Author: Steffen Meyer, Mobile Marketing Content Specialist
When users have to register to use an app, it’s vital to get one thing right: the onboarding process.
“Imagine if you had to navigate a new city without a map or travel directions! That’s how your customers might feel when they sign up on a new website or app”, our partner MoEngage writes on their blog explaining the necessary steps to onboard new customers.
We created five different onboarding flows for Telekom’s Magenta SmartHome App. The conversion rates ranged from 17.5% to 83.1%. This huge difference shows how important it is to create an engaging onboarding process.
Just imagine, only 17.5% of users that downloaded your app, go through with the registration – while it could be 83.1%. You are missing out on alot of potential customers just because you didn’t optimize your onboarding process.
5 Keypoints to improve your onboarding
To help you get a clear picture on what to look out for in your onboarding, have a look at these five keypoints we condensed from this MoEngage video:
1. Time: Every step in the onboarding process needs the consumer’s time and since we all know this ressource is scarce, you should demand as less of it as possible. Keep your messages short, don’t ask for irrelevant data and make sure the process is as customer-friendly as possible.
2. Control: The users should always feel in control of the app. They should be able to decide what data they want to share, which options they would like to enable and which devices they want to connect. Try to offer choices but don’t overload your onboarding with too much of them.
3. Flow: Users will rather stick to your app, when the transitions between apps, the web or E-Mail is as smoothly as possible. Make sure that all your cross-channel onboarding procedures blend into each other, so that users don’t experience any glitches or obstructions on their journeys.
4. Simplicity: Always ask yourself: What do users need to know and what’s just PR talk or informational clutter which isn’t important at that point? MoEngage puts it like this: “Keep the interface neat, the information simple, and the users will stay with the brand longer.”
5. Flexibility: Whether users access the service via web or app, they should always feel like they are in the same environment. When they started a process on the app but took a break in the middle of it and then opened your service on the web, they should be able to continue their journey where they left off, despite switching channels.
Let it flow, let it flow
Having an optimized onboarding process is one thing, but often enough users still need a little push or incentive to go through with it. This is where Onboarding Flows come in.
These processes remind users automatically to finish their onboarding by sending them push notifications, e-Mails or SMS. As always, these messages shouldn’t be received as an annoyance but rather as a friendly reminder.
In this blogpost, MoEngage describes a top-performing flow which consists of giving users a special offer when they finish the onboarding and automatically sending reminders when certain conditions are met.
This flow employs various channels and procedures which can be quite complicated if you try to set it up all on your own. That is why our partner offers MoEngage Flows which lets you build these flows by drag and drop.
Onboarding should fit your overall marketing strategy
Check out our blog to learn more about succesful app marketing and be sure that your onboarding process fits into your overall marketing strategy. Have a look at our Marketing Master Map to get a better overview.
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