Introduction

An analysis of usage for 12,000 apps revealed that 25% of users abandoned an app after using it only once. This finding underscores the importance of users' initial moments with an app. Onboarding – the process of guiding new users through your app in their first interaction – is your best opportunity to learn about the user, teach them about the product, and convince them of its value. A well-designed onboarding process accomplishes these goals and sets the foundation for deeper engagement and long-term retention.

However, designing a good onboarding is not easy. It requires understanding your users on a deep psychological level, being aware of their barriers, and what motivates them. Behavioral Science, a discipline that draws insights from the many fields of psychology and social sciences, is well suited for this type of understanding. It offers valuable insights into human behavior which helps you create an onboarding that truly resonates.

At Nuance Behavior, we apply Behavioral Science principles to help design onboarding experiences that promote greater user engagement and retention. In this article, we outline the most important components of effective onboarding and how to build them.

Why focus on onboarding?

Companies tend to obsess over improving the ongoing experience for their active users and spend comparatively little time thinking about the initial portion of the user journey. While it's certainly worth improving the experience of active users, we advise our clients to optimize their onboarding first because it sets the foundation for the overall user experience. We have found that common issues faced by active users, such as a lack of feature utilization, churn, and low conversion rates can often be traced back to the onboarding experience. 

Aside from shaping the ongoing user experience, onboarding is also useful for shaping overall strategy. This is because onboarding is your insight into every new user who decides to use your product. For example, a meditation app may discover that most new users are joining with the goal of improving their sleep, causing them to add sleep-specific meditation tracks. In this way, understanding trends in why new users are entering allows you to gain valuable insights into evolving needs and expectations, allowing a quicker path to product-market fit, as well as a more informed product roadmap.

The bottom line, investing in improving the onboarding experience will make your app more effective for your users and save you lots of time, money, and headaches.

Why take a Behavioral Science approach?

Onboarding is more than collecting demographics and a product demo – it’s about connecting with users on a deeper, psychological level. This requires going a layer deeper to understand and influence two key factors: their motivation and ability to carry out the behavior. It’s important to note that these are not fixed traits; motivation and ability are shaped by both personal and contextual factors, such as personal goals and challenges or constraints from their surroundings. Without actively nurturing motivation and adapting to your users’ abilities within their specific context, you put yourself at a limited timeline for usage. A Behavioral Science approach provides the tools to better understand the dynamics between motivation and ability, allowing you to design products that meet users where they are and support their needs more effectively.

Key Components of an effective onboarding

1. Reinforce their decision

One of the first things people need to see after they download your app is a reinforcement of their decision. This reinforcement can come in two ways. One is where the user is provided positive feedback for choosing your app from the many other options. In the example below, Noom reinforces and reinsures the user by showing that they picked an option that is trusted by leading health insurance companies. This supports their need for competence, a fundamental human psychological need, and increases their trust. Secondly, reinforcement can also be provided by re-iterating the value proposition of the app. Here, it's important to stick to the benefits and how the app will support their longer-term aspirations and goals. Again, in Noom, the value is re-iterated by describing the unique benefit of using the product. This further fulfills the user’s need for competence and gives them an initial burst of motivation to continue the onboarding.

2. Learn about their needs

Onboarding is a prime opportunity to learn about your users, their abilities, and their motivations. The more you understand them, the better you can tailor their experience. With so much information you can gather, it's important to prioritize. To understand what will drive behavior, focus on two key areas: their past experiences and their current capabilities.

Use Past Behavior to Build a Baseline

Past behavior is one of the best predictors of what someone will do next. By understanding what users have done before, you gain insights into their habits, skills, and what drives them. It's not just about whether they've engaged in similar activities, but also the context and patterns around those behaviors. Exploring these details helps you create a more personalized and effective experience.

For instance, a runner who's completed marathons likely has a history of established routines, clear goals, and strong self-motivation. In contrast, someone who's only run short distances might be just starting and could benefit from incremental milestones and extra encouragement. Recognizing these differences allows you to tailor your support and motivational strategies to fit each user's unique background and needs.

Understand What Is Needed to Get Someone Started

Beyond past experiences, it's crucial to understand users’ current ability: what they can do now and the context in which they'll use your product. Do they have the necessary skills, resources, and environment to get started? Are there obstacles that might slow them down? Situational factors and context play a big role in influencing behavior.

Concentrate on gathering only the information needed to activate the user – to help them perform the core action in your app for the first time. Identifying potential hurdles lets you develop strategies to overcome less-than-ideal conditions. Over time, these strategies might become key to how users engage with your product. For example, a yoga app initially designed for studio sessions might offer routines that require no equipment, catering to remote workers who want to practice yoga at home without any special gear.

Finding the Right Carrot

Motivation is key to carrying out any behavior. People will only be willing to increase their ability if they're motivated, and they'll overcome barriers you thought were impossible if they're motivated enough. So, most importantly, learning about the user during onboarding means learning what motivates them. Are they fueled by rewards like incentives or unlocking new features after a certain milestone? Are they driven by personal goals, like learning a new skill or losing 10 pounds? Or are they inspired by aspirations of who they want to become, like a healthier, more confident version of themselves?

Past behavior tells us what has worked for them previously, as those motivating factors are likely to resonate again. At the same time, understanding current capabilities and barriers tells you how to frame the challenges so they're optimal – not impossible or too easy, but at the right level to keep people engaged.

Ultimately, onboarding is best seen as an opportunity for continuous learning to understand your users as they come through the door. What you learn about past experiences, current capabilities, and barriers should not only improve the user experience but also inform the overall design and direction of the app.

3. Show them what your product can do for them

What if the secret to drawing in new users lies not in the product features we build, but in the way we introduce them? Onboarding is the moment when users decide if your product is worth their time and effort. And remember, these are people who have no prior experience, no attachment, or any sense of loyalty to your product. If you fail to show them how your product helps them solve their problems early enough, they won’t see what’s in it for them, and they’ll likely get on with their busy lives and abandon the product. And that’s a missed opportunity. 

Sell the benefits, not the specs

A common onboarding mistake is trying to impress users with lots of product features. But users care less about what a product can do and more about what it helps them achieve or what problems it can help them solve. You also won’t be able to explain every single feature right away. If your timing is off, a ‘feature dump’ full of irrelevant information will only add to your user’s cognitive load, which can lead to disengagement. People don’t have to know everything at once – your goal is to give them enough information and value to get them started. And this is where mental models come in.

Mental models are internal frameworks people use to understand the world around them, and they guide decision-making. When people first encounter a product, they come in with a set of expectations shaped by previous experiences with similar products. These pre-existing mental models act as a reference point. And if this is a mismatch with your product, the experience can be confusing and frustrating. But when your product does align with their expectations, users will find your product intuitive and easy to use. 

“People don’t have to know everything at once – your goal is to give them enough information and value to get them started.”

That's why it’s so important to shape mental models – it helps users quickly understand your product, see its benefits, and learn how to use it effectively to achieve their own goals. This is especially critical during onboarding, where you set the foundation for how users will interact with your product later on. When done well, onboarding bridges the gap between users’ initial assumptions and the reality of how your product works.

Build on what they already know

Behavioral Science shows that people learn new information best when it builds on top of what they already know. This means users won’t have to spend as much mental effort to learn new concepts, reducing cognitive load. This is especially useful in situations where you want to have a fast time-to-value, like in onboarding. So focus on the most essential and valuable elements first and introduce others later as users become more familiar with the product – also known as progressive onboarding. 

A classic example is the file structure used to save documents on computers. There is no actual ‘filing’ happening within the hardware, but the metaphor of files and folders allows users to interact with computers intuitively. People were already familiar with organizing physical documents into folders long before digitalization. By building on top of this existing mental model, the new concept of digital storage could be introduced with minimal cognitive effort for the user to understand it.

The same idea applies to products. For example, if your product has similar features as competitors, acknowledge those familiar features first to help users feel grounded. Once they’re comfortable, introduce how your product differs. If your product is truly unique, unlike anything else in the market, look for real-world metaphors or analogies – like the file-and-folder concept – to fill in the blanks between what users already know and what you’re asking them to learn. 

Boost confidence with quick wins

Lastly, an effective way to shape mental models and build user confidence is by creating opportunities for ‘quick wins’ – small, easily achievable tasks that let users understand how the product will help them achieve their goals. For example, a calorie tracking app may prompt users to log their first meal with a simple search function or barcode scan, instantly showing progress toward their daily goal and reinforcing the ease of tracking. Besides providing a sense of accomplishment, you also help reinforce a positive mental model of your product to help them see how it can contribute to their goals even before they’ve mastered all its features. This leaves users feeling rewarded, capable, and motivated to get started on their journey.

4. Leave them inspired

Finally, it’s once again time to turn our attention to the core psychological needs of the user. At this stage, it’s about leaving a lasting impression and giving them the motivation to move forward. We can provide a powerful dose of inspiration by re-affirming the ideal state they are striving for and painting a clear picture of what their future could look like with the product. Whether it’s a healthier body, financial freedom, or a new skill mastered, showing users what’s possible helps connect their current actions to long-term aspirations. This forward-looking perspective not only inspires but also reinforces the value of their decision to engage with your app.

Frequently Encountered Roadblocks (FERs)

Below, we address some anticipated roadblocks when developing a user onboarding:

1. How do I know what part of my onboarding needs improvement?

Clues to a broken onboarding can be found in low activation rates, limited utilization of features, and low retention rates. At Nuance Behavior, we test onboarding flows against a rigorous inventory of psychological and behavioral factors to determine where improvements are needed.

2. How do I ensure onboarding doesn’t feel burdensome or annoying?

Create adaptive onboarding that tailors the experience to individual needs, allowing advanced users to skip sections while guiding others step-by-step. Incorporate behavioral design elements like progress bars to build momentum and ensure every step feels relevant, actionable, and aligned with the user’s goals. At Nuance Behavior, we conduct behaviorally informed usability testing with different segments to ensure the smoothest process.

3. How long should an onboarding be?

The length depends on users' expectations and your product’s domain context. For example, if there’s a clear return on investment, or essential personalization is needed (e.g., health insurance assessments), a longer onboarding may be necessary, tolerated, or even appreciated. One thing is for sure, the longer the onboarding process, the greater the need for behavioral design.

4. How often should I be updating my onboarding process?

Just like the rest of the user experience, the onboarding process is never complete and needs to be continually refined. As a rule of thumb, revisit the onboarding process after major feature releases or shifts in your target audience to ensure it remains relevant.

5. How do I convince my team that onboarding is just as important as the current user experience?

Onboarding is the first interaction your users have with your app. Making it an afterthought risks starting with the wrong impression, leaving your users confused and uncertain about what they can accomplish. A proper onboarding can fix many feature utilization and retention related issues.

Conclusion

We hope to have shown you that onboarding is a critical part of the user experience and that understanding your users’ psychology is paramount to building an effective onboarding. While every app is different, we provide a general scheme for designing onboarding as a four step process, seen below. It may not be possible to include all nuances of these steps in your design, and in some cases certain stages may be much more important than others. But we generally recommend to consider these overall principles when designing the initial portions of your user’s journey.

Are you looking to improve your onboarding? Get in touch to explore how we can help you create a more effective onboarding using behavioral science.