“We have a user retention problem. They just aren’t coming back and it seems like new users don’t seem to know what to do. We need to improve our onboarding.”
I’ve heard this or something like it many times in my career.
The thinking goes like this: If users aren’t coming back then they must not be getting value. And if they aren’t getting value, that must mean that they couldn’t find the value. (We provide a lot of value!) If they can’t find it, then the onboarding is broken – it needs to better show them the value!
Quick Fixes
Chances are, if you’re experiencing retention problems, it’s a new product and your company is a startup. Startup culture is not afraid of issues or challenges! They eat them up for breakfast.
You’ve already determined that your retention problem is due to an onboarding problem, so you move fast and throw some things at the wall to see if they stick.
- More explanatory text!
- Less text!
- Force the user to do the thing that shows value!
- Tooltips!
- Dedicated customer support managers!
- More tooltips!
Some of your attempts bomb. Some of them seem to work for some people but not enough. Some of them work really well but won’t scale. Sometimes you stumble on a fix that works and mistake luck for knowing your user.
Does any of this sound familiar? This blog post series covers:
- What retention problems look like
- Common fixes and their pitfalls
- Digging down to the root causes
- Designing the solution
- Implementing the design
Spoiler alert: The problem and the solution involves understanding your users.
Stay tuned for part 1, coming soon.
Jay Zipursky 
