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Whether you’re building a product at an early-stage startup or fine-tuning an already built-out product at a larger company, there is a straightforward process that can help you improve your onboarding experience.

We decreased customer churn at Heyday from 8.5% to 3.3% just by changing our onboarding flow.

Here are the steps you can follow, with examples from our own onboarding experience.

Churn reduced by nearly three times to 3.3% from 8.3%. Image Credits: Heyday

Let users try your product with no guidance

After a few months of onboarding every new user via Zoom, my co-founder Samiur Rahman and I removed ourselves from the process. We dumped users into our product with no demo, zero product onboarding and one education email.

The result: a disaster. Engagement dropped and churn skyrocketed.

When we surveyed users to learn why they stopped using our product, they would respond with something along the lines of, “I stopped using it because I didn’t see the benefit.”

Observe users to identify friction and aha! moments

Don’t wait to release your product. It is ready to be shipped as soon as you can get feedback on it. Through observation, you’ll learn what users really need to experience the value of your product.

I reinserted myself into our onboarding flow via a Zoom call. Rather than walk users through the product, this time I sat there silently and watched as they got started. I witnessed a lot of confusion, moderate frustration and a few smiles.

After 20 or so observations, we identified the common roadblocks that got in the way of our users. We walked away with a list of goals for our future onboarding experience.

Checklist of goals for optimizing onboarding. Image Credits: Heyday