step 2. At a company of 100 people, that might be 80% of people who could possibly sign up for your product. The same holds for the rest of the steps – the potential for failure is massive. Who has permissions to connect Google Apps? Who knows our lawyer’s email? Who has the stand for the iPad? Who is it I can ask for the credit card again? Modeled in this way, as a blocking sequence of steps, there’s only one person at the company who could complete every step, unassisted – the CEO. And if the only person at a company who can complete your onboarding is the busiest person, with the least time, you have a problem. We had a similar problem at Intercom as we grew. Previously, in order to sign up for an account, we made people add a code snippet or import data from a CSV or third-party service. In some ways, this a good thing – we were able to show customers Intercomworking on their own website or app right away. But it also meant we blocked anyone who couldn’t add a code snippet or import data from doing anything else. Once we changed this to allow anyone to create an account right away, and then add a code snippet or data import afterwards, more people were able to make more progress through our onboarding.
How to expect unexpected paths
Since it’s hard to predict who will do each task, or which order tasks will be completed in, designing onboarding means designing for a moving target. It requires the humility to know that it will never be perfect. This
Made with FlippingBook - Online magazine maker