Principles for New User Onboarding

The way you welcome people into your product will make or break the experience for them. It doesn't matter if you have the best offering ever — If your onboarding falls short, everything else will as well.

Getting onboarding right means knowing precisely what people want to accomplish and then putting all your energy into getting them there in the most effective way. 

Before you start doing any work on your onboarding flow, you need a super clear picture of why people sign up for your product in the first place.

Onboarding is the experience between signing up and becoming an engaged user.

Your goal should be to welcome people into your product in a way that excites them to become lifelong customers. Excitement is achieved through a delightful onboarding experience.

Once you ship the new onboarding experience, that's not the end of the road. Onboarding should be treated like any other product feature. It should be continuously optimized and iterated on.

The reality of building a product is that very few parts of it reach a significant portion of impressionable users. Onboarding is one of those things that touch just about everyone.

Identify and remove obstacles along the user's path to achieving the value that they came for.