Product-Led Onboarding · Wes Bush & Ramil John · 2021

Product-Led Onboarding is a valuable and thorough guide to effective user onboarding. This is worth your time.

If you have overlooked onboarding, you may be able to leverage it as a means to enhance user retention.

Pair with Wes Bush’s ‘Product-Led Growth’ to get a great introduction to the Product-Led universe.

Key Highlights

User onboarding is crucial for product-led growth, acting as a powerful retention lever. It's not just about converting users into paying customers, but ensuring they derive long-term value from your product. Effective onboarding can lower customer acquisition costs (CAC) and boost monthly recurring revenue (MRR).

Your onboarding journey should guide users through a series of "Aha" moments, starting with acquisition and ending when the user is deriving significant value from the product. It's about helping users improve their lives, not teaching them how your product works.

Three key value stages in onboarding:

1. Moment of Value Perception (MVP): This is when users first visualise a product in the context of their situation. The MVP usually occurs before signing up.
2. Moment of Value Realisation (MVR): This is when users first experience a product’s value and achieve their desired outcome with the product for the first time.
3. Moment of Value Adoption (MVA): When users start using a product regularly and integrate it into their life or workflow..

The EUREKA Framework offers a six-step process to shorten Time-to-Value (TTV):

1. Create a collaborative onboarding team across functions.
2. Identify users' desired outcomes and value perception.
3. Define clear success metrics.
4. Optimise the onboarding path to minimise TTV.
5. Engage new users with triggers inside and outside the product.
6. Continuously analyse results and iterate.

To measure onboarding success, focus on three key moments:

1. The Signup: Signals user interest.
2. The First Strike: Users achieve their desired outcome quickly.
3. The Product Adoption Indicator (PAI): Users start using the product consistently.

The Bowling Alley Framework helps guide first-time users to their desired outcome using product bumpers (in-app triggers) and conversational bumpers (external triggers). Aim for "Straight-Line Onboarding" by minimising unnecessary steps and decreasing TTV.

To build effective onboarding:

1. Map out the onboarding path.
2. Evaluate each step for necessity, ease, and simplicity.
3. Segment users and tailor onboarding to different customer jobs.

Apply the BJ Fogg Behavior Model to drive user action:

• Motivation: Increase users' desire to perform actions.
• Ability: Make actions easier to perform.
• Prompt: Provide timely cues to trigger actions.

Continuously improve your onboarding process through iterative analysis, questioning, and action. Consider a hybrid approach combining product-led and sales-led strategies, especially for products with high annual value or complex buying processes.

By focusing on effective user onboarding, you can improve retention, lower CAC, and drive product adoption – key elements for successful product-led growth.

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A Behavioural Model of Rational Choice · Herbert Simon · 1995

Traditional economic theory postulates an "economic man," who, in the course of being "economic" is also "rational." This man is assumed to have knowledge of the relevant aspects of his environment which, if not absolutely complete, is at least impressively clear and voluminous. He is assumed also to have a well-organized and stable system of preferences. He has a skill in computation that enables him to calculate, for the alternative courses of action that are available to him, which of these will permit him to reach the highest attainable point on his preference scale.

This paper introduces the concept of bounded rationality (even though the author uses the phrase limited rationality). This paper highlighted that arguing about what’s the most rational way to respond is somewhat academic, as that’s not how people behave. This paper therefore paved the way for behavioural economics. 2 years later the concept of bounded rationality would catch light.

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Book Highlights

But leanness is a methodology, not a goal. Making small changes to things that already exist might lead you to a local maximum, but it won’t help you find the global maximum. Peter Thiel · Zero to One

Once a technology has created an association in users’ minds that the product is the solution of choice, they return on their own, no longer needing prompts from external triggers. Nir Eyal · Hooked

The key is understanding what type of advocacy matters most for your product's go-to-market and then figuring out what enables and then activates it. Martina Lauchengco · Loved

Quotes and Tweets

4 Product Discovery Mistakes: 1) Spending too long in discovery 2) Not testing your assumptions 3) only interviewing existing customers 4) Not gathering multiple inputs Ant Murphy

Mastery requires lots of practice. But the more you practice something, the more boring and routine it becomes. Thus, an essential component of mastery is the ability to maintain your enthusiasm. The master continues to find the fundamentals interesting. James Clear