Product tours are now a necessity for SaaS companies. No matter how complex your product is, you can easily explain it to users with interactive tutorials. The product tour examples we’ll mention in our article prove that.
According to research, 80% of companies plan to use only SaaS systems by 2025. Those already leveraging SaaS report that implementing new software takes them seven hours. However, teaching every employee how to use it takes longer than that.
That’s where product tours come in.
Long onboarding docs can confuse your clients. They might leave your company searching for a SaaS solution they can understand immediately. Create product tours to avoid this scenario.
In this article, we’ll go over the basics of a product tour and see ten of them in action.
A product tour or a product walkthrough is an interactive guide that helps users understand a SaaS product. It is a user-onboarding process that takes a new user through a website, app, key features or user interface (UI).
Finding their way around a complex product can be difficult and time-consuming for customers. In most cases, they need to leverage your SaaS solution as soon as possible. Having to go over onboarding docs and read complicated explanations is the last thing they need.
Product tours speed up the onboarding process, taking your customers step-by-step through the SaaS product. These interactive guides must be clear and concise so that every user can understand them.
According to Statista, there are around 17,000 SaaS companies in the United States alone. The competition is fierce and you must put out all the stops to attract customers to your company.
When you attract them, however, you should simplify the onboarding process. The way you onboard users can make or break your business.
If they experience a steep learning curve, customers won’t stick around for too long. That’s why you need a well-designed product tour.
Effective product tours bring the following benefits to the table:
- Increase user engagement – a user’s attention span amounts to a mere eight seconds. Product tours ensure you engage users and deliver a more guided experience. They’ll easily understand how the product works and what its value is.
- Simplify the user experience – not all customers are tech-savvy. Some require time and personalized guidance to master your SaaS product. You can simplify the learning curve by creating product tours for them.
- Decrease the number of support requests – users usually swamp employees with support tickets. Instead of doing that, they can find answers in product tours.
- Make users comfortable with a SaaS product – product tours reduce confusion new users feel in the beginning. These interactive guides make customers more confident while using your product.
Creating product tours is now easier thanks to platforms like Eyelet. Highlight the key features of your product, add hints or banners anywhere on the screen and help your customers reach the “aha” moment with our tool.
Let’s see what you should include in your user-onboarding product tours.
What to include in your product tour?
Not all product tours look the same. There isn’t any one-size-fits-all approach to making a successful product tour for new users.
However, you should follow certain basic principles. Here are the key guidelines:
- Make it interactive – users might not have time for long how-to articles, but they still want to learn about new features. You can use a platform like Eyelet to deliver an interactive experience that lets them try the features for themselves.
- Use personalization – create personalized product tours to catch user attention. For instance, in-app messages can address new users personally. Another solution would be to segment product walkthroughs based on user preferences.
- Launch product tours based on user action – new users log in to your SaaS solution and a product tour starts. This action shouldn’t be enough to trigger the tour. Instead, specific user actions should trigger it to create a more seamless experience.
- Focus on the value – your SaaS company should always lead with value. It must be clear to new customers what they will gain from using your tool. Cover all the points to draw your users in.
- Be consistent with the design – when your team members add product tour UI patterns to the SaaS solution, they must ensure that the design is consistent. There’s no room for mismatched colors and styles when you want to impress your clients.
- Add a CTA – do you have new features to plug? You can promote them with hovering CTA buttons. Encourage users to “Try Out the New Feature” or “Upgrade the Subscription” with a CTA.
Keeping users engaged and teaching new customers how to use your product is a piece of cake with product tours. Make sure to include the above in your walkthrough and provide the best experience to your customers.
How can Eyelet help you?
Product tours are an essential medium for all SaaS companies. They keep users engaged while also letting them learn how to use your product at their own pace.
Before we jump to product tour examples, we’ll introduce you to a tool that helps you improve the user-onboarding process—Eyelet.
Eyelet helps you easily create in-app product walkthroughs. With no coding knowledge required, Eyelet is suitable for all users, regardless if they are tech-savvy or not.
All you need is to download and install our Chrome extension. The steps are straightforward after that.
Adding a new project lets you make onboarding guides to ensure a user understands what your SaaS company offers. Our tool comes with a useful editor to further customize your interactive walkthrough.
You can add a logo, images and buttons to build your brand personality. There is even an option to control how the in-app experience appears.
Eyelet doesn’t limit you—you can include as many steps as you want to walk users down your SaaS solution.
You can also target users based on their behavior, timing and other characteristics.
Start building interactive onboarding experiences with Eyelet!
The best product tour examples
Is it your first time creating a product tour? Eyelet has you covered!
It’s easier to make a user-friendly walkthrough if you look at the best product tour examples. Here are ten companies that helped their users reach the “aha” moment with an interactive experience.
Image source: Amazon
The first product tour example comes from Amazon. It is an excellent tutorial for beginners, giving users a look at the entire sales cycle.
Amazon uses tooltips for its product tour. Tooltips are brief textual snippets that draw a customer’s attention to essential features.
Even before a seller starts using the platform, the product tour starts. The registration process is lengthy and Amazon knows that most users need help. If you get confused, tooltips will explain every required field.
Amazon shows that you must support users from the beginning. Ensure your product tour covers the most important steps.
Video source: Mailchimp
Mailchimp is a popular email marketing platform that helps businesses track their campaign’s performance. The tool is user-friendly and straightforward, but new users might need help understanding how it works.
That’s why Mailchimp created its product tour. Out of all UI patterns, the platform went with driven actions. This pattern draws the user’s attention to a specific action like a click or, in Mailchimp’s case, an input.
You must fill out different fields to send subscribers an email. Mailchimp gives subtle hints about the actions you must take. For instance, the “Subject” field comes with the question “What’s the subject line for this campaign,” prompting users to add their copy.
If you want a subtle product tour, Mailchimp is a great example.
Video source: Dropbox
Dropbox introduced its new solution—Dropbox Paper—about five years ago. It is an online document service that enables users to collaborate in real-time, make to-do lists, streamline the workflow and more.
The company realized that a new user would need some help. That’s why it created successful product tours to guide users through the product.
The Dropbox Paper product tour uses a modal window, i.e. a window that pops up and takes over the screen. This is a good choice because the user focuses on the product itself and finds out what possibilities it offers. There are no distractions.
It includes the features most successful product tours have:
- It’s short
- It’s skippable
- It has a concise and to-the-point copy
The focus is on the value users receive. This is useful for the initial onboarding phase when a user doesn’t yet know all the use cases for a SaaS product.
Video source: SumoMe
SumoMe offers online marketing tools to webmasters looking to boost traffic and conversions. The company has many standalone tools like email automation so it has to help a user understand how to leverage them.
The entire product tour relies on in-app messages, teaching customers what each option does. You can dismiss a message to learn more about another feature.
The SumoMe product tour interface is simple. This shows that you don’t have to go over the top to create engaging tours.
SumoMe keeps it easy. Its product tour helps users make sense of different tools available in the dashboard.
Video source: Squarespace
Squarespace is a SaaS tool allowing users to build and host websites. Product teams new to the platform have a chance to master its interface thanks to the interactive onboarding tour.
Just like Dropbox, Squarespace uses a modal window that includes four steps. The copy is short, teaching users the basics of the tool.
Once you close the modal window, the product tour doesn’t end there. You have an assistant that lists everything you should do to build a website. You can tick a box every time you complete a task.
This product tour example shows that you must be there for customers every step of the way. Tell them what they need to do and inform them how they can do it with your product.
Video source: Google Docs
Customers used to Microsoft Office need help when they start to leverage a new word processor. Google Docs makes the transition easier, teaching users the basics of the platform.
From opening a new blank document to using a template, customers will quickly master Google Docs. Its product tour is only four steps long. It might seem like this isn’t enough, but it is.
You don’t need to go into many details to help your users out. Just tell them how your platform works, and they’ll figure out the rest by themselves.
Video source: Trello
Trello is a perfect example of the different ways companies can use product tours. You don’t need to use them during the initial onboarding. It’s also great to leverage them when you have a new feature or interface.
The Trello product tour wants to inform existing users about the changes to the platform.
In the above example, the user must know that the navigation tabs have a new home. This saves time—the customer doesn’t need to acquaint themselves with the new interface on their own.
Although product tours are great for user onboarding, you can also use them for your existing customers.
Image source: Evernote
Evernote has developed an online notepad app for users to take, share and organize their notes. Users interact with the app thanks to helpful in-app messages that give a quick tour of its interface.
This product tour is a perfect example of the onboarding process, guiding users through their first steps on the app. It also lists vital features for more advanced uses of Evernote. In that way, the company covers all the bases.
What Evernote could add, however, is a “Close” button to their in-app product tour. This would be more user-friendly. Other than that, it is one of the top product tour examples.
Video source: Slack
A modal window is popular among SaaS companies, Slack included. It is an interactive way to engage users and teach them all there is to know about your app.
Aside from the modal window, Slack also relies on tooltips and engaging copy. The tooltips point to public channels and direct messages to ensure users don’t confuse the two.
The form is minimalistic. This shows that Slack wants to keep its product tour brief. The point is to encourage users to become active on Slack as soon as possible.
What you can learn from Slack is that less is sometimes more. Learn from this product tour example and keep it simple.
Image source: Pandora
SaaS companies can explore different UI patterns for product tours. Most of them rely on interactive walkthroughs, but they can be textual as well. Case in point, our next product tour example—Pandora.
Pandora is an ad-supported audio streaming service. Artists rely on Pandora to deliver their music to more people. However, they must acquaint themselves with the app first to do that.
The Pandora product tour offers every tip and trick users need. How to create or delete a station, browse and share content—customers can learn all that from this product tour example.
User onboarding is an important process. Pandora takes no chances and ensures its users know how to leverage the platform.
Summing up
Your users will understand how to utilize your product and its features with an effective product tour. Don’t assume that it’s easy to navigate through your SaaS solution without a product tour. Not all customers are tech-savvy and you must cater to their needs as well.
These product tour examples serve as a great inspiration, especially if you’re just starting out. See the different approaches they took and decide which one would work for your company.
Creating a product tour can be time-consuming and difficult. You need a tool like Eyelet to streamline the process.
Eyelet enables you to make a more guided experience and get the hang of your product. Use our tool to showcase your product’s value and make your customers’ lives easier.
FAQ
We have compiled a list of the most asked questions about product tours. Here are our answers.
What is a product tour?
A product tour is an in-app tutorial that offers users step-by-step guidance on the basics of a SaaS product.
Are product tours effective?
Yes, they are! Product tours engage customers and draw their attention to your SaaS product. Instead of contacting your support team, users can learn the basics of your solution with the help of a product tour.
What is a product walkthrough?
A product walkthrough, also known as a product tour, helps customers understand a SaaS product and its features. Users see in-app messages that tell them how to complete certain steps within the product.
What is a website tour?
A website tour is an interactive walkthrough that explains your platform or app to users.