From the first touchpoint to the post-purchase stage, providing a positive customer experience can effectively help eCommerce businesses reduce churn or customer turnover. The right blend of strategy, technology, and process is what impacts the user journey with high-quality experiences that improve customer loyalty.
The goal is not just to reach new customers and increase the user base but also to retain them
with the exceptional user experience and value provided. This is where an effective user onboarding optimization process can help. A smooth user onboarding on eCommerce apps can bind your customers to your application and foster a lasting customer relationship.
Consequently, it is vital to invest time and resources in improving customer satisfaction to enhance retention and engagement. Whether it is to guide users through the application use or simplify the technical aspects, an innovation-intensive eCommerce app development company can facilitate a smooth user onboarding process.
Why is User Onboarding Optimization Important For eCommerce App Success?
Onboarding customers in eCommerce apps is the process of introducing them to the online store’s functionalities, features, and benefits. This is to ensure they are able to use the application seamlessly, maximizing the value they derive from it.
This is a crucial part of the app engagement strategies that help users navigate around the app seamlessly, encouraging more application usage. Additionally, it helps your business to create a compelling first-time user experience (FTUX), bridging the gap between acquisition and the first conversion.
User Onboarding eCommerce: Tips for Onboarding Users on eCommerce Apps Seamlessly
Do you know? As per a recent survey, it was found that 25% of apps downloaded by mobile app users worldwide were only accessed once after download. Moreover, nearly 1 in 4 people abandon mobile apps after only one use.
One of the significant reasons for users abandoning the app and opting for a competitor’s solution can be attributed to an unsatisfactory onboarding experience. Therefore, defining a better user onboarding strategy for eCommerce applications is essential to ensure higher user engagement, increased satisfaction, and improved retention rates.
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Understand Target Audience
A deep understanding of your target audience enables you to offer tailored solutions addressing their preferences and pain points. Therefore, get to know them inside out through user research using surveys, interviews, and analytics. With clarity of the buyer’s persona, you can ensure every step in user onboarding in the eCommerce app resonates with your audience and engages them.
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Focus on a Clear and Simple Sign-up Process
The goal of an interactive user onboarding process is to ensure your customers feel comfortable navigating and purchasing from your online store. Therefore, eCommerce business owners need to design a quick and easy verification process with minimal information required from the users.
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Single Sign-on
Single sign-on (SSO) solutions provide a faster and easier way to log into the application with better continuity and consistency. This also increases security and efficiency with a streamlined user authentication process.
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Third-party Logins
The ability to sign up/log in to the eCommerce app using existing social media accounts like Facebook, Google, or Twitter adds convenience for users, reducing the time and effort required to create a new account.
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Session Expiration
Having an expiration duration for a login session incorporates a security layer to protect sensitive information. However, remember that frequent session expiration may lead to user frustration. Therefore, it needs to be timed adequately.
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Progressive Profiling
With a step-by-step user onboarding process, you can avoid overwhelming users with too much information at once and a lengthy registration form. Therefore, you can first ask for basic information and build a comprehensive user profile in your eCommerce application later.
Do you want to know the cost of developing an eCommerce application with a user onboarding process enhancing customer experience? Read our blog on eCommerce app development cost comprehensively examining cost-influencing factors.
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A Guided and Interactive App Tour
With a guided tour of the app’s unique features, for instance, virtual try-on, you can make your users more interested in your application. Moreover, an engaging user onboarding process provides clear instructions to the app users.
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Breakdown User Journey
When a user on your eCommerce app has a defined purchase journey, it is unlikely they face any issue midway. Users are more likely to return to an app when they can easily find products and complete their purchases.
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Keep it Short and Concise
Avoid lecturing your users and providing long documents for their reference. This can lead to user friction and confusion. However, a concise user onboarding process free of irrelevant information can lead to higher satisfaction, engagement, and retention.
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Timing is Everything
When creating an eCommerce app onboarding process, introduce the application feature as users access it. Therefore, correctly timed interactivity is vital. Furthermore, allows users to skip the tutorial if they wish to save time and effort, preventing them from abandoning the application.
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Provide Personalized Customer Experience
Delivering solutions tailored to the audience’s demands and needs can improve user engagement and satisfaction levels. Hence, ensure a personalized onboarding experience along with a highly engaging tour.
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An Appealing Welcoming Screen
Ensure the first screen of your eCommerce app addresses the unique selling point and ignites anticipation among users to explore it.
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Ask for Push Notification Options
Push notifications are a popular strategy that many online retailers are utilizing creatively. With personalized messages and notifications, you can ensure that you ask for relevant app permissions.
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Send Welcome Emails to Users
Once your users complete the onboarding process on your eCommerce app, send them a personalized welcome email. This can act as a valuable tool in converting a shopper into a buyer.
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Focus on Visualization and Gamification
Today’s businesses have to deal with increased competition levels, and omnichannel customer experience provides a way to put your product and brand at the forefront. Leading the way with hyper-personalized and predictive CX using AI and automation, eCommerce applications are improving the user onboarding experience. Additionally, incorporating elements of gamification into the application keeps users engaged.
Measure the Success of Your eCommerce App User Onboarding Process
Now that you have understood the best practices for user onboarding and how you can improve its performance. The next step is to determine whether or not implemented parameters are working and driving positive outcomes.
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Collect and Analyze Customer Feedback
The standard method to measure the effectiveness of your onboarding process is by collecting and analyzing customer feedback. You can take many approaches to collect this feedback, such as
- In-app surveys
- App store reviews
- Social media and forums
The next step is to put the feedback data collected to use to enhance your onboarding process. You can analyze the performance of the onboarding process by following these steps:
- Identify patterns and trends
- Prioritize improvements
- Make necessary adjustments
- Monitor the results
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Build KPIs to Track the User Onboarding Optimization
To identify the success rate achieved during the onboarding process, you can establish key performance indicators according to your objectives. This data-driven approach compares industry standards and establishes benchmarks.
User Onboarding Completion Rate (%) = (Number of Users Completed Onboarding / Total Number of New Users) x 100
- Average App Launch Time: This is the average time an application takes to load on a specific device.
- Average Onboarding Time: This is the average time a user spends to finish the onboarding process during the initial app launch.
- App Crash Rate: The percentage of app crashes to the total number of applications loading.
- Install to Registration Rate: Percentage of users who register immediately after installing the app.
- Average Cost Per User Registration: How much it costs you to get a user to install and register on your app.
- User Retention: Identify the percentage of users who are likely to be retained after the onboarding process.
User Retention Difference (%) = [(User Retention with Onboarding – User Retention without Onboarding) / User Retention without Onboarding] x 100
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Identify the Areas Where Users Drop Off
When you identify the steps in the onboarding process where users drop off the application, you can analyze the inconvenient process.
Drop-off Rate (%) = (Number of Users Who Drop Off at a Specific Step / Number of Users Who Reached that Step) x 100
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Change Strategies Based on Analysis
After you find out the areas that need improvement in the onboarding process, you can make the necessary changes in your strategies as per the following parameters.
- Unregistered Users: Run campaigns, provide offers/discounts, and encourage guest users who have made in-app purchases to create a profile.
- Registered, Non-active Users: Create personalized campaigns, omnichannel customer journeys, and offer discounts/ promos/ referral codes.
- Registered and Activated Users: Encouraging users to make purchases, ask them to share feedback/reviews of purchased products, and provide product recommendations.
Common Mistakes to Avoid for User Onboarding Optimization on eCommerce Apps
Despite having a data-driven and focused approach to eCommerce app development, you can face a lot of challenges and common pitfalls. For a fluid onboarding experience focused on growth goals and long-term customer success, avoid these common mistakes.
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Not Having Clear Communication
With effective and interactive communication during the customer onboarding journey, users can understand features and comply with procedures and regulations more quickly. Having engaging elements like images, animations, or videos can make complex concepts easier to understand.
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Not Providing Guided Tours
Break down the complex tasks into smaller steps and demonstrate how they work as the users access them. With progressive onboarding, you enable your customers to learn about your app functionality at their own pace, making the onboarding experience delightful.
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Overloading Users With the Information
Providing too much information during the onboarding process can overwhelm the users, leading them to confusion and frustration. While it is essential to explain your features, focus more on the visual aids and gradually reveal functionality to them.
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Ignoring User Feedback
Do you want to identify areas of improvement? Your users can tell you that better than anyone else. Therefore, collect valuable feedback from the users and enhance the onboarding process as per their convenience and demand. Identify
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Not Simplifying Technical Aspects
Your eCommerce app may contain technical aspects such as app usage policies, compliances, shipping and tax regulations, etc. Ensure you provide a crystal-clear understanding of this essential information during the onboarding process so everyone’s expectations align.
Conclusion
The effectiveness of the user onboarding optimization in eCommerce apps defines how well users understand your app’s functionality and unique features, making their shopping experience hassle-free. Moreover, a fulfilling experience can make them stay in your online store and spend more money by buying products.
The key to achieving an interactive user onboarding experience on an eCommerce app that makes shoppers return for more is to keep testing and improving. Furthermore, developing an app with better engagement by continuously incorporating user feedback can enhance ROI.
Seamless user onboarding can be challenging for marketplaces dealing with complex data and catalog transfers. As a technology partner, we deliver robust eCommerce solutions delivering a customer-centric approach where the users enjoy seamless onboarding in minutes.
