✋ Positive nudges during onboarding
Push your users, but gently
Hey there, it’s Jacob at Retention.Blog 👋
I got tired of reading high-level strategy articles, so I started writing actionable advice I would want to read.
Every Tuesday I share practical learnings you can apply to your business.
How do you create a long onboarding flow that doesn’t lose all your users?
By using positive emotional nudges to reaffirm they’re in the right place
WTF is a positive emotional nudge?
This is when you show information that motivates someone, convinces them your product works, or just makes ‘em feel good.
These can be as simple as:
“Enjoyed by 20M+ users” from Headway
Or can be more complex:
“75% of Babbel users accomplish their goal. Our method is backed by researchers at Yale University”
When someone starts using a new app, they’re still deciding if it’s right for them
We ask questions of our users during onboarding, but this is take, take, take
How do we give back to them during this process? By making them feel good about their choice!
Reassure them that you’ve helped many other similar people achieve their goals and they’ve made an excellent choice selecting your product.
How do we insert these positive emotional nudges?
You can insert these positive emotional nudges randomly during onboarding, but it’s better if you’re able to weave them more cohesively into the flow.
For example, after you ask, “How old are you?”
Follow up with, “We’ve helped 1,051,053 people your age improve their mental wellness.”
Or
“What’s your primary goal?” - I select Relax and Unwind
Followed by, “24,627 Impulse users noted they feel relaxed and inspired after Impulse games.”
Every question we ask without “giving back” is slowly draining the mental energy of our potential customers.
We need to fight this brain drain and question strain by making them feel more gain than pain.
We give energy back by making them feel good, but also by showing this is the right product to solve their problem.
If the user starts to trust the product, they’re less skeptical and concerned, which gives them one less thing to worry about.
If they get excited about a product based on what they learn during onboarding that’s also giving back energy.
How do you create a great product? Give more than you take.
This is especially true for the early product experience when your customer is still feeling your product out.
What are all the different tactics to try?
Most of these are some form of social proof:
Press mentions
Share the logo of the publications if they’re well known. You’re gaining validity by association
Number of people using a product
Everyone wants to know that a lot of other people are using this already. It de-risks their choice. (see the Headway example in the beginning)
Awards
Are you showing off that App of the Day feature you got last year in Uzbekistan?
Testimonials
Everybody loves a good testimonial. Aim for short and sweet, people stop reading quickly
Reviews and Ratings
Make sure everyone knows you have 10k 5-star ratings!
Testimonials and reviews are similar, but if you don’t want to gather testimonials from your customers look for a good review to feature
A few that aren’t social proof
Amount of content available
50,000 minutes of meditation
Big numbers are motivational and make people feel good about the value of your product
Usage stats
Based on a research study, Premium users learn 3.5x faster
“But Jacob, I don’t have the resources to get researchers from Yale to conduct a study on my app…”
You don’t need to! Send out a survey to your active, paying customers, and ask them something like:
“Did my product improve your life?”
“Do you believe you have less stress after using X?”
“Do you think you’re sleeping better after using X?”
The trick is that you’re asking active, paying customers so you're pretty likely to get favorable responses. Everyone who didn’t like your product stopped using it.
And now you can say, “80% of premium customers say their life was improved.”
Start using positive nudges today!
Check out a few Whimsical boards to see these nudges in the full onboarding flows:
📣 Want to help support and spread the word?
Go to my LinkedIn here and like, comment, or share my post.
OR
Share this newsletter by clicking here.