You’ve invested in some great technological tools to streamline your business practices, but to gain the full value of your investment, your users need to be onboarded properly. Onboarding is the process of bringing new users up to speed on the software you’ve adopted in your company.
That being said, User onboarding is far more than simply training – it’s a strategic process that methodically guides new users through the learning process. By having an efficient strategy, companies can build user confidence in those early stages of learning. Having an interactive guidance tool like Apty encourages and builds confidence amongst users. Higher adoption rates directly correspond to higher utilization rates, which is important when measuring ROI on enterprise software applications.
Five User Onboarding Best Practices
Know the Flow
Understanding the user’s adoption journey is important for successful onboarding. Asking open-ended questions during the beginning, middle and end stages provides insights and clarity on how to best map a process flow for onboarding users. Considerations that one may consider would be
- How Much experience does the user have with the existing product?
- Would Industry Knowledge be a factor in measuring success?
- Are there processes in place to address when users struggle (and where they struggle?)
Having a solid understanding of your user audience will help you develop a more intuitive, effective, and engaging onboarding system.
Use a Multi-Step Model
Breaking your onboarding process into small, easy-to-complete steps encourages users to adopt new software without feeling overwhelmed. Large, complicated steps may discourage them from fully engaging in the learning process and just “go through the motions.”
Shorten the Process
Streamlining the onboarding process keeps employees engaged. Too much information overload can be discouraging as complex software may require additional time to learn. Trim your onboarding process down to the basics so they can begin to use the software quickly then offer additional support to help them learn more advanced features once they’re already an established user.
Guide Your User
Guiding employees through steps, features, or user flows empowers employees and builds confidence. This is important when complex software adoption is required.
Follow the Metrics
No matter how well-designed your user onboarding process is, actual efficiency will be measured with real-life user experiences. Keeping an accurate record of both positive and negative experiences during the testing phase and post-rollout will provide measurable feedback. This feedback is important as it provides baselines on what to keep the same, and what to improve over the long haul.
Apty Simplifies the User Onboarding Process.
Apty is the solution to make the user onboarding process easy – for both you and your employees! With guided navigation that offers users support in their exact moment of need, Apty encourages user adoption with interactive real-time guidance. This not only increases user confidence but also increased software utilization. Stakeholders benefit from back-end insights to determine where process improvements can occur within the company organization.
