The Best Product Onboarding I've Ever Seen

Onboarding is a critical stage in a user's journey with a product. A well-designed product onboarding experience can significantly impact conversions, retention, and customer satisfaction.

What Does an Ideal Onboarding Journey Look Like?

There is no one answer to this question. The ideal onboarding journey looks a bit different for everyone.

Onboarding experiences, when done right, can be both simple and the best possible introduction to a product or service. Fathom is one such example. The AI meeting assistant for Zoom is free to sign up for.

1. Communicating Advantages Clearly

You need to download the app and get started in 7 easy steps. They list out the clear advantages of downloading the app, guiding the new user toward the ideal initial experience.  

2. Quick Value Realization

Once you are in the product (you can see it on their website too), a sample Zoom call shows you value without having to do a full setup or a call with someone else. A new user can hit their ‘aha’ moment in 8 minutes or less.

The emphasis on delivering value quickly is a key factor that sets Fathom apart from traditional onboarding processes.

3. Multiple Resources

They also have a short tutorial that takes you through highlights of the product in six slides.

4. Hands-on Learning

And, IMO, the best part of onboarding on Fathom is the Test call. Sign in to Zoom and follow the step-by-step instructions as if you are on a real call. You can practice before going on a real call, so you can use Fathom on a real call with confidence. Talk about hands-on learning.

5. Follow-Up If Not Completed Onboarding

They even nudged you to finish the interactive tutorial, if you don’t.

Fathom also uses elements of gamification to encourage the users to continue using the product while completing crucial tasks for successful onboarding.

How Can You Replicate Something Like That?

Start with identifying your onboarding goal. What does onboarding success mean to you, your team, and your business? It can be different for each user persona, product role, and type of user or account.

The next question you should be asking yourself is, how to get a user to that finish line or lines?

• Break the journey into steps and have mini-goals for each step.
• Use in-product interactive guides, push notifications, and onboarding emails to send reminders at each leg of the onboarding journey.
• It’s good to incorporate elements of gamification to make the onboarding process more enjoyable and encourage user engagement. This can include achievements, badges, or rewards for completing specific tasks or reaching milestones within the product.
• Have contextual help resources at each stage. Think of searchable knowledge bases, FAQs, and in-app tooltips. Make it easy for users and customers to access relevant information or a support resource when they need help.
• For a more generic audience, have interactive tutorials and walkthroughs that can demonstrate how to perform key tasks within the product.
• Don’t overwhelm users with all the product's features at once, implement a progressive approach to user education. Introduce advanced features as customers become more comfortable with the basics.
• Personalize at levels that are relevant to your product at each onboarding journey stage.
• Aim to deliver a seamless product experience by testing for friction right from signing up.  
• Depending on the product's complexity, introduce support resources into the onboarding process when necessary.

Once you have an onboarding flow in place, implement a feedback loop. The key to perfecting an onboarding journey is to always be optimizing.

The Big Takeaway from Fathom

The importance of being thoughtful about your onboarding experience.

A user needs to be onboarding to be able to upsell them later. And there’s a lot you can do without having to change your product. That’s why we built Inflection.

With Inflection you can create onboarding experiences based on the user’s actual product usage. And, with our unique take on personalization, it can be a custom journey for every user. Request a demo to see how it's done.