SaaS Lessons: How Teal creates “stickiness” with customer onboarding
Success comes from a decent idea and perfect execution. Which is why I'm always on the lookout for SaaS products which execute with perfection.
I stumbled upon this resume building tool called Teal (this is not a promo, they don't know me nor are they aware of this post).
One of the most important aspects of your product is articulating the value to your users. The ideal experience for your user is getting the most value in the shortest time. That's the gold standard of product experience.
Let's look at how Teal does an excellent job of onboarding users so that they don't lose them, making a "sticky" product:
#1 Onboarding Form
Onboarding Forms are gaining a lot of popularity. Upon sign up, the form collects data from users regarding their goals and why they’ve signed up. This is an excellent way to fine tune the value of your product to the user. Also, showing users the goal they hope to accomplish with your app motivates them to continue to use it.
This stage of onboarding can also be used to gather other data such as “how did find out about us?”.
Overall, this method definitely pays off in the long term, however it is not the most effective way to influence short term behaviour, which is what we want to target.
#2 Onboarding Checklist
The next screen users see after the onboarding form is an onboarding checklist + a getting started video.
The idea here is to inform the user of the main steps they need to take to get set up with your product. This is an excellent way to retain users right after sign up, it shows them actionable steps to take in order to get value.
Remember: The customer’s goal is to get value. They are not visiting your product to check out your design skills, or play around with dark mode. Ideally, they want to go from signup to value in the shortest path.
This is an excellent way to make your product stickier in the first use, as it gives the user a clear direction of what to do.
#3 Interactive Onboarding Guide
The final part of the customer onboarding is probably my favorite. Upon navigating to the resume builder, teal prompts you with a product tour. This guides you around the product, showing you step by step how to build a resume from scratch.
Again, users need the shortest path to value. This is showing them how to get value without wasting a click. I tried it out myself and although the app has a ton of complex features, it was quick for me to get started.
Once your user has seen the value they wanted (i.e. in this case a resume built automatically) their likelihood to stick to your product has increased exponentially.
Of the 3 methods used here by tealhq.com, I believe this one hit the nail on the head for a good user onboarding process. The goal is to show the user value, so that they know your tool works, and they associate it with a quick and easy process.
Teal uses these effective strategies to hand-hold their new customers through their app, rather than leaving them to figure it out on their own. The result is a much more satisfying and value driven user experience, which drastically reduces churn, making their product “sticky”
How can I implement this?
There are many excellent customer onboarding tools available to help build experiences like these.
- Appcues (https://www.appcues.com/): Appcues offers a platform for building product tours. It is packed with features and pricing starts at $249/month
- Userpilot (https://userpilot.com/): Userpilot is similar to Appcues, but it offers more product experience based tools as well. Also starts at $249/month
- GuideSail (https://www.getguidesail.com/): GuideSail is a chrome extension which helps you build product tours in seconds + basic analytics. While it is not packed with as many features as the above, it gets the job done. Available right now at $39 for a lifetime deal.
