Show HN: Onboarded – User Onboarding as a Service | Hacker News Reader

Show HN: Onboarded – User Onboarding as a Service

getonboarded.com

I never really like this style of on boarding. Mostly because I can 'see' the app behind the dialogs and I just want to start using it.

Much prefer is on boarding is baked into the design of the app. So literally hide / alter the page based on where they are in the setup / learning process.

One of the goals we had when we designed Onboarded was for it to be unobtrusive yet flexible. It can be used to accomplish just what you are saying. The styling as overlay/modal is just a default to get you going. It can be made into a fullscreen flow or inline, or however you want. Onboarded makes it easier to do all those things stylistically, as well as bind event handlers, post data, etc.

Ok sounds interesting.

Because I'm dumb and short of time, I could only take it at face value.

I sort of want to come away lusting to have the feature on my site.

Be great to see some of the possibilities demo'd on the page in the future !

Maybe in the intro path in addition to saying 'let me out' you could have an option like 'i like the concept, but show me a different style' and then take a few example paths to show off possibilities

This is a great idea. Thanks for the feedback.

I'd love to get an idea of the pricing before I sign up for a trial. I don't want to spend time trying out a product that will end up costing more than I'm willing to pay for it.

Correction: Ahh I see what you're saying and agree. I wouldn't think about using a service that carried with it so much inherent uncertainty.

Pricing is linked to in the footer: https://www.getonboarded.com/pricing

The thing is, we're just focused on the free tier right now. When you've onboarded lots of people and decide you like the product, pricing is an open conversation.

> pricing is an open conversation

I do not want pricing to be an open conversation. That sounds horrible to me.

To take a wild guess - maybe you think that an open conversation is good for the customer because it represents flexibility? To me it doesn't. To me it screams "UNCERTAINTY!" and the less of that I have the better.

Or even worse: "If you have to ask, you can't afford it."

First - apologies. There is a point to this. I apparently like taking the scenic route to get there.

I'm at the tail end of roughing out the high level design of a pretty large (as in complexity, not number of users yet), Enterprise SaaS thing.

In any case, I've had to probably glance at 5,000 things and of those, look at 2,500 things, and of those play with 1200 things, evaluation 700 things to end up with about 300 things (currently) that will turn into probably less than 150 things in production.

At the front end of this process, I probably unfairly dismissed some possibly viable candidates for technologies or services. Which is unfortunate and ultimate unfair to the vendor.

The two top things that made me go away (unless HN or somebody pointed me back) was: - The front page, the about page, and the top blog post don't really tell me what the company is or the product is. IF I get pointed back to look, I'll poke around github to see if some brilliant marketing maneuver made them put their "about page" from their website into the github Readme.md. (I'm looking at your, Weave)

  - I can't find a way to put the right number of zeros behind the price in my estimates. Now. 6 Months. 12 Months. 24 Months. 36 Months. It has to be easy-to-understand (because I am very simple), and look thought-through and stable.

I am 12 months away from having to embed on-boarding into our project, and I will come back and see what you have at that time. But, please, for the love of getting anything past the CEO/CFO/Board ... let me rough out a guestimated cost (for us; pricing for you).

N.B. 1) Our use case probably isn't in your sweet spot, but who knows, you may shift.

N.B. 2) Not trying to be harsh, but I was up to my ass in alligators 2~3 months ago, and I would have tossed the link and not looked back.

Gonna agree with others that I don't like "pricing is an open conversation". Sounds like you just don't know what to price it at. Why not just start with something and then adjust up/down as needed?

We use http://www.walkme.com at Top Hat, how does this compare?

The key point about Onboarded is that it's made for developers. It makes it simpler and faster to completely customize the user experience that you want, integrated as you see fit with your app's existing functionality and look/feel.

I'm your target customer. I need to rework my onboarding flow but haven't done it yet because it seems like a huge pain. Would like to see better examples of the non-modal options, because I'm trying to move away from the modal approach.

Got it. Would you send me an email at hello@getonboarded.com? I'd love to show you how you could implement a non-modal flow with Onboarded in ~5 minutes. Would love your feedback.

Does Onboarded use Onboarded?

Yes

The correct place to dump users after they create an account is the Account screen, where they can fill out various sections, but don't have to. Each action on the site/app which requires certain info from the user (eg their location or interests) would have a link to an inline / popup allowing them to fill out that section before proceeding.

I could not disagree more.

I am never interested in building a social profile or entering preferences to some app I'm unfamiliar with. Like others comment, I'd like to get to using the product ASAP.

Signing up is already a hassle that should have been kept to a minimum.

I may be an atypical and less social (more asocial?) than others. Or maybe I'm old and impatient. Or all the above.

Making me fill out, really anything, before I can drive the app around at all is a sure way to make me "nope" right out of there. Now, I understand that you said "don't have to", but a big screen of form(s) is an intimidating clue that you will want more from me than I suspect I am willing to give. I don't even know who you are yet.

Incrementally adding information during the use of the application to make operation/data/context more relevant or useful is fine. Not filling out a list of interests, for gods sake. And not 20 things, mind.

YMMV.

This seems similar to Appcues (http://appcues.com/). Appcues is oriented at PMs though. I'm not sure what the market is for a product which requires messing with the HTML of the site.

There is something a bit ironic about a web site which claims to be 'the most effective way to communicate with new users' showing me a YouTube video to explain what they do ...

How different would your service be to using something like impromptu.js https://github.com/trentrichardson/jQuery-Impromptu

Hm, looks like the example pages are missing validation for user input.

What's really the advantage of this over writing 50 lines of javascript to automatically do the same thing and using segment.com to track events?

We don't think developers should have to reinvent the wheel, or cobble things together to build a customized experience. You're usually not writing 50 lines of javascript one time only and calling it a day - you are changing your flow all the time, as soon as you see evidence for how to make it better. Onboarded is a tool that will make that process of learning and iteration much more efficient (and thus faster and cheaper). And there's no reason you couldn't integrate with Segment too.

From the article: "After new users sign up to a website or app, they are often dropped directly into a home screen. ... This is a big missed opportunity. This moment is a chance to ... ask important questions, and personalize their experience. ... They will then be more likely to tell their friends about you. When combined with analytics, the onboarding process presents an opportunity to learn vital details about your users ... and increase retention and conversions."

So this isn't for the user's benefit.

personalize their experience ... They will then be more likely to tell their friends about you. ... increase retention and conversions.

So this isn't for the user's benefit.

non-sequitur

If something is increasing retention; and creating more satisfied customers (so much so they are telling other people about you)... then it is benefiting the user. Actions clearly indicate it's benefiting the user.

> So this isn't for the user's benefit.

I think it is. You're understanding what problems they need solved so you can do that for them (and thus increase retention and conversions).

Exactly. Plus you can improve the user's experience by helping them find and understand the things they are looking for in your app :)

This kind of response makes me think of the mandatory training missions that have started populating the introductory levels of many videogames - Even though movement is the same as every other game, we're going to spend 10 minutes to teach you how to walk around and shoot your gun.

I think those are fine, as long as you can skip them.

Increasingly, the option to skip is removed. If you want to play a game with your friends, you have to spend 10 minutes doing what the game tells you to do.

Just because something benefits one party, doesn't mean it can't benefit both parties.

reminds me of http://zurb.com/playground/jquery-joyride-feature-tour-plugi... zurbs joyride for foundation

Or LinkedIn's Hopscotch http://linkedin.github.io/hopscotch/

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