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6 onboarding UX emotions
In an earlier post we covered how Eventbrite tracked anger vs delight. Today I cover 6 onboarding UX emotions your users may experience when trialling your App.

Your user’s journey is a mix of “will this work for me?”, “how does this work”, “that didn’t work”, “aha-yes!”. For a new user it’s a roller-coaster of emotions and its made up of 20 small steps that anger or delight.
1. What made users flock to Mixpanel but shun Kissmetrics?
2. How did Amplitude arrive much later but still nail a huge market segment?
I don’t have the answers – there will be many, many reasons** and even more opinions. The question is what are the 20 steps your App needs to deepen engagement where users go from:

ACQUIRED ➡️ ACTIVATED ➡️ RETAINED ➡️ REFERRER

Tracking and shaping emotional UX

This chart is intended to show that:
1. users build up “Delight” slowly over a period of time.
2. One event along the journey send then into a state of “Anger” . The anger has a much bigger impact than all the small delight moments.
3. Summary: “delightful things don’t matter if you don’t solve the critical moment”
For Eventbrite, it was failures at payment time that produced anger. The user had searched for, selected an event, read about it, got excited, registered and then BOOM something in payment was wrong or broken.

Types of Emotion

Anxiety and Uncertainty

For the Eventbrite customer, things were even worse – the user didn’t know if they were registered or not!

When I was at College, the programming classes were on a shared Unix system that would always crash at the worst possible time, everyone pushing to get their assignment done at the last minute was “<CTRL-S>ing their code every few seconds to make sure they didn’t lose work – stressful!

Would those Anxious students ever recommend or refer people to use that brand of Unix hardware? I think not.

Once a customer has a catastrophic experience its going to be hard win their trust again.

Overpromise Disappointment

In the 20 small steps to engagement the user is investing time in the hope that they have the product to solve their Job-to-be-done (JTBD). The curve might look something like this:

Along the time-invested curve, the user is calibrating their experience back to stories told on:
1. Your marketing
2. Your website
3. Your onboarding emails and guides
4. What their peers or press have said about the product
It’s easy to over-state a product’s unique value proposition in the marketing.

We experience this ourselves:
- the product is a self-service dashboard
- the impression is this is a super quick process
- some don’t realize there is an SDK (at least for mobile) and that they need their developer buy-in
- that targeting and personalization is magic rather than data-driven
- that the integration will match their app perfectly first-time. (Mobile Apps are often written differently and our integration sometimes needs the developers to talk to each other)
None of this is the customer’s fault, we need to better set expectations of simple things and technical things.

Confusion (Cognitive Overload)

Related to uncertainty is powerlessness.

Often users are confronted with a confusing array of crammed in features. It’s just too much and leads to confusion.

One of my most popular posts on medium covered the risk of cognitive overload in your App. These psychological factors affect your user activation rates and how you can manage that.

Take a look here.

The “Vibe”

Incompetent lawyer Dennis Denuto abandons case law and logic when arguing his clients case in legendary aussie comedy “The Castle“.

Dennis’ argument is that the “Vibe” is not right!

Customers also use their “spidey-sense” when trialling your product. The spidey-sense is getting the “Vibe” of whether the product is going to work for them. Small moments in your App transmit a positive or negative Vibe to the user. This Vibe will affect activation rates.

Gratification

The activated user chart (above) has an initial steep climb – along that climb your user needs to experience practical results along the way.

Gratification is a major goal. But it needs to be revealed to the user in a timeslice that is achievable. In an attention-deficit TikTok world “Instant Gratification” is your only option ????.

Prioritizing your Onboarding should be coloured by JTBD and tempered through the lens of SMART goals. Give the user something achievable! Its a major dopamine rush for any user to get gratification on their key “jobs”.

Surprise and Delight

Consumerisation of SaaS and B2B Apps is one of the most interesting trends. Slack, Mailchimp have added playfullness and joy into work-based applications. Its a powerful “cute” additive to the user’s experience. It signals your are not only on the top of your functionality but you have time, space and ❤ to add some fun into the application.

BUT….as mentioned above, Delight is only impactful if you’ve resolved all the Anger points first.

Summary

I’ve provided 6 major emotions that a user experiences on their way to:
1. being happy and buying your product or
2. churning to a competitor.
But don’t be fooled, these emotions run under the surface – don’t believe what any user says, but measure what they do!
1. Customers make terrible product designers.
2. Get as much feedback as possible from customer BUT you cannot take at face value.
3. The customer’s job is to show you their pain.
4. Your job is to translate into meaningful product solutions.
5. You need a champion of the customer that OWN this conversion of pain to design.
Last note: one important emotion I didn’t cover here (its pre-acquisition) is the conviction that comes from referrals and social proof about your solution. When a prospect’s friend recommend product, it’s a huge contributor to trialler positivity.

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June 28, 2021
Getting Product Market Fit – a panel
Why do left-handed squash players who drive yellow Camrys on a Saturday morning matter??

If you work in Product you know the term Product Market Fit or PMF or PMFIT. This milestone is a momentous point in a product’s journey and a defining cusp in potential great success and failure – but it’s hard to point to the science of knowing how to get it.

Last Friday, I was lucky enough to host a panel with some incredibly talented product folk and founders – between them over 90 products have been launched. We dug into what is pre-PMF and what is post-PMF, some wins in finding it, some fails and most importantly what methods help you get there.

Here is the link to the full session and I’ve summarised a few key points below.

The main takeaway is that PMF is about “doing the work”. Prioritizing and running experiments that align with revenue goals or okrs and measuring the results.

Trish started by:
1. “what is the killer epic?” – this is the feature that will hook the user.
2. in tandem focussing on nailing the key customer segment who is passionate about what you solve. Mick’s quote of “users who are left-handed squash players who drive yellow Datsuns in Surry Hills on a Saturday morning”.
Mick deconstructed the PMF acronym highlighting:
1. “go-to-market” is just as important as the code you’ve written.
2. understanding if that market is sizeable and lucrative. A good product in a bad market is antithetical to startup success.
3. Like art, PMF is “I don’t know what it is, but I know it when I see it”. Particularly if you “can’t stop growth”, “its growing without you trying”.
Cheryl’s experience of over 60 startups was valuable. The change is from “pushing shit uphill” to “chasing the demand…I can’t keep up with this thing” (possible directions for the product).

Sometimes you find (the Spotify example) that your key users are treating your App like an operating system – they are hacking it in ways that you never imagined.

Steen related thought tools he has used over the years. Specifically oscillating back-forth between the “understanding which segments are right for your offerring” and “how can you better service those segments”. Then iterate through that cycle where you get to high level of engagement accompanied with money “flying through the door”.

The Sean Ellis’ methodology was the first to lay the groundwork for quantifying PMF. The favourite for Steen is the currently more fashionable method from Superhuman. Both of these are focused on customer/user perception of their need for your product on their chosen task.

Steen called this “toothbrush time”, that consistency of use in each day.

Stick with the whole video for learnings and some useful questions.

I’d love to followup some time with a deeper dive on marketing and audience testing methods both pre and post PMF. Stay tuned.
April 26, 2021
App Leader’s Tips and Popups

How is it that some apps nail user engagement? What looks so easy is the result of a lot of product measurement and fine tuning.

The reason why mobile tips, tooltips and guides work is because designers often hide features away to avoid clutter. What you can show on a sidebar (or top menu) in a Desktop App is often not best to show on mobile due to limited screen real-estate or differing layout.

Successful Apps always work by optimizing feature uptake. Successful Apps eventually add more features that need explanation – this post we have a look at what tips and guides some big players have been doing in 2021. (all of these screencaps are from just the last week or two).

Twitter

You could forgive the twitter team for sitting back, sipping on a Sightglass latte. Or perhaps you imagine them freaking out about Clubhouse and rushing to launch Twitter Spaces. But some part of the team are quietly optimizing user’s understanding of how the app works.

As you can see here, they are testing 2 tips at once. I didn’t think about the bookmark idea before, so kudos to them.

Google Calendar

A nice new feature would not be known by users unless accompanied by a Feature Announcement – the call-to-action “Go to settings” is a perfect example of giving the user the option to uptake that feature. You can do this easily with Contextual and you can measure the uptake.

eBay

eBay benefit if they can encourage us to save our searches. You know you will get inApp reminders, price-drops, emails all based on your stated-interest.

A latte sipping product manager might think that the “❤️ Save this search” is prominent enough but kudos to this product manager for leaving nothing to chance.

Calendly

Calendly may not be as big as the other Goliath’s but you can see Feature Announcements are a great way to deepen the usage of the product. Regardless of whether its mobile apps or mobile web, tips can help users comprehend all the capabilities of your App. As I mentioned in the starting paragraphs: in mobile much is hidden and that is exactly why tips, tours, guides are even more powerful – targeted to right-user-right-time.

March 23, 2021
When Mobile Carousels make sense
With Contextual you can create carousels without coding. But readers will know that I’m not a huge fan. I AM a huge fan of JTBD (Jobs-to-be-done) and to me carousels seemed to stand between the user and their job.

So thats not a good thing.

Elsewhere in a banking app, I was positive on using carousels for feature discovery. In this post, we look at how the world of cryptocurrencies is trying to become easier to consumers. Specifically why carousels help explain a new concept from a crypto project called Argent.

In the world of crypto, post-Mount-Gox, the familiar catch cry is “not your keys, not your coins”.

That won’t make sense to most people and hence why crypto is largely for either for geeks or the very committed. Like all movements, you have wearly adopters and eventually the movement “crosses the chasm”. The diagram below was made famous by Geoffrey Moore in his book of the same name.

Briefly:

1) when we store our cash in a bank account, the bank is the custodian – they hold the keys.

2) in the crypto world:
1. you can choose to have an exchange (CEX) or some other entity (paypal, square, soon Robinhood) hold your keys but you need to make a leap of faith to trust them like a bank.
2. you take responsibility for your own coin and tokens via “wallets” (paper, cold and hot).
If you are confused, no problem, this is because we are still on the RED left hand-side of the curve below.

Argent want to help change that.

Credit: slidemodel.com

Argent have a radical and new way of avoiding the custodial role by adding “Guardians” – but for a new user to understand: it does need education, and it does need people to collaborate. I’ll let them explain.

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This is a complex new area for consumers and this use of Carousels by Argent is not interferring with the JTBD, but actually bootstrapping the consumers understanding. I think they’ve done a good job. They were probably tempted to use a video explainer, but this keeps the user inApp, contextual and ready to proceed.

BTW, they did have an introductory Carousel which I was less excited about. I’ve included it here for completeness.

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March 19, 2021
FOMO and product adoption
Its been a huge month in tech with #wallstreetbets on reddit** and crypto going mainstream – but the breakout success in Apps has to be Clubhouse. Clubhouse launched in April of 2020, perfect for a COVID world, now they have over 5M users on IOS only! They’ve mastered the art of FOMO to drive that growth.

Source: the twitter thread below

Why FOMO matters

For the uninitiated: “fear of missing out” (FOMO) is a huge driver of consumer crowd activity. It was a big, big driver in the #wallstreethbets fight and is fully leveraged in Clubhouse’s explosive growth. @petergyang summarises on this excellent twitter thread.

Specifically Yang outlines:
1. FOMO on top creators (they had superstars like @pmarca and @naval early, culminating with @elonmusk, upcoming is Elon with Kanye )
2. FOMO on the best content
3. FOMO on invites
4. FOMO on growing audience
5. FOMO on delightful experiences
The thread expands detail for each of these points – it’s worth a read.

BUT…I wanted to focus on 2 important messages for the activation part of the funnel (where Contextual helps), that matters a ton for Product Managers and Growth teams:
1. “The app also aggressively promotes follows through: 1. Onboarding 2. Notifications 3. Clubs“
2. “…is the delight of discovering an amazing topic or seeing a top creator join the conversation. Variable rewards cause people to tune in more.”***
Whilst there is a huge FOMO in acquisition (users get invites which makes them part of the “insiders” club”), its is the ability to re-engage via the Onboarding and Notifications to keep bringing them back.

The big deal about consumer Apps is the “meh” response once they’ve installed and the users closes the App and doesn’t come back (they go back to Instagram or Tiktok for their entertainment). This is why consumer apps have Day 0 abandonment above 78%.

FOMO based re-engagement

Have your product team brainstorm what are the FOMO elements that your users want. Think about it….the user likely went to the effort of installing your App or creating an account. Not all FOMO needs to be about worshipping Elon or Naval or Kanye (does anyone ?????).
Things that might make sense:
- if you are ecommerce, then can you alert the user about price drops.
- if you are real-estate or research, can you capture the users preferences and give them an inside edge that will have them opening the app again.
- if you have a social graph, let their connections do the re-engagement broadcast (this is how Clubhouse uses “Clubs”).
- …the list goes on.
The first point is that it’s likely to acquire a user (even before activation) you’ve nailed the insight that drove them to you. In your Onboarding can you throw up a Contextual feedback question to clarify what is driving them?
The second point is that these method are well-known and consistent, once you’ve nailed your EXACT version (iterate fast with tools like Contextual to “test-and-learn” don’t get bogged down roadmapping and coding the tests) then make it repeatable across the product Onboarding and Re-engagement processes. Identify the common questions and use-cases and standardize them!

Clearly stated by my friend @chrissaad he expands this thinking/expectation to all SaaS products. Products for B2B can often be super-complex and feature rich (Contextual is an example) – but the job of the Product Team is to make the experience as standard as possible and align it with the messaging as the user comes down the acquisition funnel.

If you apply your particular insights based around FOMO and standardize you may just nail your engine of growth.

** Reddit raised $250M off the back of the WSB phenomenon. Social network’s ability to influence group behaviour and now long established markets is analogous to the 2011 Arab Spring.

*** BTW “variable rewards” is a well-known tool in gamification.
February 15, 2021