When creating your onboarding experience, it’s easy to go crazy with tons of questions and required form fields. But, seeing endless screens asking for info is sure to leave your user questioning whether or not they actually want to continue down the rabbit hole with you. It starts to feel like a big investment.
People are busy, and respecting our users’ time is key to gaining their trust.
A simple fix is to first remove unnecessary steps. (Save the extra questions for surveys down the road after users already love you and feel reciprocity toward your brand).
Another super simple way to get a user to complete onboarding is to include a progress bar. Let them know how many steps are completed (#accomplishment) and how many are left (#goals). This way, they know what to expect.
Progress bar for the win
I worked with a startup that had a 7-step onboarding process and they assured me there was no way to reduce the number of steps. Research revealed that users dropped out of the free-trial signup around step 5 or 6 and did not come back. They were so close to finishing, what was wrong?
I checked out the onboarding flow, and while it wasn’t overly tedious, by the time a user gets 5 or 6 screens into a signup process with no end in sight, it’s easy to throw in the towel and give up. For all they know, there could be 20 more steps lurking around every “Continue” button.
I suggested we add a progress bar.
Sure enough, while there were still some users that dropped off, those rates went down significantly with the addition of the simple progress bar.
That wasn’t the end of the project, but it was a quick fix that helped solve some of the dropoff we were seeing.
What do you think? If you don’t have a progress bar in your onboarding flow, will you be adding one?