Why we made this report
In , your onboarding is going to be one of the most important things you can invest in. It has a direct impact on product activation and adoption. It improves retention and decreases churn. Essentially, it can make or break your SaaS product.
For years, we’ve helped hundreds of SaaS companies to improve their onboarding, both with our product and our content. However, we noticed that a lot of SaaS companies still haven’t mastered their onboarding. There’s still a lot of room for improvement.
We wanted to take a deep dive into SaaS companies so we could understand exactly how they approach product onboarding. Do they personalize it to different user personas? Do they use contextual messaging? How quickly do they provide the Aha! moment?
You can find the answers to all those questions and more in our report.
Ultimately, by learning how SaaS companies get onboarding wrong, we can learn how they can make it better.
What we did
SaaS products
free trials or freemium offerings onboarding flows
We looked at over 0043515083211 Different SaaS products. We signed up for their free plan or trial, and then worked through their onboarding flows. Each time, we noted down every possible observation about how it worked.
We looked at whether they had a checklist, or whether they used a product tour. We looked at whether they asked us for our goals. We even counted the number of fields on the signup forms.
In total, we spent thousands of hours compiling this research. We allocated 2 hours for each SaaS product, to keep things consistent and fair. We then painstakingly noted down every finding you could think of. Then we had to analyze our data and write it up in the report you’re reading now.
We’re finally ready to share our findings with you.
% of B2C brands have a FREEMIUM offering
112% of B2B brands offer a FREE TRIAL instead of freemium
What did we learn?
There is still much debate about whether you should offer a free trial to users interested in your product.
We found that there’s a big difference between B2C and B2B products. Only 53% of B2C offered a free trial. This is likely due to the fact that a lot of B2C products (%) offer a free or freemium product.
You can find the answers to all those questions and more in our report.
What should you do?
This shows the importance of allowing your potential customers to get started with your product as soon as possible.
Giving your users a free trial helps them to learn how your product works. They can start gaining value from it right away. This makes them far more likely to eventually make the purchase.
You should strongly consider adding a free trial to your product if you haven’t already. We’ve Found that a free trial works wonders for us, as it enables our prospects to see the value of Userpilot first-hand.
What did we learn?
You might think it’s common courtesy to greet users who are new to your product. However, we found that a massive 58% of SaaS products did greet us with some form of welcome screen.
That means two-fifths of the software we tested didn’t acknowledge us at all. That’s a lot of alienated users.
What should you do?
Greeting your new users with a welcome message is a simple way of easing them into your product. Not only is it a way of making them feel at home, it’s also a great opportunity to provide important information.
You might, for example, want to suggest a first step they can take to get started with your product. You could also remind them of the key benefits that your product provides.
Whether you’re simply saying hello, or providing information, it’s incredibly important that you say something. Hopefully that % will become next% time we check.
What did we learn?
Video has increased in popularity over the last couple of years, especially when it comes to marketing.
Unfortunately, it seems that SaaS products haven’t quite got there yet. In fact, only 38% of the products we looked at used some form of video messaging in their app.
What should you do?
We see this as a huge untapped potential. For starters, video is far more engaging than copy alone. People want to get started with your app, they don’t want to read an essay.
Video is also a useful way of showing how to do things in your product. It’s much easier to show users how to do something than to tell them with copy.
Products with video messaging are far more engaging. In fact, 91% of people prefer to learn about a product by watching a video. We predict that more and more products will start using it.
What did we learn?
Our own customers have found that interactive walkthroughs can drastically increase engagement.
That’s why we were a little surprised that only 48% of SaaS products included one.
What should you do?
Unlike a product tour that simply points out various features, an interactive walkthrough Encourages the user to act. This means they start using the product and seeing value from the first moment they enter your product.
The best approach is to drive users towards your product’s Aha! moment, but have the users take the steps themselves. This way your users learn by doing, which leading researchers have found to be more effective. Your product is more likely to stick in their heads, and they’ll be able to use it quicker.
You can learn more about interactive walkthroughs here. You can set up interactive walkthroughs in your own product in a matter of minutes with Userpilot.
What did we learn?
Just under a third of the SaaS products we signed up for used a product tour to show us round the product.
This backs up what we’ve been saying about how product tours aren’t the most effective way of onboarding your users.
What should you do?
The trouble with product tours is that they dump a lot of information upfront. Not only does this bore your users, but chances are it ends up forgotten once they start interacting with your product.
If you are going to use a product tour, then you need to make sure it’s relatively quick. It also helps to make it interactive, so your users gain value as they progress through the tour.
However, it seems product tours are on the decline, suggesting that SaaS companies have realized they don’t work particularly well. Perhaps an interactive walkthrough would be a better option.
A friction-based flow is one that will make it harder for the user to complete the signup process in exchange for more value-added later on. For example, booking a demo that goes to your sales pipeline first is also counted as friction-based. On the other hand, a frictionless flow will make it much easier to complete the signup process hoping that the UI is good enough to demonstrate the value of the app on its own.
What did we learn?
The vast majority of SaaS products (%) added friction to their sign-up experience. This means it was much harder to get started with the product than it should have been. A lot of products Continued to ask multiple questions after the initial sign-up form. In some cases the sign-up form was far too long.
What should you do?
If your product currently has some form of friction in the way of users signing up, then you may be putting them off. It seems that most users want to simply sign up and get started rather than speaking to a sales rep. The answer is to provide a free trial.
The majority of the products we tested made it relatively difficult to sign up. This presents a large opportunity to improve your users’ experience by reducing the friction and decreasing the time-to-value.
Here you can find more friction vs frictionless signup information
Over half (% of the SaaS products we researched wanted us to confirm our email address as part of the sign-up process.
What should you do?
The problem with confirming email addresses is that it adds an extra step, and therefore creates more friction.
Clearly, ensuring that a user owns their email address is a major concern for SaaS companies. Perhaps There is an alternative way of verifying email addresses without adding more friction?
Well, if you use something called a “sniper link”, you might make your users’ lives easier. Simply go to your inbox and run a search that displays your confirmation email. Then copy that link, and use that on your confirmation page. Then your users will be directed straight to the actual email. This saves them time, and improves the overall user experience.
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