You better believe it’s happening! People just don’t signup and use SaaS products the way they used to. Nobody has ever liked going through training or reading up on documentation but the number of people that actually do has never been lower.
And it’s our fault.
We, the people that made these incredibly easy-to-use SaaS apps. We are to blame for the ever-shrinking attention span of our users, and their unquenchable desire to pick up a tool and start using it from day one.
These symptoms can be also observed in physical products too, I mean, when was the last time you read the instruction manual of a phone or tablet? Even with Ikea furniture, you don’t read the manual until you finish assembling the chair and realize you have twelve screws left.
The way our users are educated on the core values of the products we sell is shifting. That’s why these regular onboarding guides don’t work anymore.
You can’t be taking your users on a fourteen-step guided tour of your SaaS and expect them to both, have the patience to sit there and take it and learn how the product works.
Furthermore, expecting them to all need the same thing out of your product is nuts. So why would you take them on a tour of all your nooks and crannies?
And don’t get me started on those video onboarding. We get it, it’s easy to slap a Loom video with you talking about how pretty and useful your SaaS is but your users need to see it working, not hear you talk about it.
So how are you supposed to onboard users in this brave new world?
I want to preface that there is no substitute for good UI, that should be a given. The next thing is to ensure you have all your support resources on point. These could be video resources, documentation, FAQs, or a combination of all of them.
Once that’s sorted you can start looking at why people come to your app in the first place. Granted, at first there is going to be a lot of guessing involved but once you start onboarding and tracking users you’ll have a better idea of what they are looking for.
From here on out, there is going to be a lot of back and forward between data and your app. You need to figure out if there are multiple personas using your product (very likely that this is going to be the case) and create different experiences for each of them. I’m talking about different support resources and different onboarding scenarios.
You’ll want to make sure that each segment of your audience gets the right kind of love from you. And by love, I mean that you ought to do whatever it takes to show the value of the product without ever taking control away from them.
Taking control away from the users even if it’s to show them how to use the app is definitely a big no-no! You’ve already spent a lot of time and effort to get them interested enough in your product to signup, let them experience it at their own pace.
Tooltips
Instead, make sure you add some contextual help. My favorite way of accomplishing this is using the tooltip feature of Eyelet.
Create tooltips that highlight the features without forcing them to click on them.
This way you let the user choose if he wants to start the tour or continue browsing the app until he finds himself in need of help.
At this point, you have several options.
Helpful Bot
You can implement a bot that will show up after a certain amount of time. So if the users stay in the same spot for what you perceive as an abnormal amount of time.
Resource Center
You create a checklist containing all the relevant content and guides for that particular section. Say your user stumbles on your account page. The section containing your billing information, RBAC (role-based access control) system, and other configurations can be all explained in simple sequences and packed into a checklist that acts as a resource center.
The goal is to replace a support ticket or live chat interaction with an instant solution. Instead of having the user reach out ask for help, you offer the help right then and there.
What this amounts to is a significant decrease in support fatigue (fewer support tickets) while giving your users instant help.
What should you do next?
It’s on you to ensure you are creating these rich, deep experiences for your users but at the same time you have to walk a very tight line between what a user thinks it’s helpful and what a user might need to get going and what they actually want to do.
I already covered the fact that most of your users won’t like your tutorials but at the same time, an equal number of users might need help. Figure out how to make everyone happy and do yourself a favor, signup for Eyelet.io and ensure that your users are well-educated, happy, and in full control of their journey.
In case you are still on the fence about trying Eyelet, our friends at Tekpon are running a promotion where you can start using our tool at a significant discount. Check out the Eyelet review on tekpon.com
