Workflow Priorities
Analyzing the onboarding workflows of Instagram, Notion, and Venmo reveals each app’s priorities. Instagram prioritizes learning about the user’s personal connections, to ensure users can make the most of their experience from the outset. Notion instead wants to know about the user’s motivations and infrastructure, prompting questions about what they will use the app for and where they currently store their data. Venmo’s onboarding flow stands in contrast to Instagram and Notion. While Instagram and Notion seek to learn user information, Venmo prioritizes giving the user information; the onboarding flow contains several privacy and legal disclaimers with few questions collecting user info.
Friction Points
Instagram seems to have the least friction – the onboarding flow is quick with some user data questions and contact syncing. While this can be a friction point because of the amount of data needed, we can estimate that a low fraction of users (perhaps less than 5-10%) would actually drop off during this flow. The reason lies in the fact that Instagram is known for its social aspect; a user creating an account likely knows the reason to join Instagram would be to solidify connections and would expect these questions along the way.
Notion and Venmo seem to have more detrimental friction points; both require substantial and highly personal information such as access to personal data (such as Google Drive) and bank information, respectively. This is likely to cause more user dropoff, potentially above 15-20%, as each stage presents more user privacy being torn away. However, because the business model for Notion and Venmo is more favorable than Instagram (which relies on getting people on the platform for free, as compared to Venmo which charges on transactions and Notion that provides subscription services), these apps can likely survive the higher dropoff rate.
