Instagram Onboarding
Figure 1. Instagram onboarding
Social apps like Instagram’s onboarding focus primarily on building a personalized user profile (e.g, username and profile picture) and most importantly, syncing existing friend contacts quickly so users can find relevant content from their peers they care about. While Instagram explicitly asks users to sync contacts first, the app makes this optional with the “Skip” button (See Figure 1). As such, the business cost of this friction point is relatively low— not only can users skip this step, but they don’t lose much value from doing so since Instagram automatically creates a “Suggested for you” feed, suggested accounts to follow, and more on their Explore page (See Figure 1). In short, Instagram’s strategy allows immediate value delivery with low friction—I would estimate a 5-10% drop off rate when Instagram asks for contacts.
Notion Onboarding
Figure 2. Notion’s “Get Started” checklist (2018)
Figure 3. Notion’s Meeting Notes template (2018)
Productivity apps like Notion prioritize getting the user to build their first page. Notion creates delightful onboarding by showing users a “Getting Started” Notion page with a checklist of features to explore (See Figure). Notion also uses tooltips to help users find helpful templates so users don’t have to start from scratch and to excite users about what’s possible to build with Notion (See Figure). Still, building, customizing, and editing a page takes some effort, so I would estimate a 10-30% drop off rate.
Venmo Onboarding
Figure 3. Venmo’s bank verification step
Finance apps like Venmo’s onboarding require bank verification to get started (See Figure 3). This is a high friction point with a large business cost if users can’t get over this hurdle. For example, users may have trouble remembering online bank login information or technical issues with Plaid. Frustration from these issues can cause users to close the app and delay verification, or delete the app all together. Based on this, I would estimate for users that have issues during bank verification, the drop off rate is 50-70%. As such, it’s essential that finance apps like Venmo help users quickly navigate issues whether it’s via alternative verification methods, seamless customer service, or a helpful FAQ page.
