Finding the user onboarding flow that works best for your product is a quite important task that, as we have seen previously, it takes a while to design, create, test and refine.

We love software development and coding... but we also know the time and resources it takes to create a product that really works for your users' needs. That's why we collect a series of tools that will help you figure out the flow that best suits the needs of your service, without having to build everything from scratch.

From registration to user activation

In this post we will start from the registration form and see how we can use different tools to easily build an onboarding flow for our SaaS or MVP.

Low-code and no-code tools can help you quickly test and iterate your ideas. Would you like to give them a try?

User registration

The registration form is one of the most critical points in any onboarding process, as it must offer minimal friction to the user but also be secure and sometimes get some extra data for our marketing and sales teams.

It is practically impossible to create the perfect form the first time but there is a tool that can help you save a lot of development time when building and iterating this form and its server-side logic, and that is the case with Arengu.

Your form and server-side logic, without effort

This form and flow editor will allow you to build help you create from the most basic to the most complex and sophisticated registration use cases that can be used and embedded in any tech stack, by simply copying and pasting a line of code, thanks to a JS SDK.

With the drag & drop form builder and the visual flow editor, you will be able to create and combine, from template or from scratch, frictionless and passwordless forms, user verification, data enrichment... and to easily integrate any external service with an API.

Identity providers & custom integrations

If you have advanced coding skills, you will like to know that you can also connect any identity provider, such as Auth0, Firebase, Okta or Keycloak, even your own one.

A collection of native actions is also available, allowing you to easily integrate third-party services such as Stripe, Slack, Telegram, HubSpot, Pipedrive... simply by copying and pasting their API keys and Secret keys. Does it sound good? Give it a try!

Welcome email

The next key point to define in any onboarding process is the welcome email, in which you will have to show off your best features and didactic contents. There are many mailing services with which you can do it, but we recommend two that you can really easily connect with Arengu, even if you don't have coding skills.

Mailjet

This email service provider is used by +150,000 companies all over the world to create, send, and track their marketing and transactional emails.

Why do we like it?

• Intuitive interface. Available in 5 languages (English, French, German, Spanish, and Italian), Mailjet’s interface enables marketing teams to create, test, and send complete customizable emails and easy-to-scale campaigns.
• Content & template edition. The drag & drop email builder helps you create 100% responsive emails in no time and to have a great control over your brand images and accounts with advanced user management and content locking.
• Help & support. Mailjet’s support team works around the clock to resolve customer issues in English, French, German, and Spanish, and enterprise accounts benefit from a dedicated Customer Success Manager too.

SendGrid

Trusted by over 80,000 customers globally to send over 45 billion emails every month, this email service provider makes it simple and stress-free to communicate with your users and customers.

Why do we like it?

• Email customization. It is very easy to use and configure, a big amount of customizable templates and a good user interface that allows you to manage the different types of contents and campaigns.
• Flexibility & Docs. The flexibility and range of solutions that Sendgrid offers to assist with marketing activities, in addition to the technical capabilities and the documentation provided.
• Help & Support. A very good and prompt Customer Service that is able to solve the most technical doubts, queries and issues at the earliest in a chat session. A unique support and training flows that remains in constant evolution.

Quick overview video

Summarizing the goals and key points of your service in the shortest possible time is now easier thanks to some video recording tools. We recommend these ones to record the video for the welcome email or to show right after the registration process.

A freemium tool that allows you to easily record videos of your screen, webcam, or both and simply share them with a URL. It is very fast and easy to use, and it will allows you to connect with your users and audience in a much more personal way.

Why do we like it?

• Simply. Sign up, install the browser plugin and simply start using it. You do not need anything other than a browser to make and see the screen recording. Not advanced or technical knowledge is required.
• Effective. Build relationships that just an email can not do. For quick overview videos and even responding to emails more personal and fun. Perfect for a few long explanations of complex questions, issues and features.
• Easy to share. Download the video by clicking a button or simply share it with a URL. It also provides high quality screen captures and different options for camera on/off, which application or tab should be recorded, etc.

Wistia

In addition to video recording and sharing, this all-in-one freemium platform allows you to customize the player and adapt it to your brand image, include annotation links, interactive call to actions and consult video analytics and metrics.

Why do we like it?

• Customization. Upload your logo, modify the controls, and easily change the player color to match your brand.
• Interaction. Help your audience take action with CTAs, email gates, Annotation Links, and more, and increase your audience's engagement with the content.
• Analytics. Use viewer data to reach new audiences and retarget existing viewers with ads on Facebook, Instagram, and Google + send viewer and listener data to tools like HubSpot, Mailchimp, Marketo, and Pardot.

Walkthrough

One of the main hot spots in onboarding flows which you can now easily build with this set of tools. Show the main features and how to start using them with different elements of contextual help with one of them.

Appcues

Easily build custom in-product tours and experiences, use branching logic to let users choose their own path, and get the metrics to see how everything is going with this freemium tool that is perfect for any product that iterates quickly.

Why do we like it?

• Friendly interface. The clean and modern interface plus a Chrome plugin will allow you to easily build experiences directly from the browser, in minutes, as if you were working with a word processor.
• Customization. A completely customizable way to communicate with your users and clients by posting helpful notices directly on their dashboards and launching campaigns with a high degree of control (who, what, when, when not).
• Real-time analytics. Measure the impact on key business results, collect feedback from customers and features to know when and how to intervene with a human touchpoint, and easily build your monthly business reports.

Userpilot

Build dynamic onboarding experiences, letting users to decide their journey without forcing them into one path by triggering hints based on in-app events. This paid service will allow you to completely customize and integrate an adaptive walkthrough in your product's interface.

Why do we like it?

• Features & Toolkit. Great variety and availability of step templates and types of steps (modals, sliders, tooltips, driven actions) and also great flexibility in terms of what you can actually do with them (personalization, dynamic elements, etc).
• Metrics + Iteration. Organize users and behaviors into segments, and create and save variations in subsequent experiences. Get the most out of the data to try different options until you find the best one for your product.
• Support & Resources. Their support team, documentation and educational resources provides really useful help on many aspects such as understanding your customers and how to apply the onboarding process through different channels.

Chameleon

Manage and improve product experiences for your web application, build user onboarding, feature adoption, and feedback collection flows, without writing code and following the best practices, with this paid platform.

Why do we like it?

• Easy to set up. Easily add interactions, instructions and integrations without engaging your development team and design on-screen help that matches the look and feel of your app with a user-friendly interface.
• Flexibility & Performance. Great out-of-the-box features, custom attributes, flexible data outputs for analytics... everything you need to fully customize the flows and without impacting the performance of the application.
• Support & Documentation. Very helpful support pages and documentation, continuous improvement and new feature delivery, and a truly receptive support team that will help you enhance your knowledge and skills.

Analytics

Collecting and analyzing your onboarding data is essential if you want to know if it is working properly or, if not, where you have to focus your efforts to stop losing users. These tools will really help you and your team with that.

Amplitude

This freemium product intelligence platform helps you understand how users are navigating through your application, which features engage them the most, or how to improve long-term user retention. Answer questions critical to your product development strategy and build the right product experience, faster.

Why do we like it?

• Flexibility & Customization. Create and personalize charts, easily set up integrations and segments, and decide how real-time data is displayed on dashboards in a way that's understandable to your team.
• Affordable learning curve. Accessible basic functions for beginners and more in-depth features for advanced users in an intuitive interface, plus thorough and constantly updated guides and documentation.
• Shareability. It really facilitates exploration and collaborative analysis due to the individual permalink URL that allows you to save and share it with others without needing to worry about remembering the parameters.

Fullstory 

Connect digital interactions to the metrics that matter most to businesses and optimize the digital experience of your product, enabling teams to understand issues, prioritize fixes, remediate bugs, and measure the impact of those changes with this freemium analytics engine.

Why do we like it?

• Session replays. Identify pain points in the user experience from the user's perspective. View user sessions and comply with privacy regulations (CCPA, GDPR...) by hiding private information during the reviews. They are also shareable.
• Integrations & Updates. Ease of implementation of many third-party integrations (Slack, Jira, Google Analytics, Qualtrics...) and constant release of new functionalities that keep the product really up-to-date.
• Mix of quantitative and qualitative data. Advanced search and user segmentation capabilities, in addition to completely customizable dashboards to check, in a few clicks, both what happened and how it happened.

Mixpanel

A self-serve product analytics solution that allows teams to easily analyze how and why people engage, convert, and retain with your product. Discover how to improve their user experience analyzing real-time data across devices.

Why do we like it?

• Friendly user interface. Easy to use, agile and fast when a user registers for the first time. It allows to quickly make graphs and tables, and to take advantage of the many functionalities that it offers in its entirety.
• Querying & Data history. Query years of historical data that can be analyzed over time for seasonal trends, access control to manage a large team and a large number of product offerings, mobile apps and services.
• Tracking options. Track events, journeys, funnels, flows, create cohorts, and numerous advanced tools that are very easy to configure. Advanced tracking is available both for mobile apps and websites to easily make comparisons.

Feedback & Support

Two-way communication is essential on user onboarding processes if you really want to know and understand how everything is going for your users. Stop facing difficulties on this with the tool that best suits your needs.

Intercom

Onboard, activate, and re-engage customers with targeted messages, product tours, and email campaigns to build better relationships with this paid service. Provide also personalized help at any scale by layering human and proactive support.

Why do we like it?

• Content edition. A nice WYSIWYG interface where you can format the articles to make them appear just as you want them to, and easily to organize them into collections that allow you to create useful paths and resources for your users.
• Audience segmentation. It is really easy to search conversations and group customers into targeted segments, offering both a complete and detailed overview, allowing you to keep all communications within the same environment.
• Direct & Quick contact. The possibility to interact directly with the customers whilst they are using the application, to provide additional training material relevant to their current situation, and to initiate support tickets.

Wootric

Optimize the most important touchpoints of the user experience of your product with this paid platform. Monitor onboarding, support interactions, launch hyper-targeted micro-surveys and get the info you need for the success of your SaaS.

Why do we like it?

• Advanced data collection. The UI is simple and clean and it makes it really easy to collect data from customers, organize reviews, consult information, make reports and even detect behavior patterns, feelings and trends.
• Triggers & Integrations. Email notifications, control survey parameters, follow up messages... Trigger NPS, CSAT, & CES surveys from within Salesforce, Zendesk, Mixpanel, or other sources of customer data.
• Mapping users loyalty. Better understand the growth of your platform and how your actions as a company affect it positively or not. Map most loyal users to use as ambassadors and refer to potential new customers. 

Zendesk 

One of the most famous support, sales, and customer engagement software designed to foster better customer relationships. Provide support across channels keeping all the interactions and relevant context in one place for your agents.

Why do we like it?

• Ease of use. The user interface is really easy to use, allowing beginners to get started pretty fast and it is also easy to install. A light application to sort any major issue due to its conversations management and flows.
• Customization. Make multiple customizations to the product based on your team's needs and your company's evolving practices. The views, triggers, and automations make it easy to control your team's workflow and priorities.
• A centralized workspace. Provide support across channels via email, chat, voice, and even social messaging apps like Facebook, WhatsApp, Apple Business Chat... and centralize all the relevant information in a unified workspace. 

Have you tried them yet?

Let us know your opinion and the use case via Twitter or LinkedIn!