Summary of advice in the articles

Track the number of people who stop using the software after they try it the first time.
Consider offering templates or starting the user with an explanatory demo-project rather than starting the user with a blank project, MS Word-style.
Consider hiding the full complexity (buttons) of your software to new users so it's easier for them to learn the basics.
Consider using the search term or ad that brought a user to your site to direct them to a custom onboarding experience that caters to their particular use-case.

Articles

Kalzumeus - Improving The First Run Experience Of Your Software
- Intro
  - Of 100 people who sign up to use your product, how many come back? I ask this question to consulting clients all the time. And the reality is that almost no one knows that answer because almost no one tracks that statistic right now.
  - Across a lot of clients and a lot of industries, it's pretty consistent. 40%, 50% use the software a second, third, fourth time. So 50%, 60% of your users are essentially going to waste.
- How To Avoid Paralyzing Your Users With Blank Screens
  - The default implementation of a lot of the first run experiences for software looks like the experience when you open Microsoft Word. You're presented with a bunch of confusing options and then totally blank page on the screen.
  - We don't want to give people an array of options before they can start digging in and finding value from the software.
  - For a social network, if you don't bootstrap that friends list by giving people suggested friends or something of that nature, then they're going to perceive very little value from your software.
  - Balsamiq Mockups doesn't start with a blank screen. It starts with a demo project.
  - Lean Designs presents you with seven templates to choose from (as well as a blank template). You can pick the one closest to what you're going for and modify it to suit your needs.
- Using 'Scent' To Improve Trial Conversion and User Engagement
  - Main idea: Use what you know about the user (such as the search term that brought them to your website) to direct them to one of several onboarding experiences that cater to their particular needs.
  - 'Scent' is an advertising term that means that there should be continuity of experience between the creative for an ad -- that's the actual image of the ad -- and the landing page that ad redirects people to.
  - 37signals ran an ad campaign in which different versions of the same ad redirected to different testimonials: "See Marie's story", "See Brian's story", etc.
  - What if we could change the first run experience of the software, their whole experience for the trial, based on what we knew about them based on what creative took them into our page originally, or perhaps what search term took them to our page?
  - He spends a while going through two things he did to increase conversions:
    - He had his onboarding take into account a certain subset of searches (eg US Presidents), so people searching for those terms had a streamliend experience.
    - He hid the full complexity of the software from first-time users (buttons they could click).
- How My Tour Greatly Increased Customer Lifetime Value
- Optimizely: Well-executed Tours Of Complex Products
- Wrap-up & Review
I was reading a forum thread about phpBB and someone (I think maybe Jeff Atwood) complained about the number of buttons and options that are present in most (phpBB, probably) forums, most of which are never used. So for new users, it's probably best to present them with the minimum number of options and then have a separate screen where they can have additional buttons pop up on their UI.
- I think Jeff may bring it up in this talk: https://www.brighttalk.com/webcast/43/100507

Books

https://www.useronboard.com
- This book looks really good, check it out!

Examples

Digital Ocean
- - The first thing you see when you go to their site is a gif that shows the entire onboarding process in ~30 seconds, which is all on one screen. Very impressive.
PythonAnywhere.com
- - They let you drag around how much of different options you want, and your price scales accordingly. Brilliant!
Workflowy
- When you start, you're presented with a YouTube video that guides you through how to use it.
- There are 18 tutorial videos, each one is about 40 seconds to 1.5 minutes. And it tells you which ones you have already watched.

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