selection of templates, showing these paying customers that they’re getting their money’s worth.
💡 Key Takeaways
There are several key lessons we can learn from Lucidchart's balanced onboarding approach:
- Avoid heavy-handed onboarding. Offer help in a subtle and accessible way.
- Tailor onboarding for different user types. Provide more comprehensive onboarding for premium users who may need additional guidance while keeping it simpler for freemium users.
- Showcase valuable features early. Greet users, especially premium ones, with options to start with templates, create from scratch, or watch an overview to ensure they quickly see the value of your product.