Components in Top 5 Onboarding Stories of SaaS Products

Top 5 Onboarding Stories of SaaS Products

Onboarding is important for retaining new users. As people say, the first impression might be your last impression and hence it becomes important to give the best user experience to a new user.

So, when the user comes to your product for the first time, it is just like the first date of the user with your product and now you can understand the importance of this first date. SaaS products are certainly no different and because of their savvy users, it becomes more important to create an Aha moment to hold the user.

We have studies the onboarding stories of one of the top 5 SaaS products out there and here is our summary:

Webflow Signup Flow

Webflow has a detailed 6-steps onboarding flow where they ask one question per screen which makes the user engaged as well as the user does not feel overwhelmed at the same time.
They use this information to set up your account accordingly. For example, they ask you the type of website you wish to build with Webflow and based on your answers (like e-commerce, SaaS, etc) they accumulate the templates for you on the dashboard.
The whole onboarding flow is non-skippable however they have tried to keep it simple and engaging.

Basecamp Onboarding Flow

Basecamp has a 4 step onboarding process where they ask for personal details, teams type, ongoing project types and invites more team members.
Most of the information they ask for is optional however they want to be familiar with the user before taking them to their dashboard. The whole point is to personalize the dashboard based on user and project type. If you are making an account for the sales team, they will show you relevant projects which you can edit later to create your own.
Also, they want as many team members as possible onboard and hence in the onboarding, they ask you to invite other members by simply submitting their emails which will send an invite on their emails to join the same project.

Amplitude Welcome Dashboard

Amplitude is an analytics product and they do not follow the traditional onboarding style which makes users answer a bunch of questions before getting started with their account. Their onboarding is different in the sense they populate their dashboard with fake data to give users a feel of how their dashboard is going to look like once they include Amplitude’s JS pixel on their website/app.
For analytics or other product which requires a significant effort from their user like integrating a snippet or making code-level changes, it does take an extraordinary amount of convincing. Just by asking your users a few questions may not be enough. Hence, Amplitude has taken a different approach to giving users a 360-degree feel of their product using fake data.

Convertkit Signup Flow

Convertkit has combined the onboarding flow with their signup flow. Before taking account information, they take a few details from the user which helps them to quickly set up their account.
Convertkit is an email automation product and hence they assume that any medium user must be using another email automation product before ending up on their platform. Hence, they ask if the user is migrating from any other email service like MailChimp or Drip, etc.
They also take input for the number of email subscribers to ensure hassle-free deliveries even in trial periods.

Canva Onboarding Flow

Canva is a product for designers and hence it is important for them to make a good onboarding impression with respect to the designs. So, their onboarding widget is very well designed with pretty images.
To personalize the templates on the dashboard, they ask for the type of things you will be using Canva for like as a student or teacher or large company.
Also, they ask you to invite team members who will be contributing to your project to make sure to enroll as many users as possible in the first step itself. So far they have the best designs for onboarding screens.

We have found multiple types of onboarding like in a modal, with fake data and so on. Want to know more about such stories? Subscribe to our newsletter now!