An Onboarding Expert’s Playbook For Maximizing Product Adoption Rates

As the saying goes, you can lead a horse to water, but you can't make it drink. I think that old chestnut really sums up the product onboarding to adoption pipeline; just because a user has found your product doesn't mean they'll end up paying for it. I get it; it's frustrating when new users seem to arrive at your product, take a sniff, and gallop off into the sunset. But we're not here to commiserate about runaway users, we're here to zoom out on this kooky little analogy and understand how to get that horse to drink. Because when you look at the context around successful product adoption, you'll notice that many parts of that journey actually begin long before and continue long after user activation.

My guest today is Ramli John, author of Product-Led Onboarding and the founder of Delight Path, a product onboarding consulting firm. Ramli is like, THE guy for product-led onboarding wisdom. So we were really lucky to have him come on and share some practical frameworks, tactics, and tools for figuring out how to evaluate and refine your user onboarding journey.

Interview Highlights

  • Meet Ramli John [01:12]
    • Ramli has extensive experience working with SaaS companies, focusing on growth and onboarding.
    • Connected with Wes Bush, author of Product-Led Growth, through a shared alma mater, the University of Waterloo (10 years apart).
    • Worked at Appcues, a product adoption software for product-led companies.
    • Currently at Delight Path, helping product-led companies enhance their onboarding experiences.
  • Common Misconceptions in User Activation [02:12]
    • Many product teams overcomplicate activation by chasing metrics like Facebook's "seven friends in 10 days," which isn't fully data-driven or applicable to all companies.
    • Instead of complex metrics, teams should focus on simple, meaningful "sticky moments" that require user commitment.
    • Onboarding is often mistaken as solely a product issue, but it’s a cross-functional challenge involving marketing, especially in messaging and positioning.
    • Unrealistic user expectations from unclear messaging can hinder activation, regardless of the quality of the onboarding experience.
  • The EUREKA Framework for Onboarding [04:23]
    • The EUREKA framework is a five-step onboarding process designed to improve user activation.
    • E: Establish a cross-functional team (product, marketing, sales, customer success) to tackle onboarding collaboratively.
    • U: Understand what users define as success before designing onboarding pathways.
    • RE: Reverse journey map the "happy path" by analyzing successful user behaviors in specific timeframes (e.g., first 7 minutes, days, weeks, months).
    • K: Keep new users engaged with a mix of in-product tools (e.g., tours, checklists) and out-of-product strategies (e.g., emails, educational content).
    • A: Apply changes, iterate, and personalize onboarding for different user needs and "jobs-to-be-done."

Before we think about in-product features, onboarding emails, or anything else, let’s first determine what your users consider success. If we don’t have that clearly defined, we risk building the wrong path to the wrong success outcome for your users.

Ramli John
  • Types of Friction in Onboarding [06:42]
    • There are three types of user friction: product, social, and emotional.
      • Product friction: Barriers within the product itself, like too many steps, overwhelming fields, or excessive pop-ups.
      • Social friction: Challenges in gaining buy-in from others, such as team approval for purchases (in product-led) or resistance to change (in sales-led).
      • Emotional friction: Psychological fears about change, risk of failure, or negative outcomes, like losing credibility or a job if the product doesn’t deliver as promised.
    • Product teams often focus on product friction, but addressing social and emotional friction is equally critical for successful onboarding.

Part of onboarding that people often overlook is the change it involves. Onboarding isn’t just about introducing them to the product; it’s about onboarding them to a new way of working or living.

Ramli John
  • Enhancing Adoption through Human Interaction and Insight [09:59]
    • Social and emotional frictions are harder to measure and require qualitative insights to understand drop-offs in adoption.
    • Early-stage companies should prioritize one-on-one onboarding to uncover challenges and barriers.
    • Reviewing customer onboarding and sales recordings can reveal critical insights, especially around conflicts or buy-in issues.
    • Adding human interaction, educational content, or tailored emails can address non-product barriers.
    • Example: Installing a code snippet often involves social friction (product managers needing engineering help) and emotional friction (fear of breaking production). Providing clear instructions for collaboration can alleviate these issues.
  • Cross-Functional Collaboration for Onboarding Success [12:34]
    • Align cross-functional teams on a common success metric to foster collaboration and eliminate silos.
    • A champion, often from customer success, can bridge gaps between teams by showing how activation impacts sales, marketing, and retention.
    • Executive buy-in enables forming dedicated cross-functional "growth squads" to tackle specific business problems collaboratively.
    • Example: At Appcues, a "tiger team" worked across marketing, product, and customer success to improve trial-to-paid conversion rates.
    • Conduct onboarding audit workshops with diverse team members to align on user success definitions and create cohesive strategies.
    • Lack of shared understanding of user success among teams hinders seamless onboarding and product adoption efforts.
  • Reverse Engineering Success in Onboarding [16:44]
    • Reverse engineering success starts with defining the ultimate user win or outcome (e.g., saving valuable data to a list).
    • Break down the journey into "mini wins" or milestones leading to the ultimate win, such as conducting a first search or creating a list.
    • Focus on key milestones rather than every step, streamlining the path to success.
    • Analyze user behavior to refine and simplify processes, like improving search results with suggestions or autocorrect features.
    • For complex products with long timelines, identify quick wins (e.g., same-day success moments) to maintain engagement and provide early value.
    • Example: At SparkToro, the ultimate win was saving useful data to a list, achieved through steps like conducting searches and creating lists, with optimizations to shorten the journey.
    • Example: At Appcues, the ultimate win was publishing live product experiences, but the early win was starting to build tools like checklists or tours on day one.
  • Essential Tools for Designing Onboarding Experiences [21:14]
    • Product teams need tools for insights, implementation, and experimentation.
      • Insights tools: Amplitude, Mixpanel (user behavior analysis), Fullstory, PostHog (session recordings, identifying user frustrations), and survey tools like SurveyMonkey or Appcues (qualitative feedback).
      • Implementation tools: Appcues, Userpilot, Chameleon, and Pendo (in-product experiences).
      • Experimentation tools: Google Experiment, Appcues, Chameleon, Pendo, and Amplitude (A/B testing and split testing).
    • Focus on measuring user success, deploying in-app experiences, and iterating through experimentation.
  • AI in Product-Led Growth and Onboarding [24:17]
    • AI can optimize onboarding by analyzing customer interactions and tailoring experiences.
    • Companies use AI models (e.g., ChatGPT) to analyze onboarding and sales calls, identifying pain points and successful strategies.
    • Insights from these analyses improve product copy and user guidance to address common challenges.
    • AI-driven tools customize in-product experiences based on users' website activity and behavior.
    • To address the "blank page" problem, AI generates tailored recommendations or dummy data, as seen in tools like Zapier offering personalized automation suggestions.
    • AI's adaptability helps refine onboarding paths and training for specific user needs.
  • Creating Effective Feedback Loops [27:41]
    • Feedback loops in onboarding rely on insights from sales and customer success teams who directly interact with customers.
    • Regularly gathering feedback during customer onboarding (e.g., through one-on-one sessions or webinars) helps identify pain points.
    • It's crucial to ensure clear communication between customer success and product teams to act on feedback quickly.
    • Teams should align on success metrics for users to identify when onboarding is not effective.
    • If there's a drop in user success, the entire team should collaborate to identify the root cause, whether it's related to marketing, product, or other factors.

Meet Our Guest

Founder of Delight Path, Ramli John is a leading expert in product-led onboarding for B2B SaaS companies. As the bestselling author of Product-Led Onboarding, which has sold over 35,000 copies, Ramli empowers product teams to design onboarding experiences that drive activation and customer retention. With a background in marketing, UX design, and software development, he has advised companies like Zapier, Appcues, and Mixpanel, creating actionable strategies that boost MRR and customer success.

photo of Ramli John

If you can't even define what initial success looks like for the user, good luck fixing your onboarding and providing them with a seamless experience.

Ramli John

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