Category: Onboarding

How To Reduce User Churn? 5 Tips For Product-Led Companies
User churn rates can be daunting to see, especially if you’re part of a startup company, or even if you’re a seasoned product manager. You want your product to succeed, for people to like it, and to go from onboarding straight to product adoption. However, in reality, you can’t be everyone’s cup of tea.

While user churn is a natural phenomenon in product-led companies’ journeys, there are some measures you can take to reduce the rates. So, get ready to optimise the user journey of your App! In this article, you will read about the five tips that, if followed, will make product adoption more successful among your users.

Analyze Why Churn Occurs

As mentioned above, user churn rates aren’t something you can get rid of entirely. It’s part of the process, it could be:
- your product has bugs or responsiveness problems
- your product is not easy to understand and the onboarding is failing
- your marketing is attracting the wrong users. (This is the Acquisition part of the AARRR pirate metrics).
- the user deferred interest or got distracted
- inconsistent messaging
- myriad other reasons!
But that doesn’t mean you can’t turn it into something positive. Just ask yourself: why does customer churn ha ppen for us?

By analyzing the core reasons behind failed product adoption, you’re one step closer to making your App better. If you can isolate the PRIMARY reasons why your users choose to leave, you can focus on improving in those areas first and optimize for other (lesser) contributing problems later.

Whether it’s customer service, problems during onboarding, or differences between the web and mobile version, you should be aware of the root problems, so that you can focus on fixing them.

Therefore, turn your data into valuable insight for future user journey mapping. By putting more energy towards the problem areas of your product, you can reduce your churn rate, while also showing the user that their experience is important to you. This leads us to the second tip.

Focus On User Experience

User journey mapping might be one of the key parts of developing an App or adding features to an already existing platform. This practice helps you visualize your App through the user’s eyes, and it can make it easier to identify errors or weak points in your development process. These, in turn, help reduce the user churn rate your App may be experiencing.

It can also help a product development team to understand the expectations of new and recurring customers. For the latter category, this process is crucial in order to keep them loyal to the product. For users who are just finding out about the product, it’s essential to optimize the onboarding process, and with it, the user journey.

So, if you want to adopt a customer-oriented mindset for your product-led company, focus on user experience and user retention.

Through user journey mapping you’re not only prioritizing your customers, but you can also make a positive impact on the company’s internal collaboration practices.

This way, you’re ensuring that everyone is working towards the greater good: the overarching user experience.

Optimize Your Onboarding

As mentioned in the previous section, for new customers, the onboarding experience is the deciding factor that determines whether they will go through with the product adoption process or not.

User retention may look like a scary concept, but when your product has a strong onboarding to back it up, it’s easier than it seems. Make sure to start building a rApport with the user as soon as they start using your App by inserting their name in the welcome message for a touch of personalization.

Don’t overwhelm them with notifications and popups from the get-go. Make sure to guide them through the App while allowing them to explore the features on their own.

These aspects may seem small or insignificant, but in the end, they make the difference between product adoption and abandonment. So, to keep your churn rate low, make sure to optimize your onboarding process.

Ask for Feedback

User feedback is always important for a product-led company. You can ask for it during onboarding or after completing it, upon introducing new features to your product, and so on.

By asking users about their experience, you’re showing them that your company is humble enough to take suggestions and accept constructive criticism. Feedback helps you improve various aspects of your product, as well as the way in which the company is running.

You can ask for feedback in many ways. You could try surveys after implementing features, you could collect feedback through social media posts, or through NPS. Also called Net Promoter Score, NPS is the standard customer experience metric, and it’s based on one simple question: “On a scale of 1-10, how likely are you to recommend this product to a friend?” Obviously, the higher the score, the higher the likelihood of the user remaining loyal to your product.

By asking for feedback, you signal to your customers that their opinion matters to you as a developer. If they feel this connection with your product and company, they are less likely to abandon the App.

Keep an Eye on Engagement

Engaging with your users has a similar effect to asking for their feedback. It helps build a rapport between them and your company. The relationship between you and your users might be a factor in them deciding to go through with product adoption or add to the churn rate.

User engagement might come in different forms: through periodic newsletters that have meaningful content, through social media posts, blog posts, or by having a chat option in your App. Besides helping with churn rate, user engagement also can be of aid in your user journey mapping, as it helps you see what do the customers like to interact with more.

Reducing User Churn Rates

Although it might seem scary at first, churn rate is essential to figure out your customer niche. However, if you’re worried about it, you can implement the tips in this article to improve the relationship between your company and your customers.

Analyze your churn data, focus on feedback and user experience, and your churn rate is bound to improve. If you want to see more product-led growth, check us out at Contextual!

We offer a range of solutions, from onboarding through feature discovery to feedback. We’re here to help you with your journey towards product adoption. Book a demo with us today and don’t miss out on growing your product further!
January 24, 2022
Reducing Trialler Abandonment: 5 Tips for Product-Led Companies

How many apps do you keep on using after the trial period?

Worry not, you are not the only one who does so. Trialler abandonment is an unfortunate event. Yet it is a natural phenomenon that today’s app-driven world brings with itself.

While product-led companies are trying their best with social media campaigns, ads, and other marketing tools, statistics show that between 2010 and 2019, the average app abandonment rate after just one use (session) was 23%.

This might sound alarming for companies who rely on their user’s onboarding experience and product adoption. However, despite the statistics, not all is lost.

If you are a product manager or part of a product-led company and your goal is to reduce the trialler abandonment your app WILL face, keep on reading. We put together a list of tips and tricks just for you!

1. Invest in Your UX

It goes without saying that the interaction a potential user has with your product should be your biggest focus. Look at it as the channel of communication between your company and your future clients.

Whether you like math or not, we have a formula for you:

Positive UX processes = increased loyalty on the customer’s end.

Simple, isn’t it? Well, for this to happen, design of the user’s journey combined with visual economy and appeal are top priorities for product-led teams. By focussing on JTBD and paying attention to details such as functionality, personalized, contextual tips, announcements and notifications you ensure your product stays with a user beyond the initial onboarding.

App abandonment often happens because the company fails to invest in their clients first and the product after. Your product’s usability will greatly impact the client’s decision on whether it’s worth going through with the adoption.

So, improving the app’s interface might help you not just with the initial trials, but will also help your company with a long-term retention rate. What marvelous results! o

2. Learn How To Balance on The Fine Line of Notifications

Mobile apps are an important part of the modern person’s life, whether we take its personal or professional aspects. Notifications are a vital tool of these products, as they help the user journey and also with the product adoption.

As such, notifications should take an indispensable place in your list of priorities when it comes to product development. So, next time your team discusses user journey mapping and optimization, take time to look at the impact of your app’s notifications throughout the user journey.

While notifications have a significant place in every app, there is a fine line between helping with user engagement and frustrating the client with too many push notifications.

Trialler abandonment is often caused by notifications that are either too obnoxious or even unnecessary. Making sure that you take time to create meaningful, personalized notifications can increase the chances of product adoption.

Connect with the user from the onboarding process. Something as simple as inserting their name in your welcome message can guarantee you a positive first impression.

Yet, consider the timing of your notifications. Try not to interrupt your user in their workflow, as bad timing can lead to product abandonment. Especially with new clients.

You do not want to annoy people, but you don’t want them to forget about you. So, find the balance!

3. Make Your Ads/Popups Less Intrusive

How to do that, you might wonder?

Similar to balancing notifications, pay attention to interuppting the user flow with the ads or other pop-over content (announcements, nudges, prompts) in the app during its usage. Read our posts about JTBD – so many Apps make the mistake of popping up something selflish (like a request for Appstore rating or SaaS NPS question) when the user is trying to get a “job done”.

Most users are aware that ads are important in a B2C Apps, however, if they appear to be too frequent, occupying a large part of the screen or even interrupting the work of your user, it can easily be a source of frustration, which can lead to an increased app abandonment rate.

Users have low patience with new apps: the fewer distractions they have, the better. Especially in the first few uses of a new software product, clients can be more picky than usual, so it is crucial to be mindful of details such as positioning of the ads and their frequency, in order to ensure an increased app retention rate.

4. Security Should Be A Priority

Cybersecurity and digital attacks are topics that seem to be on the table constantly, especially with the rapid rate at which technology advances today.

If you’re part of a SaaS product development company, security should be prioritized within your product. Digital attacks can and should be avoided in order to increase client trust and your app’s retention rate.

The product should not only be secure, but product-led companies should especially focus on how this feature is perceived by clients who want to protect their personal data from getting hacked.

To ensure that your clients trust your product, you can create a sense of security by making sure your app runs well and doesn’t have many bugs, or that it’s user-friendly and easy to follow for your target audience.

5. Take Advantage of User Feedback

Accepting that not everyone will find your product useful is crucial in order to make sure you and your team can focus on narrowing down your clientele.

When you find your niche of customers, it becomes easier to listen to their feedback in order to improve your app for new and potential customers.

Take advantage of the onboarding feedback given by users who already completed this process and see what you can optimize for future clients in order to reduce app abandonment in the early stages of user onboarding.

Try to measure the effectiveness of different features your product has, pay attention to possible threats, and fix bugs as soon as they appear.

You not only ensure that your new clients perceive your product as a serious one (and thus are more likely to go through with the product adoption process), but you also build credibility within your existing clients.

If people feel heard, they are more likely to stick around for a longer time. After all, customer service is one of the strongest bridges between a product-led company and its users.

Overcoming Trialler Abandonment

App abandonment in the trialler phases is a common occurrence during user onboarding and in the product adoption process.

However, you should not be disheartened, as there are some tricks to reduce these numbers and promote higher retention rates for mobile apps.

Some of them, such as investing in the UX, or ensuring product security, are foolproof methods of encouraging product adoption among new clients.

Others, such as managing ads and notifications, should also be considered as they help in facilitating the workflow of your users and providing a more pleasant experience when the product is being used.

Lastly, by listening to the already existing customers’ opinions, both your product and your company will be seen as reliable.

So, what is the next step?

You are an expert in the theoretical part, congratulations!

But you know what they say: practice makes it perfect. Would you like to implement these tips smoothly and swiftly into your app development workflow? If you want to learn more about obtaining better retention rates and how to grow your product, get started with Contextual today!

December 14, 2021
Onboarding Feedback: Product-Led Success with Your Mobile Users

Product-led companies are praised for pouring their heart and soul into the product that ends up in their customers’ hands.

While the product-led approach is known to boost growth and efficiency within a business, to get there, it’s crucial to focus on the first impression your product gives to a potential user. The onboarding experience can best be perfected through the feedback of your clients, which in turn helps with reaching more users and encourages product adoption.

As SaaS (software-as-a-service) companies are expected to deliver their products both in web and mobile formats for a better product adoption, onboarding feedback is especially helpful with mobile users.

Asking for client feedback on their onboarding journey while using the mobile version of a product has great benefits both for the client, as well as for your product and your company. So, why exactly is onboarding feedback important? Let’s deep dive into it!

Onboarding feedback reduces time spent on perfecting the process

Although it might sound counterintuitive at first, collecting client feedback on their onboarding experience actually helps your company save time on coming up with ideas for new features, better performance and many more. Especially with mobile version users, time is of essence not just for product development, but also for the client, as their attention span tends to be much shorter than that of a web user.

Generally speaking, the first 30 seconds after a potential user downloads your app are the most crucial ones, as your product needs to catch their attention in order to avoid trialler abandonment.

By asking for feedback after they complete their onboarding, they help your company figure out where the product needs to be improved.

With a product-led growth mindset, you must make room for the clients too. Reserve them a chair in your meetings and refer to them as being part of your team. Understanding that their feedback is crucial for the improvement of your product will help you save time and stress when implementing changes.

It helps with building a rapport with the user

Product-led growth can be achieved if you have a strong rapport with your clients. With user engagement and communication comes product satisfaction, which leads to company growth over time.

Focusing on your clients and listening to the feedback they have to offer upon onboarding with your product is an investment that will always make its return into your product and company.

As we mentioned above, clients have limited attention for your product, especially when it comes to the mobile version, where it takes a couple seconds to lose a potential user. Mobile versions allow for companies to have highly targeted interactions with their clients. By involving the user in the creation and improvement of your product, they are more likely to go through with the product adoption, as they feel that their opinions are valued by your company.

Getting to know the client’s needs through their feedback

As your mobile product’s time from the start of the onboarding process is limited, knowing your users’ needs is critical. With a broad clientele of new and returning users, you have to make sure you implement their feedback for a successful product adoption.

Learn from previous feedback: returning users expect possible bugs or errors to be fixed, their needs concern reliability, while new users need to be engaged fast enough to continue using your product and complete the onboarding process. Paying attention and anticipating their problems will result in a happier client, a smoother user journey, and a better app engagement.

Continuous onboarding equals continuous feedback

Consider the concept of continuous onboarding to keep user satisfaction at its maximum. For example, when introducing a new feature to your app, ask the returning users to give you feedback on it.

The initial “Aha!” moment they had when completing the onboarding for the first time is a rewarding feeling. By helping the client achieve it again through feature discovery (and then asking for their opinion on it), you are keeping the user in a continuous onboarding state, and they will offer feedback with more enthusiasm each time.

If the users see that their opinion is valuable in the development process of your product, they will feel included and are more likely to take their time giving feedback on their experience.

Mobile is the future – except it’s happening now

Understanding that the mobile version of your product is a key feature of product-led companies will help you prioritize what’s truly important for your team and efforts. By relying on onboarding feedback from mobile users, you’re doing a huge favor for your future self and the future of your company. Involving the clients and asking for their feedback should be a top priority, as their opinion helps with optimizing your product.

Besides the positive impact of their feedback on your product, interacting with your users through their onboarding feedback also builds a bridge between them and your company. Having returning users who rely on you, and who you can rely on is a true advantage in a sea of product-lead companies.

To conclude, the relevance of onboarding feedback is undeniable, especially when it comes to mobile versions of SaaS products. By involving the client in perfecting your product, you gradually build a rapport with them, which has as its main benefit the mutual reliance between company and user. Moreover, you get to know the client through their feedback, which helps you predict their needs moving forward.

Lastly, if the users feel heard when it comes to feedback implementation, they are more likely to continue using your product, which will lead to continuous growth, which is already the goal for product-lead companies.

Do you want to learn more about how to better capture feedback and how to make use of it in your future business procedures? Book a demo and get started with Contextual!

December 6, 2021
Calm App: What’s New Announcement

Some time ago, I posted a review of a few meditation App’s onboarding experience. One of those was “Calm” which I believe (along with headspace, now a unicorn startup).

I recently found an updated writeup from Really Good UX. Its a nice post that covers the psychological elements of onboarding and making sure when they are asking permission that you are still reminded of the “calm” journey.

An interesting element in the post is how they’ve handled the Apps re-organization for existing users: “Calm also offers an overview of changes to the app navigation for existing users, giving them an option to check it out with a “See What’s New” button.”

Specifically the proactive handling of user’s aversion to change is key here – keep the users informed but with positive messaging and re-inforcing the Apps mission.

“By offering a tour, Calm reduces the likelihood that users will become confused by the app’s updated navigation. “

September 17, 2021
Manage “empty states” with tips
Empty states are the unfortunate onboarding journey that your users often experience. This is the place where a user doesn’t experience value until the user has the “aha” moment. e.g for Trello or Monday, this is clicking “finish” on one of their action items.

How do we solve this?

I attended a great session with UX consultant Mark Lamb who has 20 years of experience designing products at Google, Uber, and Adobe.

Mark recommends reading B.J Fogg’s book to get a deep understanding of user psychological responses to your App in the FTUX. How to manage Empty states was a powerful part of the talk.

Mark’s advice is “be helpful or hide”, he was a little harsh on our Microsoft Word friend “Clippy” because (as we wrote) he was “bolted on at the end”. Similarly an empty shopping cart like this from Etsy is a poor experience.

Mark suggests hiding these experiences until the user is further into the journey but such design decisions are costly to implement.

Many teams don’t have the budget or resources of Uber, Google or Adobe – when Mark was asked about cost constraints he recommended tools like Contextual.

Etsy didn’t take advantage of this state, a better onboarding FTUX would direct the user back the “Aha moment” is achieved with something like this next example:
- it is playful
- has a call-to-action
- adds a little FOMO by showing “trending” as what other users are enjoying.
You could be using tools like Contextual to potentially test different button styles and messages.

The key message is “if it’s empty, then suggest things”. Clearly with Contextual you can test and iterate different suggestions (or creative) and measure uplift using goals.

Another key principle Mark advocated was “Show don’t tell“. Product Managers and Designers can use guide tools but careful to make Clippy’s mistake.

In “todoist” the “How can I use filters?” button is an opportunity.

The button may be a Contextual tip that might popup some contextual help or an explanatory video.

The key message is: What is the next step to get the user towards the “Aha” moment?

Here is the “Empty States” section of Mark’s talk, thanks to Fishburners for the session and recording!

If you’d like to explore further we have touched-on Empty States elsewhere here and here. If you want to see how Contextual can help you, book a screenshare. ????
August 19, 2021