Best Practices for Onboarding UX

Learn how to create seamless, user-focused onboarding experiences that drive engagement and reduce drop-offs.
Best Practices for Onboarding UX Lesson

Onboarding is the first big step users take when interacting with a product, and it’s crucial to make it as smooth and engaging as possible. A well-designed onboarding experience helps users understand the value of a product quickly, without feeling overwhelmed. By breaking down key actions into simple steps, using clear visuals, and offering help at the right moments, businesses can make users feel confident and empowered from the start.

Personalization is another important factor in modern onboarding. When the experience is tailored to users' needs and goals, it feels more relevant and helps them connect with the product on a deeper level. Features like progress indicators, interactive tutorials, and dynamic content ensure that users are guided without being overloaded. Tracking their progress and knowing when to stop showing tips creates a more seamless, enjoyable experience. In the end, effective onboarding leads to happier users, faster product adoption, and reduced churn.

Minimizing steps for a seamless onboarding experience

A seamless onboarding experience begins with minimizing the number of steps users need to complete. The fewer barriers between users and the product's core value, the higher the likelihood of retaining them. However, this doesn't mean that shorter onboarding is always better. Sometimes, a few well-designed steps are necessary to provide value through a personalized experience. To streamline the process, focus on guiding users through essential actions first — such as account setup or feature exploration — while deferring secondary tasks (like filling out personal information) to later stages. This keeps onboarding short and focused, ensuring users reach the product's value as quickly as possible without feeling overwhelmed.[1] 

The Calm app demonstrates this balance perfectly. It starts with asking users about their goals to customize content. Only after showing value through personalization does it request account creation. This approach maintains engagement while collecting necessary information for a tailored experience.

Pro Tip! Ask yourself: "Is this step essential for users to experience the core value?" Remove or postpone steps that don't pass this test.

Highlighting key actions during onboarding

During onboarding, it’s crucial to highlight the most important actions users need to take to get started effectively. Not all features require emphasis — focus on those that are essential for users to experience the core value of the product. Tooltips or pop-ups are useful for drawing attention to these key actions, especially when a feature might be unfamiliar or complex.

MyFitnessPal demonstrates effective feature highlighting through its food logging tooltip. The app immediately draws attention to its core functionality with a clear, numbered guide that emphasizes both the what ("Log food fast") and the how ("Search or scan food right from your home screen"). This focused approach helps new users quickly grasp the most essential action for achieving their goals.

Designers should decide which features need tooltips by identifying which steps users are most likely to overlook or struggle with. Features critical to product adoption, such as setting up a profile or connecting an integration, are ideal candidates for tooltips.

Pro Tip! Aim for 1-2 short sentences for a tooltip, such as "Add your first project here" to keep the copy clear and focused on action.

Providing step-by-step guidance

Effective onboarding often involves guiding users through key tasks in a step-by-step manner. Breaking down complex actions into smaller, manageable steps ensures that users can follow along easily without feeling overwhelmed. This approach is especially useful for more technical or multi-step features, where users might need extra support to complete tasks successfully.

Step-by-step guidance can be delivered through a series of pop-ups, progress bars, or interactive tutorials. The goal is to walk users through essential actions without interrupting their flow, helping them accomplish tasks with clarity and confidence. By offering clear, progressive instructions, businesses can ensure that users stay engaged and are more likely to complete the onboarding process.

Pro Tip! Use progress indicators to show users how far along they are in the process and break complex tasks into simple, digestible steps.

Personalizing the onboarding experience

Personalizing the onboarding experience helps create a deeper connection with users by tailoring the process to their specific needs, preferences, or usage goals. Personalization can include asking users about their interests or objectives during sign-up and then adjusting the onboarding flow to introduce them to the features most relevant to them. For example, a design tool could offer a customized onboarding journey based on whether users are beginners or experienced designers.

TikTok presents a clear, visually appealing set of content categories enhanced with relevant icons, making the selection process both intuitive and engaging. By explicitly connecting this choice to "better video recommendations," TikTok helps users understand how their input will directly improve their experience.

This approach not only makes users feel understood but also helps them quickly engage with the parts of the product that deliver the most value. Personalized onboarding flows can also reduce frustration by avoiding irrelevant information and focusing on what matters most to each individual.

Pro Tip! Ask users about their goals or preferences, and tailor their experience by introducing features that align with their answers.

Streamlining user interface for clarity Bad Practice
Streamlining user interface for clarity Best Practice

A streamlined user interface is essential during onboarding to ensure that users can easily navigate through the process without confusion. By reducing visual clutter and presenting only the most important actions, businesses can help users focus on completing the key steps needed to start using the product. During onboarding, simplicity is crucial — too many options or distractions can lead to drop-offs as users may feel overwhelmed or unsure of the next step.

Otter.ai exemplifies clean interface design through its onboarding carousel. The app uses simple dot indicators to show progress and the number of tips, while providing clear, concise prompts that guide users through their first recording without overwhelming them with information.

To streamline the onboarding UI, use whitespace to create a visually clean layout, limit the number of calls to action on each screen, and ensure that navigation is intuitive. Organizing information logically allows users to understand the process at a glance, keeping them engaged and progressing smoothly through onboarding.

Avoiding information overload Bad Practice
Avoiding information overload Best Practice

During onboarding, it’s crucial to avoid overwhelming users with too much information at once. When users are bombarded with excessive details, features, or steps, they can become confused, lose focus, and abandon the process altogether. The key to effective onboarding is delivering information in manageable chunks, focusing only on what’s necessary for users to get started.

The goal is to help users understand the product's core features first and save more advanced information for later stages. The app offering water filtration setup instructions demonstrates excellent information presentation by using clear, everyday language that avoids technical jargon. The steps are broken down into simple actions with specific timing, making it easy for users to understand and follow the setup process without feeling overwhelmed.[2]

Offering support during onboarding

Offering timely support during onboarding is crucial for ensuring users don’t get stuck or frustrated as they explore your product. Providing easy access to help through features like live chat, tooltips with quick tips, FAQ sections, or in-app support buttons can make a huge difference in the user experience. When users encounter difficulties, having support readily available keeps them moving forward instead of abandoning the onboarding process out of frustration.

Support doesn’t have to be intrusive — simple elements like a persistent "Need help?" button or a well-placed tooltip offering assistance can reassure users that help is available if needed. Notion demonstrates effective support accessibility by clearly highlighting its "Help & feedback" option with a friendly prompt and pointing gesture emoji. The app proactively shows users where to find help while keeping the interface clean and the message concise, ensuring assistance is obvious but not intrusive.

Measuring the success of the onboarding process requires tracking key metrics that indicate user engagement, satisfaction, and retention. Metrics such as completion rates (how many users finish onboarding), time to complete onboarding, and first-week activity (how engaged users are after finishing onboarding) are essential for understanding how well the process is working. These data points help businesses identify areas of success and improvement within the onboarding flow.

For example, if many users drop off at a specific step, it might indicate a confusing or overly complex process. Similarly, tracking how quickly users engage with key features after onboarding can show whether the onboarding experience is setting them up for success.

Pro Tip! Run A/B tests on different onboarding flows to identify which steps drive the most engagement and lead to higher completion rates.

Reducing friction for seamless onboarding

An effective onboarding process adapts to user behavior by tracking progress and ensuring that users see relevant content at the right time. For first-time users, it’s essential to deliver onboarding experiences that introduce core features and guide them through essential tasks. Once users have completed onboarding or interacted with key features, continuing to show the same tips and tutorials can become frustrating.

Tracking whether users have completed specific actions or seen certain onboarding content allows the product to adjust the experience dynamically. By tracking interactions — such as whether users have seen a feature tutorial or completed an essential task — the product can adapt.

For example, if users repeatedly dismiss a tooltip, it might be time to stop showing that tip. Similarly, after users have completed onboarding, further onboarding prompts should be hidden to make the experience feel more personalized and less repetitive.

The Airtime app demonstrates thoughtful feature education by including a clear "Don't show me this again" option for its room setup instructions. This simple checkbox respects user preferences and prevents tip fatigue, particularly valuable for returning users who are already familiar with these features.

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