In-product digital onboarding

Transitioning from hand-holding onboarding to a digital experience

The problem:

The business identified that there was a number of issues new users experienced when trialling our RMM tool. The overwhelming size of the product and often confusing workflows often required handheld onboarding in order for users to appreciate the power this tool provided.

The aim:

The objective of this problem is to address the uncertainty that users may face when they have not experienced a product demonstration from Sales. Additionally, it aims to reinforce key concepts that users might have learned during their interactions with sales engineers and onboarding professionals. By doing so, we strive to create a smoother user onboarding experience that includes relevant and updated content, ensuring users feel more confident and informed as they begin using the product.

The hypothesis:

The team believed that having onboarding tours available at all times would boost trial conversions since they relied on tutorial videos and documentation that were not directly accessible within the product. They thought this new real-time guidance would enhance product adoption, allowing users to quickly see the true value of our RMM product Additionally, the team believed that these educational tours would improve retention, as the onboarding process would make users feel more confident while using the RMM solution, resulting in increased product usage.

The Process

  • Lets start with the problem

    The business identified an over reliance on hand-held on-boarding which was resulting in increased business costs. Documentation and existing guides were not adequately supporting new users which led to higher rates of churn and missed trial conversion opportunities

  • UX starts with the user

    Identifying how to best serve the user started with a comprehensive research project. Interviews were conducted to collect user behaviour data. This was then scrutinized in internal stakeholder review sessions and transformed into journey maps which shaped the user requirements for the digital onboarding experience.

  • Where to begin?

    Our RMM product is huge. Workflows within workflows is often a source of great confusion and intimidation when starting out.

    Our research allowed us to start looking at key user journeys and where we could provide the most value to our customers.

  • Designing the workflows

    Using the information gathered and identified points of value, I began working with the info-dev team to begin curating the most important

  • Sense Check!

    Further internal stakeholder reviews were conducted to ensure the guidance being provided aligned with the strategy that the infodev and SMEs have when teaching customers how to use our product

  • Artefacts

    Alongside reviewing the content, I began designing the containers that would house the guidance so this could be integrated with our Software Experience Management tools.

  • Testing the "real" thing

    Following the feedback from our internal content review and ensuring the guide containers were aligned with our brand and style. I passed these onto the development team for the first pass of testing.

    Our internal usability testing took individuals who had never used this specific tool, through steps required to set up their RMM environment.

    The feedback used here cycled back into revising further content

  • Testing the real real thing

    Following the revisions which were identified in the internal testing. We put the guides to the test against a number of “power users”.

    Overall, participants felt that the guides gave them some level of confidence to begin using the RMM with one user stating;

    “How long have I been fighting to get it enabled by default for all users for onboarding”

  • Launch

    Following the typical merry-go-round between UX, Devs, QA and PMs - we were able to launch the guides in October 2022

    https://status.n-able.com/2022/10/13/new-onboarding-guide-and-tool-tips-added-to-n-central/

    Our post launch research showed users who were guided through the workflow spent on a daily average, 14 minutes longer on the product and produced a higher feature click rate than non-guided users.

    We also found that of the users who were guided - they were more likely to convert their trials into full users.

The process summarised:

We started out the project with a vision to reduce the need for handheld onboarding by creating a digital onboarding experience. The team and I began with journey mapping, identifying pain points and struggles that users had with trialling the RMM without guidance. We then used click-data to identify which workflows were most important for current existing user and that helped inform the key features to create guides for. I collaborated with the Customer Success team, the Information Development team and our UX Researchers to begin creating the content for the workflows. I also worked on designing the artefacts that would eventually be used in the guides. We tested the initial low-fi prototypes with SMEs to ensure the guides were appropriately communicating what was required.

Following the hand-off to development, we were able to do some internal show-me sessions to find any issues or gaps in the content and experience. Users in this test had never used the RMM product before so this allowed us to gauge how much more confidence a user may have had by going through the guides. We also used the feedback to further refine the content of the guides.

The conclusion:

We launched the guides in October 2022 and they had a significant impact on trial user retention, increasing conversion rates and user stickiness. One metric which was interesting is on a 180 day average. Users who were presented with the guides would use the RMM Product 14 minutes longer (an increase of 58.4%) than their unguided counterparts. Increasing the overall number of clicks within the product and users were more likely to complete key workflows when setting up their RMM environment.

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