Behind The Experience: Recent Episodes
Appcues
Get an inside look at the experiences of the top product-led companies such as Wistia, Canva, and Miro. Each week, we'll feature inspiring UX examples, proven frameworks, and hard-earned lessons from in-depth conversations with product, design, customer success, and marketing experts. The end goal is to help you build user onboarding and product experiences that turn more of your new users into lifelong customers.
In this new segment, Ramli and Lyla take a look into ClickUp's mobile onboarding experience - a project management and productivity tool offering various features and integrations to organize tasks and workflows. They also share their overall impressions and suggestions for UX improvements along the way.
Quotes from this episode
""When you have a lot of products in your suite, there's a lot of adoption that you need to do."
Show Notes
[0:00] Intro
[1:33] Analyzing the Mobile and Web Onboarding Process of ClickUp
[5:24] How Can ClickUp Enhance the Welcome Page Graphics to Better Convey its Value Proposition?
[8:00] Balancing Hype Levels and Clarity in Messaging for a Superior Onboarding Experience
[10:43] Lyla and Ramli Evaluate ClickUp's Sign-Up and Email Verification Process
[13:51] The Importance of Demonstrating Value before Asking for Commitment
[20:16] Ensuring the Use of Realistic "Dummy Data" instead of Misleading "Demo Data"
[26:50] Lyla and Ramli's Ratings and Recommendations for ClickUp's Onboarding Process
ClickUp is a cloud-based collaboration and project management tool suitable for businesses of all sizes and industries. Features include communication and collaboration tools, task assignments and statuses, alerts and a task toolbar.
In this episode, Cailin Litke, the Product Manager of Appcues, talks about the importance of leveraging user intent to gain a better understanding of the user's needs and preferences. Cailin then looks into the Appcues welcome modal to create a more targeted and personalized experience for the user, leading to a better UX and higher conversion rates.
Quotes from this episode
"I think building is such a core aspect of what we do."
"There has been a lot of alignment around how to reach out to people, what our objectives are, and how we can try to improve these things."
Show notes
[1:38] What does success look like for new Appcues users?
[3:05] What kind of metrics have they been tracking recently?
[4:29] Feeling and understanding the value of Appcues, not just its features.
[6:01] How does Appcues define onboarding?
[10:05] Understanding mobile-only companies versus web-only companies.
[15:32] The welcome modal (call-to-action) feature has contributed to their completion rate.
[17:45] How can the app cater to different learning styles?
[21:05] On leveraging user intent.
[23:57] The importance of aligning with the marketing team.
About Cailin Litke
Cailin Litke is a Product Manager at Appcues, responsible for developing and improving the company's products and services to enhance the user experience. She collaborates with marketing and sales teams to devise strategies for promoting Appcues and fueling company growth. With a background in product management and customer success, Cailin leverages her expertise to drive Appcues' success.
Join hosts Lyla and Ramli as they revisit some of their favorite episodes of 2022 and take a trip down memory lane. They'll be cherry-picking the most memorable guests and highlighting the key takeaways that they've learned throughout the year.
Don't miss this chance to relive the best podcasting moments of 2022!
Quotes from this episode
"The biggest takeaway I have for that particular episode is, you know, it's the name of his company; delivering value. When we're thinking about activation moments, think about when the user gets value and use that to define your activation moment as opposed to when you as a company get value."
"What I like about that episode is that it teaches us the importance of creating an experience segmented for each business goal."
Show Notes
[0:00] Intro
[1:23] Remembering 2022 Milestones and Opening a New Chapter of Growth in 2023
[2:52] The Best of 2022: Episode Favorites Recap
[3:34] Hotjar's Tracking Code Installation Screen ft. Alessio Laiso
[5:55] Wistia's Segmented Onboarding ft. Andrew Capland
[8:13] Thinkific's JTBD-focused Checklist ft. Kris Chichak
[11:53] Trainual's Video Tutorial Through a Hotspot ft. Taylor Sell
[14:38] AWeber's Checklist That Adapts to People's Goals ft. Daniel Hanawalt
[18:00] PandaDoc's Templates and Sample Documents ft. Eugenia Brown
[20:25] Future Podcast Guest Appearances
In this episode, Chris talks about how they designed Privy to be a powerful, all-in-one solution for e-commerce businesses looking to increase their sales and customer engagement. He looks into their app experience, user experience, and user interface. And share what it is like working with other sales teams to develop a solid experiment. By the end of this interview, Chris shared that a new pin feature would be available to their site soon.
Quotes from this episode
"Marketing needs to be something they can learn and feel very accomplished with."
"With Privy, we want to be an all-in-one marketing solution for small, medium, and large businesses.
Show Notes
[0:00] Intro
[2:16] What does success look like for new users in Privy?
[5:54] Chris explains how they collect their data at Privy.
[8:30] Pop-ups are a big help to your business.
[11:15] Explaining Privy’s user interface and their process of establishing
[19:44] Intentional friction can help users accomplish their goals.
[20:52] Testing at scale is one of the biggest lessons that Chris realized after his design experiment.
[22:29] How could they find success and work with people outside his team?
[25:09] What’s the next design experiment for Privy?
[27:29] What’s the difference between a custom segment and a smart segment?
About Chris Ladouceur
Chris always makes sure to work towards having everything I create evoke emotion, action, and investment, creating a product that benefits both the company and the consumer. His key areas of impact come from my background in UX and UI design and my product management experience in both SaaS and consumer products. For Chris, the best part of the product is that you always have to continue learning. There is always a new trend, insight, tool, or approach to help you constantly grow personally and professionally.
In today's episode, we interviewed June.so's CEO and Co-founder Enzo Avigo. June.so is a powerful opinionated analytics tool that allows you to automatically turn your data into learnings and provides actions you can take now. It helps activate more users, improves the onboarding process, and keeps users on track and updated all the time.
Quotes from this episode
“Increasing the friction can lead you to better business outputs.”
“Sometimes when you work on an activation flow it can have a business impact.”
Show Notes
[4:16] What is their standard for being fully set up?
[6:33] Enzo explains the UI for June.so and how they brought impeccable experience to new users
[9:11] Since many users who are first-timers in using June are not technical; they integrated the “set up” bar to help them for better navigation
[10:10] Enzo gives us a walk-through of June’s sign-up low iterations
[11:33] How do they target a self-serving website instead of an integration store
[17:17] Enzo shares some of the learnings that he realized during the making of June
About Enzo Avigo
Enzo is a self-professed product and data nerd. Over the last decade, he worked in product management in FinTech, Marketplace, and B2B SaaS.
He realized that most tech companies need to learn how their product is used, so he's changing the product analytics world by Co-Founding his company June.so.
She’s here today to dive deeply into how MURAL creates the best-in-class digital customer experience for its new users. Lauren also tapped into how MURAL seeks meaningful collaborative sessions where people can create content—bringing up how their team works together to strive and deliver a seamless user experience effortlessly.
Quotes from this episode
“Mural is all about that collaboration that involves multiple people and them coming together to have that moment of collaboration.”
“In onboarding, we're trying to teach you both how to use this piece of software, but we're also educating you on use cases.”
Show Notes
[1:33] What does success look like for new users at MURAL?
[3:33] MURAL is all about that Collaboration that involves multiple people and them coming together to have that moment of Collaboration
[5:40] What are some of the metrics they look at to ensure that things are working well in their onboarding process?
[6:29] The methodology of breaking individual metrics into more extensive metrics
[7:47] Collaboration happens at a team level rather than an individual level
[9:20] How do they work with other teams to deliver a seamless experience for new users?
[11:30] The core of the product is often an essential part of getting activation
[16:24] A walkthrough of MURAL’s interactive UI
[18:17] MURAL allows different options for people to learn in the way that they like to learn
About Lauren Schuman
Lauren has 15+ years of a track record in delivering results to grow businesses of all sizes. She always believes that "what" you deliver is just as important as the "how." She works tirelessly at becoming a daring leader who leads with vulnerability, empathy, and alignment with a set of values.
Today's guests are here to give you a quick rundown on how to become a better marketer with the help of SparkToro. SparkToro is an audience research tool that shows the websites your customers visit, their social media accounts, hashtags they use, and more. In this episode, Co-Founder Casey Henry and VP of Marketing Amanda Natividad will give us a full rundown on how they define user success by providing quality over quantity in their product metrics.
Quotes from this episode
“Stories are what capture our attention first.”
"It’s a logical next step to show people the true power. We’re playing the fine line of trying to have a free product forever where somebody can come in and gain value from a free product that provides sample data. However, a premium product for full data is still available."
Show Notes
[1:26] Success for new users in SparksToro depends on the users themselves. Some use it for marketing, some for digital PR, and others for outreach.
[8:24] Amanda and Casey navigate through SparkToro’s UI and explain the before and after of their website
[12:48] The importance of choosing quality over quantity in their product metrics
[13:05] Why do they think stories are so powerful?
[15:30] A product tour of SparkToro and how they were able to come up with one
[21:16] Amanda, the story behind why they added free queries on SparksToro
[28:10] The people who use SparkToro are clickers
[29:44] As a SaaS tool, sales calls are more appropriate for high-touch services
[32:00] The quality of the results depends on the quality of the search
[34:04] What’s next for SparksToro in terms of sales, marketing, and design?
About Amanda Natividad
Amanda is the VP of Marketing at SparkToro, an audience research startup. She's also a contributor for Adweek, a Le Cordon Bleu-trained chef, and a former journalist. Previously, she led Growth Machine marketing for Liftopia, built Fitbit's B2B content program, and led content and communications for NatureBox.
About Casey Henry
Over the last decade, Casey has been focusing on the engineering and marketing needs of small family-run businesses, profitable startups, and large corporations. He believes marketing without effective or efficient engineering is like a car without wheels.
Dan helps AWeber in the design aspect, as he leads his team to create simple user interfaces and workflows to accomplish the complexities of email marketing automation tasks. In this episode, he gives us a rundown of their product and design strategy while enumerating some of the metrics they follow to track their performance.
Quotes from this episode
"We see that there's quite a big hump over there sending that first email and after that, it seems to be much easier. We have success for our customers tied to that metric."
"We all work together. We evolve and develop a design system for all users across the app. So we work very closely together but still focus on these individual areas."
Show Notes
[1:39] What does success look like for new users at AWeber?
[4:35] What kind of metrics are they looking at?
[7:08] What role does Dan play from a team perspective?
[9:41] Dan explains their holistic approach toward developing new features
[12:54] The key to putting their systems in place is having close communication between departments
[13:28] Dan gives us a walk through AWeber's UI
[17:10] It’s important to keep the audience fresh by constantly communicating with them
[22:13] Don't get disappointed about the rates of your checklist completion, especially when you're just starting, because you have a lot to learn
[22:43] “You are often not the target that you are trying to reach”
[25:29] What tweaks and experiments are they looking forward to trying out next?
About Daniel Hanawalt
Dan has had quite an experience working with high-performing companies in the field of Email Marketing Automation, Life Sciences, and Master Data Management. His career is focused on UX leadership and strategy as he implements some of his background in various design principles, which includes UI and UX design for web, mobile apps, video, and print. Today, he's been spearheading AWeber in achieving its business objectives.
In this episode, Cai helps us navigate OpenPhone's UI system and explains how they define new user success. He also walks us through OpenPhone's functionality, its unique features, and how their app centers around collaborating with your teams.
Quotes from this episode
"When it comes to onboarding, once you're in the product, onboarding doesn't end there. It shouldn't end there. So educating our users on the core aspects of the product is very important."
"It made me realize sometimes a bit of friction's okay. If anything, it weeds out the bad actors. If someone has high intent, they're going to put in a little bit more effort to get the results.”
Show Notes
[1:37] What does success look like for new users at OpenPhone?
[3:43] Success for users is dependent on their goal
[5:13] Cai distinguishes users who use their phone to nurture relationships and those who only use it for personal reasons
[7:07] Cai and Ramli navigate the UI of OpenPhone.
[9:04] OpenPhone categorizes what types of users are coming in to use their products and what types of features
[14:50] Educating their users on the exact features of the product is something that they look out for.
[16:04] The balance between tech and handholding
[19:07] What's next for OpenPhone in terms of onboarding and other features?
[20:58] Adding more functionality and features around collaboration is their top priority for their next project.
About Cai Cardenas
Cai Cardenas is a product designer currently living in Sydney, Australia. He spent the past fifteen years cultivating his skills at agencies, startups, and while freelancing across London, Brisbane, and Sydney, creating engaging digital product experiences through beautifully simple interfaces.
In this episode, we’re joined by Jane Portman, the CEO and Co-Founder of Userlist. An email marketing and customer engagement platform built with B2B SaaS features in mind. Jane shares her favorite UX examples and integrations that made Userlist ten times more potent in onboarding, engagement, nurturing customers, and marketing leads.
Quotes from this episode
"When we were designing our onboarding flow, we wanted to create a commitment experience. For us, that's leading the user to entering their credit card details.”
"We don't have a hard time on manual sales, so collecting information during the signup is a powerful thing because it helps users self-diagnose what they're going to do with the tool."
"As a UX person, I'm a big proponent of empty states versus violent things that get in front of you. We want to encourage the organic app experience."
Show Notes
[1:30] How did they come to define onboarding at Userlist?
[2:11] What made them decide to broaden their category rather than niching down?
[6:54] What are other ways to get people into that commitment mindset?
[13:14] Going over Userlist’s website interface and the journey of how they come up with their design flow
[21:38] Jane explains how they wanted their design to be more on the organic app experience side
[24:56] Not all integrations are seen as equal
[26:39] Jane explains the performance of their API integration
[27:48] What are some exciting things that UserList is looking forward to achieving?
About Jane Portman
Jane Portman is a UI/UX consultant specializing in web application design and the founder of UI Breakfast and Userlist. At Userlist, Jane aims to provide flawless UX and help users improve their customer messaging. Jane has also been running UI Breakfast Podcast since 2014.
Today, Kris will give us a walkthrough of Thinkific’s onboarding process and the journey of how they’ve become the best support for their users. Kris also shares some tactics they implemented to amplify their users' engagement. At the end of this episode, he also spoils some exciting experiments that Thinkific is looking forward to launching.
Quotes from this episode
"Segment your customers based on where they're at and develop communications that actually help them accomplish jobs-to-be-done. That's how you improve activation."
"Building a customer journey map has been critical to understanding and improving our activation experience."
"We offer a checklist that gives some structure in terms of what you can do first, second, and third. But, it doesn't force you to do anything in any linear path."
Show Notes
[2:59] How do they define success for new users at Thinkific?
[7:40] Speaking to their customers and understanding their journey is a significant part of Thinkific’s onboarding process
[8:28] Onboarding success is not about getting to that “aha” moment. It’s about building a habit
[12:54] How does Kris work with other teams to jumpstart their onboarding experience?
[17:38] Kris talks about Thinkific’s website interface and how their checklist work
[21:43] How Thinkific uses videos to amplify their user’s engagement?
[26:59] Thinkific aids in guiding their users on how to accomplish their goals and give them more clarity in their journey toward success
[34:45] Kris shares some of the experiments that they’re looking forward to launching
About Kris Chichak
Kris is an expert in working in fast-paced environments. His exceptional professionalism and dedication to his work are his assets in propelling him forward to success. His strong sense of leadership and altruism makes him stand out in the business world.
Ruben gives us a rundown on how they provide and share different experiences for their new product users. He also explains how they were able to onboard different people from different backgrounds to come together and create smooth sailing, interactive, and hassle-free software.
Quotes from this episode
“We tried to make it clear by just pointing out UI things. In this case, just a new interaction that, once they get it, they like, and it makes sense, and it makes things easy.”
“We make sure that we successfully integrate the product in a production environment and get documents signed.”
Show Notes
[4:28] SignWell ensures that everything is smooth, that the recipient can understand what they’re looking at and get the value from the product.
[6:02] Ruben shares some of the metrics that SignWell takes a look at to achieve success
[8:49] Ruben gives us a rundown of SignWell’s interface and the evolution of how they come up with their templates
[13:58] How SignWell went from trial and error to finally achieving their template strategy
[16:16] The heart of the action that they formed lies upon the excellent foundation and removing friction
[23:39] How SignWell is onboarding dynamic people from different backgrounds
About Ruben Gamez
In 2009 Ruben started his own company, BidSketch. A proposal software company that web designers and developers primarily use. Ruben knew that his journey in the business world would go on and decided to start a software company that caters to a hassle-free alternative to hard-to-use and expensive e-signature software. And that was the birth of SignWell.
Imagine signing up for a product, and the last screen of the onboarding experience asks you to install a tracking code to your app. If you're not a developer, you'll likely leave and never come back! That's one of the challenges for Hotjar, a platform that gives people insight into their users' behavior. In this episode, Alessio Laiso, Senior Product Designer at Hotjar, shares:
- An overview of identifying Hotjar users' personas
- Some critical indicators on how they can drive toward user engagement
- How Hotar empowers product teams to empathize with their users while bringing personalisation and guidance.
Quotes from this Episode
"Hotjar strikes that balance, helping users achieve their goals but not driving them crazy."
"We look at those users that are the most engaged and understand what those actions are that they take and how they can replicate those actions."
Show Notes
[2:26] What does "success" mean for new users at HotJar?
[4:22] What are some indicators that they use to know if somebody ends up purchasing from HotJar?
[7:47] Alessio shares his own experience of using HotJar.
[13: 42] Alessio gives us a walkthrough of HotJar’s interface.
[24: 33] A lot of times, users want to see your product on screen. It gives your site more functionality.
[31: 39] The checklist at HotJar adapts to the options that people or new users choose as a sign-up flow.
[32:12] What is the next big thing for HotJar?
About Alessio Laiso
Alessio have led user-centred design work to build award-winning software and experiences enjoyed by people across the globe. He is also a well-known Graphics Designer and has been designing typefaces since 2013. His fonts have been used by brands like eBay, Amazon, USA Today, and are available on Google Fonts.
In this episode, Corey shares their company’s philosophy throughout their onboarding process, the challenges that they had to face, and how they established systems and found their way to success. Corey also gives us a rundown of his personal experience as a power user and how efficiently SwipeWell can help users’ workflow and adhere to the user’s experience.
Quotes from this Episode
“I think onboarding is all about reducing friction. Trying to hold someone as they go for the next step. "
“SwipeWell is very visual and it’s more like a creative tool where you use it to speed up and improve your workflow."
Show Notes
[1:22] What is success for new users of Swipe Well?
[3:31] Corey shares some of their company’s philosophy on building the Swipe Well experience.
[9:17] Corey gives us a rundown of their onboarding journey and how they found their way to success.
[22:13] How does Swipe Well use its product to onboard people to the product?
[28:34] Corey shares his firsthand experience as a power user of their product
[32:15] What’s the next big thing for SwipeWell?
About Corey Haines
Corey helps in giving exceptional products the attention they deserve. His passion for marketing is what supercharged him in his mission to become one of the best SaaS marketers in the world. Corey’s undeniable wits in the business world have also helped in founding his company, SwipeFiles.
In this episode, we are joined by Claudiu Murariu, co-founder and CEO of InnerTrends. A leading product analytics platform that helps product-led teams with optimization. Today, Claudio will walk us through how InnerTrends understands the impact of the customer journey by creating first-hand experiences for its users. Claudiu also shared some unique strategies for how they handle their data, from acquisition and activation down to retention and referral.
Quotes from this episode
"The onboarding process finishes when you deliver the promise of the product for the first time."
“It’s not just about the tool and making it easy to go through the steps. It’s about how you make it possible so they don’t make mistakes.”
Show Notes
[1:34] How do they define onboarding at InnerTrends?
[3:38] The difference between first-hand experience and second-hand experience
[7:16] What are the strategies and tactics that they’ve done to improve the firsthand experience?
[13:17] The difference between good and bad friction
[19:36] The reasons why they never went entirely to Product-Led
[22:09] How did they develop the right questions on their site and build a tracking plan?
[27:28] Aligning your goals with your team is an essential aspect of increasing growth
[34:41] What’s the next big thing for InnerTrends?
About Claudiu Murariu
Claudiu is obsessed with data-driven businesses right from the very start. His passion for data algorithms and his data hacking skills are his driving force in starting his own company, InnerTrends. He’s continuing his mission to keep raising the bar on driving insights from data and driving businesses towards their growth.
Having an effective mobile app onboarding flow is key to enabling new users to succeed. However, smaller screens demand simpler onboarding because users tend to try out a lot of apps but decide that they want to stop using most of them within the first three-to-seven days. The key to success is to get the users hooked during that critical period. If you’re curious about how this whole system works, strap in because we have an episode just for you!
Quotes from this episode
"With mobile, you really have to show the value very visually."
"App use mobile can 100% help you nail that first impression for your users."
Show Notes
[1:45] What makes a great mobile onboarding experience?
[3:36] The importance of quickly communicating the value of mobile onboarding.
[6:06] How different is it between using mobile apps and web-based software?
[10:31] How does personalization work on onboarding for mobile apps?
[9:57] Mobile apps are tailored to a specific user and a specific use case. It’s not as feature-rich as the web version.
[15:18] What other things are they currently working on that are coming down the line for mobile?
About Sam Stuckless
Sam has years of experience working in cross-functional agile teams of product managers, business analysts, developers, and end users. He specializes in product strategy and design and loves uncovering real problems to help people.
Today's guest is Allen Liao from Lucid, a visual collaboration suite that uses incredible cloud visualization, virtual whiteboarding, and intelligent diagramming to help teams see the future. This software is especially made for enterprise and hybrid teams of all sizes.Today we’ll be diving deeper into its premium and free features.
Quotes from this episode
“The most valuable advice about product growth is to really understand what's the input and what's the output. We can talk about growth and ARR retention. But at the end of the day, we really need to understand what are the inputs to growth.”
We made a few mistakes in the past. One of them was to show people 10 things they must know about Lucidchart. My grandma and mom love that. But most The knowledge workers we talked to were offended by it.
“For user onboarding, strive towards educating people in a non-intrusive way.”
"When someone gives their credit card information, they have a higher level of commitment. On the flip side, we want to meet their expectation by giving them the best resources and show the product's full power."
Show Notes
[1:20] When it comes to product growth and user engagement, user onboarding is such an important lever.
[5:35] Allen gives an example of user engagement for their product.
[7:57] What engagement metric should be driven by behavior?
[8:41] How do their teams collaborate and work with each other to drive growth?
[12:20] In our industry today, does engagement, retention, and virality really affect the topline?
[15:25] I'm still figuring out how to teach and educate people in a non-intrusive way.
[21:56] How did Lucid come up with their unique and premium templates?
[27:14] It’s important to figure out other people’s use cases and frequency.
[36:00] How can users identify premium templates and free ones?
[38:18] Lucid always makes sure that they’re providing the right value for their consumers.
About Allen Liao:
Allen is a true leader. He's an excellent product manager for his team and always makes sure that you fully understand customer needs above all else. He leads product-led growth initiatives across multiple scrum teams within Lucid's visual collaboration suite. He's an active listener, a problem solver, and always leads by example.
Have you heard of an interactive product demo? Where you can have a walkthrough experience and try out products before signing up for the real thing. If you’re not ready to commit to putting your credit card details for a "freemium feature," product demos are a great way to test out whether or not the product fits you and your needs, with no risk involved.
Quotes from this episode
"The fact that people who have seen an interactive product demo already have an idea of what the product does before going into that first call just makes they are more qualified."
“One thing that we've actually really struggled with is how to create an interactive demo of a platform that creates those demos. The reason we created a demo of Google Analytics is because most people know what it is.”
Show notes
[1:21] What is an interactive product demo?
[3:20] If product-led companies already have free trials, why not opt for the free trial instead of the product demo?
[6:39] If you’re someone who wants to move to PLG but you want to test it first, product demos are a great way to start
[8:38] Why did they opt to use the Google Analytics demo for Navattic?
[16:38] Natalie shares the stats and conversion rates for Navattic’s interactive product demo
[18:21] Experiment with more products on your website to increase the visibility of your products
[22:27] Do they ask for emails upfront, before or after the product demo?
[24:47] What experiments are they ready to try out next?
About Natalie Marcotullio
As the Head of Growth and Operations at Navattic, Natalie focuses on helping SaaS companies grow while giving their prospective customers a better buying experience. Natalie thrives in full-funnel marketing, GTM strategy in improving the experience of digital buyers.
Cloud Content is a powerful content creation solution that lets you get all your written content in one central location. They’ve got a content marketplace that connects more than 2,000 writers with agencies, brands, and publishers. To best serve their many audiences, Crowd Content crafted a personalized welcome experience.
Did it work? The proof is in the percentage—and they increased conversion 15% by personalizing their onboarding with findings from a new user survey. TL;DR? Just say no to one-size-fits-all onboarding.
Quotes from this episode
“There has been some rearranging of the options in the new user survey. We try to get the most important stuff for us at the get-go, the first couple of questions because we know people, they just want us to get started.”
“Personalizing the onboarding experience with a new user survey improved our conversion rate by 15%. It's because new users feel like someone cares about them and wants to make sure they're successful.”
Show notes
[2:40] How Crowd Content optimizes their onboarding
[4:44] Key indicators Crowd Content looks for in successful onboarding programs
[8:15] The similarities and differences between onboarding clients and freelancers
[10:13] How Crowd Content works as a team to iterate their onboarding experience
[21:01] The guts of their new user survey
[27:59] How clients determine quality
[29:57] What’s up next for Crowd Content?
About Stefanie Brown
Stefanie has a deep understanding of the best practices for SEO and content marketing. She is always one step ahead in looking for ways to solve problems even if it’s completely out of her wheelhouse. Stefanie is a grinder at heart.
We’re going to dig into what Deepti is currently working on; some hands-on tutorials and quick actions in the model for their new users. Deepti also talks about their product, their wide range of customers, and how they champion their employees.
Quotes from this episode
"One thing I've learned across the board is that people just like to explore. If you suggest it for them, it's less successful. If you point them to the right place for them to explore, they do a lot more from there."
"Successful onboarding is about finding the balance between pointing users to the right sets of actions, but giving them the pleasure of exploration"
Show notes
[2:28] How do they define onboarding at Adobe?
[3:25] Does her team just focus on Creative Cloud?
[4:04] What is the success for users in terms of onboarding?
[6:14] How do they harmonize with other teams and learn from one another?
[11:52] What is the right time and the right place to collect intent and goals?
15:25] About how they launch new models
[16:01] Navigating the features of Adobe Photoshop
[19:07] Adobe Photoshop’s concept of "Quick-Actions"
[21:48] What are the things that challenged her expectations while working on Adobe?
About Deepti Pradeep
Deepti is passionate about visualizing and actioning on several levers of product and revenue growth and generating impact through outcome-driven experimentation across acquisition, activation, engagement, and retention. She works alongside Product, Marketing, Data Analytics, and Sales.
She currently leads product teams at Adobe (Creative Cloud) to drive product engagement and recurring revenue on desktop, web, and mobile platforms through the use of rapid experimentation.
Panda Doc is well-known for its high-quality templates. They provide a variety of categories, and news cases, for their templates. And in this episode, we will be digging into these awesome features. We also tapped into how they deal with onboarding with their united teams and prioritize user experience for their customers.
Quotes from this episode
"The fanciest templates are the most popular. They have beautiful cover pages, pricing tables, and sample products, so you can just plug-and-play with those templates."
"Users like to start with something. They don’t want to start with a blank document. So if you show them the template gallery, they are more likely to interact with the application.
Show notes
[3:28] What does onboarding on PandaDoc look like?
[4:28] Onboarding for Panda Doc is about the user experience and how PandaDoc helps them achieve their business goals.
[6:47] Is there a guiding metric that they consider for measuring success?
[9:39] How are they able to unite teams, fuse ideas, and give feedback in each department at PandaDoc?
[12:54] Do they have product-qualified leads?
[16:51] Eugenia explains their process of creating templates and setting up their designs.
[23:06] Eugenia shares some of the potential projects that they are working on.
About Eugenia Brown
Eugenia is hands down one of the backbones of PandaDoc. She always seeks quality outcomes, and her creativity serves as an outlet for the company's potential growth. Eugenia loves to work with her colleagues, helping fast-scaling teams accelerate their ability to create. And one fun fact about her is her love for dogs. She has a dog named Gryffindor who likes to chase butterflies.
Today we have Claudia Pravettoni, Success Growth Lead at Gorgias. Gorgias is an e-commerce help desk that turns your customer service into a profit center. We discuss the role of understanding users' preferences and how Gorgias deals with their team to provide a quality experience for their users. Claudia also highlighted how they provide customers with fast and personalized help.
Quotes from this episode
“Giving users the option to get help from a product specialist is just a quick way to also understand user preferences and kind of highlight any issues or any friction points that our users are having in getting set up.”
Show notes
[2:25] How do they define onboarding in Gorgias?
[5:52] How do they deal with working on multiple teams?
[8:09] How does she let other teams know what tasks she's been working on and when?
[9:35] Context and communication are key, especially when you're working with a team. Your goal with Gorgias in a standardized way Learning by doing is the best way
[11:46] Claudia tackles how to gauge users' interest and how to set up Gorgias
[19:36] What project is she looking forward to?
[22:23] Company size is a big factor in user roles
[25:18] What are some things that surprised her with some of the onboarding that they have set up so far?
About Claudia Pravettoni
Claudia is the Success Growth Lead at Gorgias. She specializes in problem-solving and growth hacking. Claudia transformed Georgias’ dashboard into a digital CSM. She also leads product growth initiatives for. customer service platform for e-commerce brands.
When you’re building functionality and when you’re building experiences, it’s important that you define your voice and what you represent in the market. This way, you can create more value. Today we’re about to learn how to create non-intrusive educational content to help users get and see the value of a product.
Taylor Sell, the Director of Product at Trainual, is speaking with us. Trainual is a leading SaaS platform that is transforming the way businesses onboard, train, and scale teams.
Quotes from this episode
“With hotspots that show the value behind that area of the product , some of our activation metrics went up by 100% and conversion rate grew by 80%”
Show notes
[2:23] How does he define onboarding at Trainual?
[3:18] Is there one person who owns onboarding in his company or is it more of a cross-functional ownership?
[5:32] When they’re splitting up post purchase and pre-purchase onboarding, does he notice a huge difference in the behavior within the flow or the actions that he wants his fellow cohorts to drive into?
[10:13] Does he know what his best sources are or what their most highly activated cohorts are?
[24:06] What kind of experiments and tests are they trying out next?
About Taylor Sell
As the Director of Product at Trainual, Taylor is trained and experienced in delivering value and solving user needs in the SAAS landscape.
Every business with an incredible product starts with a problem. But the catch here is that you have to understand the problem first and let your creativity follow. Andrew Capland, the former head of growth at Wistia as well as PostScript, always uses his creativity and strategic planning to ultimately grow his companies faster. He is now the massive brain behind Delivering Value and works with B2B leaders to celebrate their careers and early-stage SaaS founders to scale their businesses.
In this episode of Behind The Experience, let's learn about Andrew's proven frameworks and methods that led him to fast growth.
Quotes from this episode
“You don’t know what you don’t know until you really get close to understanding the problem and the customer. Then, all of a sudden, ideas for growth experiments just appear.”
“A lot of SaaS companies have this blank screen problem. It’s like looking at a Google Doc and there’s a blinking cursor with no words, and you’re like, “Well, I don’t know what to write”, and it feels overwhelming. If you don’t solve this, everything will be so much harder.”
“At its core, user onboarding is about delivering value to people inside of your product for the first time.”
“Your customers are just looking at your tool as a way to accomplish a goal.”
Show notes
[5:49] How do they measure onboarding success?
[8:22] Andrew gives his framework on how to narrow down value points.
[10:51] How does he disseminate the framework that he has back to his team and how do they work cross-functionally?
[18:03] Andrew shares his experiences working on onboarding as the Head of Growth at Wistia.
[23:59] What are the learning lessons that Andrew encountered while he was doing data collection?
[26:30] The idea of making brand video templates for the company so that users could shortcut the experience while still gaining value from the product.
[31:40] Andrew shares his future projects and ideas that he’s currently working on for his company.
About Andrew Capland
Andrew's core competencies include analyzing funnel data, running a/b tests, solving user acquisition challenges, new user onboarding, and managing high-volume product-led growth businesses. But his real passion lies in helping people around him scale up their careers by teaching them his systems and frameworks.
Celebrating your customers' achievements is one of the best ways to create momentum and build a connection between their success and your own. That's where thoughtful and useful success state screens come in. In this episode of Behind The Experience, Jessica Andrews shares Copper's magical success state screen.
Quotes from this episode
"When we applied the jobs-to-be-done framework to our onboarding, we saw a big spike of 15% improvement. It’s had downstream effects already!"
"We assume that our users know so much more than they do. So we use big words that may not make much sense to them."
Show notes
[01:15] How they define onboarding at Copper
[07:02] What does the onboarding success metric at Copper?
[10:46] How does Jessica work cross-fuctionally to improve user onboarding
[16:56] The Jobs-to-be-Done framework in Copper’s onboarding
[20:00] Segmenting users based on their industry knowledge.
[26:52] An easy way to add contacts to Copper from Gmail
[28:57] Copper’s magical success screen that gets 25% of new users to install their Chrome extension
[33:32] What is Jessica excited to try out next
[37:20] Where can people find Jessica Andrews online
About Jessica Andrews
Jessica Andrews, leads product marketing at Copper, the CRM for Google Workspace. She is based out of Toronto, Canada.
A proven strategy to improve your onboarding is to ensure it drives users toward specific, key actions that will help them achieve their unique goals. Kareem Mayan, Founder of Savio and Conversion Consultant at TrialToPaid.com, knows this all to well. He’s worked with companies like ESPN, Predictable Revenue, and Headphones.com to improve their free-to-paid conversion rates.
In this episode of Behind The Experience, Kareem breaks down the strategy behind Savio’s goal-oriented onboarding flow.
Quotes from this episode
"The trialer has a goal they're dissatisfied with the current state of the world. Your marketing site has sold them the dream about what the world is going to look like when they sign up for their service. If your app doesn't deliver on that promise, they'll be disappointed."
"Look at your converted and churn customers and what they did do and didn't do. This gives you a nice heuristic about the key actions in your app that customers need to take."
Show notes
[01:15] Why is knowing your free-to-paid conversion rate so important?
[02:31] Benchmarks for free-to-paid conversion rate
[04:46] Common reasons for low free-to-paid conversion rate
[07:36] Kareem’s process for improve the free-to-paid conversion rate
[11:57] How often should you update your onboarding experience?
[16:33] Savio’s goal-oriented onboarding flow
[29:11] Kareem’s advice to anyone looking to improve their free-to-paid conversion rate
[30:16] Where can you find Kareem online?
About Kareem Mayan
Kareem Mayan helps growing product-led B2B SaaS companies increase trial to paid conversion. He is previously the Product Manager of ESPN.com’s Insider business (a seven-figure ARR product). By focusing on conversion, he grew revenue by 25% in 6 months. He now works with clients like Predictable Revenue, Headphones.com, ESPN, Ecamm, and more.
In the first episode of Behind The Experience, learn how Lyla Rozelle, Director of Customer Enablement at Appcues, increased checklist completion rates from 2% to 25% by breaking it up into multiple bite-sized lists. She'll also share wins and lessons learned as she worked with a cross-functional team to improve onboarding.
Quotes from this episode
“Personalization isn’t just dropping a first name and company name. It’s experiences-based, triggered-based, behavioral-based.”
“Be very aware of the language that you're using. You don't want to alienate people or make them feel like they don't belong in your product, when they do.”
Show notes
[01:19] Why we're excited about Behind The Experience
[06:30] What success looks like for new users at Appcues
[10:31] How Lyla works with other teams to improve onboarding
[16:50] Reviewing Appcues' welcome modal for new users
[18:21] How personalization reduced Appcues' activation rate by 20%
[21:46] Appcues uses onboarding patterns to onboard new users
[22:42] An experiment to get new users to install the Appcues Chrome extension
[24:16] Breaking up the onboarding into a two-step checklist improved completion rates
[25:38] Other experiments around improving checklist completion rates
[31:04] Don't assume that new users know all the terms and acronyms
[32:03] What Lyla is excited to try next
[34:55] An invite to join Behind The Experience
[35:18] Where you can find Ramli and Lyla online
About Lyla Rozelle
Lyla Rozelle is the Director of Customer Enablement at Appcues. She is the resident Appcues expert at Appcues, designing our in-app flows.
Links
Appcues website
Made with Appcues
GoodUX
Profiles
Lyla on LinkedIn
Ramli on LinkedIn