The Importance of Frictionless Onboarding
Most people see a new sign-up form and do a runner. Let’s be honest, no one has ever looked at an account creation page and gone, ‘Oh, you’re speaking my language’. Except maybe hackers but that’s neither here nor there. I’ve seen it happen at parties.
At work lunches. During the slow but brutal deaths of friendships. You ask someone to fill out a sign up form and it’s like watching the colour drain from their face.
More or less. It’s a legitimate struggle for every brand. But no one wants to lose business because of poor design and this is where frictionless onboarding is a godsend.
There are loads of tools out there - some really stand out in terms of features - but the ones that take the cake are the ones that don’t feel like onboarding tools at all. I can see why they’re so successful too - by asking for essential information only, these platforms become lean, mean data capturing machines without feeling invasive or nosy. They also offer ways to integrate accounts across platforms so you never really have to start over with an onboarding process.
Of course, most companies still have yet to catch up to how simple things can get when you invest in intelligent platforms but the larger problem here is cost and internal buy-in. How many times have you heard ‘But this is how we’ve always done it’.
The best way to break through those barriers though - show them how much money you’re losing every year on drop-offs because of account sign-up pages. It seems like going frictionless is everyone’s best bet moving forward, so it may be time to start streamlining things on your end too.
Key Features to Look for in Onboarding Tools
People either love or hate onboarding processes, and there are all sorts of reasons for that. First impressions are important in people’s minds so yes, if they have a bad experience with your onboarding tools, they’ll never sign back in again. That’s why you need to make sure your onboarding tools are on point.
In the SaaS industry, there is fierce competition so if you want to be at the top of your game, you need an easy-to-use onboarding tool. It has to be user-friendly and should not only guide your users through a seamless process but also provide you with all the insights you need. Intuitive navigation will ensure that people don’t drop off during their onboarding process so if there’s anything you should pay attention to - it is this feature. You should also make sure that your onboarding tool integrates with the existing tools in your ecosystem like your customer relationship management software (CRM), marketing automation tools, and other applications.
Another really handy feature is an onboarding checklist that tells your users what tasks they have already completed and what else they need to do. You can gamify this process too, offering virtual badges or tokens to motivate users through every step of the way. There’s nothing like a little healthy motivation to get people engaged in signing up with your product or service. Personalisation is also key as it helps engage users by speaking their language.
Automatic email messages with their names, educational videos based on their purchase behaviour, and follow-ups based on their questions are all useful features. If you want your users to succeed with your product, a good onboarding experience is critical. This will help reduce churn rates and will improve conversion rates while boosting loyalty to your product.
Giving access to fun but informative resources can empower new users while gamifying the process makes it less boring and more interactive. And honestly, who likes boring things anyway.
Top 5 Tools for Simplifying Account Creation
People are quick to drop off at sign-up if you don’t make things a breeze. And sometimes, even that isn’t enough. I think consumers have gotten a little bit picky, and I can’t say I blame them. That’s why businesses need to think about frictionless onboarding.
We know it’s important - it helps you cut costs, increase conversion, and so on. No matter the device or platform customers use to sign up, they’ll feel like they’re being treated with care. And they are.
There are a couple of tools that are simple enough for anyone to use: for example, UXcam and Userlane help brands figure out what users respond positively to and what they don’t. With data analytics, brands can work towards higher conversion rates. But then there’s Appcues, which works more as an onboarding wizard to reduce time spent on sign-up and set the right expectations for each user.
Some tools are more specific, like ChurnZero, which focuses on SaaS onboarding. There’s also WalkMe that studies digital behaviour on a micro level to help businesses find bottlenecks during onboarding. This isn’t to say you need to use every single one of these tools - that would be too much information.
It’s also vital to still have genuine empathy for your customers because while tech is great, it isn’t always the solution to everything.
Case Studies: Success Stories of Streamlined Onboarding
It's funny how simple some people's lives can be. Especially the overachievers who own calendars. They get up and start their day; every action is typically planned out and scheduled down to the minute, and they still find themselves with time to socialise after a long day of work. Others struggle getting up in time to catch the bus, forget their ID card at home, and by 8am, have forgotten what they were supposed to do in the first place.
Isn't it amazing that software can help both the calendar-wielders and those who just can't get their day together. Well-made tools for onboarding seem rather like a godsend for both of them, judging by how successful they've become within businesses everywhere. Case studies suggest that automated onboarding tools reduce errors by a significant margin - especially ones that offer customisation and accessibility options.
It cuts corners on tasks like double data-entry, which makes sure there are fewer errors in sensitive work documents for new employees. The best part of being able to recommend good onboarding tools is knowing they're geared towards making office life simpler for both people filling out the paperwork and those giving out official instruction. That means a stellar employee experience overall - one that's built on the idea that people should feel welcome in the companies that hire them.
People are happier with their jobs when they aren't overwhelmed or left wondering what happens next because technology has made complicated processes quite a bit easier than they used to be. There's an appeal in building confidence through streamlined onboarding and creating bonds - people are good at picking up on things like that, even if they're not intuitive enough to file paperwork on time.
Best Practices for Implementing Onboarding Solutions
I realise this topic can be a bit like that annoying teacher who keeps repeating the same lesson over and over but the truth is, user account creation is almost never fairly important for any business operating in today’s competitive digital space. Makes Me Think Of it doesn’t matter if you are in saas, banking, ecommerce or retail; if your onboarding processes are a drag, customers will move on without a second thought. Now you can’t simply throw everything at onboarding and hope something sticks.
It’s better to focus on a few effective tactics that work for most use cases to keep things simple. These include giving new users options for creating an account, letting users see what they are signing up for, making onboarding easy and interactive, reducing commitment requirements for users, and providing clear guidance on what to do next. While this can work for most people, it is still not perfect for everyone. When rolling out onboarding solutions it helps to be mindful of who your customers are and what type of devices they use.
For example, mobile-first clients and customers with disabilities will need different onboarding approaches than desktop users. At the end of the day, you want to make customer onboarding easy while ensuring your system fits into their lifestyles.
Finally, let’s not forget there is such a thing as too much customisation. More or less. It might be tempting to give users every bit of information right off the bat in hopes it will help them better understand your business and product offerings but that usually ends up being information overload which causes more confusion than anything else.
Future Trends in Account Creation and User Experience
Everything seems to be speeding up these days. I Gather swifter replies, instant answers, blazing fast sign-ins. People are comparatively keener than ever to have it their way - whatever ‘their way’ happens to be in that moment.
How we create accounts and log into our favourite sites or services also reflects this attitude. No one wants the pain of filling out pages and pages of forms just to stay connected anymore. A good frictionless onboarding process needs to find a balance between being secure and being quick, and getting this balance right is going to separate the products that achieve sustained success and those that fall by the wayside. Sort of.
There’s a growing appetite for letting people have everything they want, as soon as they ask for it, without having to jump through any hoops. But the problem with people’s online behaviour is that it can become inconsistent quite easily, so you can't always rely on it for verification purposes. If someone wants their account creation experience to feel unique, personalised or even special, matching them with tools that can rapidly process cues from their biometrics or preferred credentials is key. Account creation tools are not just about onboarding anyone anymore; they're about onboarding someone who will keep coming back frequently enough and authentically enough, so keeping users at the heart of the process is what’s going to work best in the long run.
Even though biometrics-based tools are supposedly not about curating experiences tailor-made for users, they focus on producing reliably verifiable data. And that's proving equally beneficial because it's helping businesses identify which users they can actually deliver those tailored experiences to - there’s a lot of data-driven decision making behind these simple-seeming account creation flows.
Because an effortless account creation experience feels great until you start getting targeted by bots spamming you with "too-good-to-be-true" offers they've curated specially for your user persona by collating information they've obtained from your brand new login credentials. I think future trends may also focus heavily on regulating how user data moves between two connected third party services as well as how much each third party service stands to benefit from sharing user data with others.