AdvanceLocal | App Onboarding
AdvanceLocal strives to strengthen and empower the communities they serve, locally and nationwide. In order to increase user engagement with our app benefits I designed an in-app onboarding experience to reach users at different points in their user journeys.
Overview
Role
Product Designer
Develop in-app onboarding that highlights benefits users have access to such as notifications, save for later, and app widgets.
Timeline
Problem
June 2023 – February 2024
1. Increase long-term engagement and retain subscribers.
2. Make users aware of what benefits they have access to in the app.
3. Increase engagement with individual products and benefits.
Goals
DISCOVER
Before beginning the design process we needed to first understand what our users want from our product and what they would find valuable from onboarding. Having already designed and developed the USAToday onboarding flow from my time at Gannett, I came into this project with with a foundation to build from.
Understanding our users
DEFINE
Based on our research, I created three user personas to focus and inform our design decisions and further empathize with our users. Meet Max, Paula, and Ashley!
Who are we designing for?
Moving forward
As we began the design process we had several clear goals to keep in mind:
We need an efficient onboarding process that is informative but also quickly moves users into the product.
Onboarding will need to be thought of from multiple points of view to address the needs of all of our users.
What benefits do we want to promote? Determine the most important information to avoid overwhelming users.
Don’t tell users what to do. Show them how to engage with benefits and use the app.
DESIGN
To start the design process I created a series of user flows representing the onboarding flow for subscribers, registered users, and anonymous users.
User flows
We created cohesive designs across all local markets to bring delight to the experience and to ensure our messaging is recognizable to users at all touchpoints.
Visual design
After 5 rounds of unmoderated high fidelity user testing with 46 users, we iterated based on the some of the following major insights:
Usability testing
83%
of users understood the purpose of the progress bar
75%
of users thought the length of onboarding was ‘just right.’
33%
of users rated app widgets as the least valuable benefit in the flow.
Users found the Onboarding experience easy to understand, highlighting the UI and copy as key reasons. Words used to describe it were “concise”, “straightforward”, and “friendly.”
Without being given context, users find onboarding a confusing and jarring experience. An introduction screen and a progress bar proved to be necessary for a seamless flow.
Onboarding is streamlined and quick to complete. After a timed test with 18 users, the average time of completion for onboarding was 43.2 seconds.
Users are willing to engage with onboarding because it will enhance their app experience. They highly rated their likeliness to start and complete the onboarding flow.
After months of in-depth analysis and design iterations we handed our final designs off to engineering to begin development. Moving forward, we would like to include more touch points within the app to inform users after the onboarding flow, such as the addition of nudge modules, reminders, and article tours.
DELIVER
