I thought it would be interesting to see how http://www.useronboard.com/ stacks up, based on some of the feedback dished out in those teardowns. Some quick notes, based on http://i.imgur.com/mIwr3TS.png, and assuming that the goal is to sell copies of the book.
- There's no call to action at all
- Assuming someone who lands here would have some idea of what user onboarding is, the page doesn't say specifically how this will help me get better at it. Just gives me a definition which I (probably) already know.
- Mentioning brands I recognise (Spotify, Pocket, Pinterest) is good. Makes me curious to know more. But I'm not sure exactly what a teardown is.
- Ahhh, so there's a book that I'll like if I enjoyed the teardowns. I guess I'll look at a teardown and then maybe I'll look at the book afterwards.
- I am now addicted to teardowns and have forgotten about the book. The Training & Contact links at the top do not get my attention. Which is a shame because I think https://www.useronboard.com/training/ does a pretty good job overall.
Maybe it's not actually trying to sell very hard the book and I'm over thinking it a bit, but I did find it interesting to try and apply what I'd just learned.
Very nice feedback! I agree there's plenty of room for improvement here -- it started as a side project I threw together over a weekend and it's always had a bit of a "cobbler's children" status.
That said, the fact that it skews educational over salesy is very intentional -- I'd much rather have you find it to be a phenomenal resource and come back over and over (and then buy the book) than I would have it try to sell you hard on the first visit, which is probably unlikely to be optimal timing. To that point, I didn't see you mention signing up for the mailing list or not, but if you did, it's "working" as intended for visit one!
But yeah, overall, you're quite right to turn my own advice back on me!
I completely agree with the OP's advice. Without knowing anything about the site at all (I'm not familiar with your services at all so I can probably offer a pretty useful data point), I clicked through, looked for about five seconds at the Basecamp example, and clicked the dreaded back button. Not because the info isn't useful, but because I didn't have the desire to look beyond that right at that moment. Chances are that after a day or two I would have forgotten that the site existed and never returned (not a slight, it's just a realistic fact about most people). It's very unlikely that any resource is going to be so useful from a single use that users will frequent it from that day forth. It requires a bit of nudging/reminding over several interactions.
I think it's a mistake to avoid being salesy. People who want to improve their conversions (presumably your targeted customers) want solutions that your book or mailing list very well might solve. In fact it wasn't until I read the OP's comment that I realized you had a mailing list or training materials to sell.
One suggestion would be to put a WP-style banner at the top asking people to sign up for your mailing list. It isn't overbearing and if people aren't interested, they won't sign up.
Anyhow, not trying to sound condescending, just offering some advice that I think could be helpful.
Thanks for the feedback, and I didn't take it as condescending at all. I tend to lean away from brazen self-promotion, so it's nice to hear I could turn it up a notch or two. Sounds like I have an A/B test coming up!
It's been mentioned that it's below the fold, but it's also worth noting that it's not even on the linked page.
The article page linked to from HN is "http://www.useronboard.com/onboarding-teardowns/", which has zero calls to action on it natively. If I go back to home, yes, I see the button, below the fold, presumably it exists on other pages as well, but it is definitely not on the linked page, which had me questioning why I couldn't find it (and spending an inordinately long time looking for it).
This is getting really nitpicky, but it's below "the fold." So it might as well not be there for some users.
But getting people to buy the book might not be the primary goal of the website, or the home page. It's probably to show off the reviews and teardowns, which it does a great job of. I think it's perfectly acceptable to have the secondary purpose of the site, buying the book, a bit out of the way.
Hi everyone! I just saw a bunch of tweets linking to my site and traced it back here -- I'm the person behind this site and if anyone has any questions, I'd love to answer them here!
You've clearly put a lot of time into this and I think you've done a great job. I've gathered a whole bunch of new ideas to try with my onboarding in a fraction of the time it would have taken me to figure it out myself.
Any chance you could bring down the size of the screenshots you take? Most people don't have huge screens like you do, so I feel like I'm not seeing the typical UX.
For instance, a lot of the buttons on these screens are very extremely pushed to the side when they're in the corners. Look at the Shopify one specifically.
And while yes, some users will have screens that huge and designers will have to deal with that edge case, I feel it's too atypical to use for a typical user's experience.
I actually just got an email with this question yesterday, as well! Going full-screen gives me extra screen space to tack on the annotations without covering other parts of the interface up, but I agree that sometimes things spill over. I could try letterboxing it and seeing where that leads -- thanks for the feedback. In general, though, I also wish more teams had a simple "max width: 1400px;" declaration!
Very nice, great work! Some FYIs: On my iphone Safari browser, I found the next/prev buttons on the viewer to be very small targets. Also, before I noticed them, I tried swiping horizontally on the slide itself, but this triggers some weird zoom behavior. Lastly, it's hard to see the details of the slides when using this device/browser. Again, congrats on creating a great resource!
Those are good points, for sure. I hadn't considered the swiping part, especially. Mostly the details are stupidly small at mobile size -- as much as I'm a fan of responsive design, this really is more of a "desktop" activity.
It's definitely tempting, but the reviews I provide are really just surface skims -- without knowing the constraints the teams are working with and/or what the conversion rates of the adoption funnel are, I'm really not in a position to dole out grades.
I'm not sure this is the intended use case, but this website allowed me to check out a few products without having to sign up for a trial. I think I have free trial fatigue. It also introduced me to a few new products.
Wanted to chime in about Samuel's consulting service. I was part of a project that Samuel did a teardown for. He went above and beyond to do a very thorough video and answer questions on the follow-up call. It's especially handy if you have a bunch of small UX issues you're working on and find yourself going in circles debating the same issues. His "first-time-user" take on things helps iron that out. He also points out a lot of things you havne't noticed because you're been staring at the same design for so long.
This is a great example of something most people can do to boost their earning potential, even (especially) as an employee. As an aid to selling ebooks & training, the benefit is obvious (it's on HN). But, something like this would also make sense to anyone working on UX.
It's at least as valuable as an acronym on your CV.
Patrick seems to be advocating making your everyday work public, repeatable and enduring. That's ideal. But, for people that are working in a silo or otherwise not going to take that step, this seems like an accessible step.
In fact, a carbon copy of this seems like a good template for a UX person to follow. Pick a topic (not on boarding). Do the research. Make a dozen examples easily digestible for someone who needs to implement the thing you are researching. In-app notifications, advanced settings, in-app tips (Clippy!), profile pages, email drip marketing, commenting systems, badges, profile pages…. Almost any UX topic could use teardowns like this.
The breakdown of the OKCupid process has these two comments about illustrations:
1. Illustration of smiling high confidence person draws you in.
2. The illustration feels a bit flat and 'uncanny-valley-ish.' it leaves an
impersonal impression, but that might be the intent (i.e. you get the
personal stuff when you log in)
Would you be surprised to learn that these comments are about the same illustration? I was. I clicked back and forth 4-5 times to make sure I was not missing something. A lot of the comments made it seem like I was listening to Foamy the Squirrel give stream of consciousness impressions as he signed up for online dating.
I appreciate the critique, but it's not like an object can't have more than one quality. :) In this case, an illustration was both crudely presented while simultaneously being more personable than, say, a block of text. I'm not sure where the "gotcha" here is.
You really think those descriptions are compatible? I don't mean compatible like "sort-a prominent sorta-not position," I am talking about not mutually exclusive. Uncanny valley has never been something that I imagined being drawn to.
Netflix slide 34. "Opportunity for smiling faces or other positive imagery, to promote more encouragement".
You think so? I have mixed feelings about this.
I think designers tend to overload commercial websites with cheesy smiling faces.
Maybe if they could come up with some more creative idea for positive imagery instead... but happy people, perhaps it's actually good that they didn't resort to this cliche again (since - as you pointed out - they already showed us a bunch of people mysteriously smiling at the menu screen like some drugged Joker victims ;) )
I'd be curious to see a review of StackOverflow as well (not that I think it makes a bad example, although surely one that targets a non-standard audience and falls into a somewhat different category than most)
Interestingly, the Optimizely landing page looks completely different now, with a lot of the content that used to be there placed elsewhere on their website. Assuming that they used their own technology to improve their own landing page, we could perhaps conclude that their old information-heavy landing page wasn't good for conversion, and their newer page performs much better. I wonder why; the old landing page looks a lot better to me, and seems to make a lot more sense if you look at the theory behind it (as put forwards by the teardown).
That is interesting. I agree with you, the old landing page was a lot better.
Maybe they've reached a point where they feel they are the market leader now and assume that anyone hitting their site already knows they're good and just wants to get straight in to a free trial?
Wow, yeah, that's way different. I'd be very curious to see how it's performing in comparison. If you're gonna test, you might as well test big I suppose!
- There's no call to action at all
- Assuming someone who lands here would have some idea of what user onboarding is, the page doesn't say specifically how this will help me get better at it. Just gives me a definition which I (probably) already know.
- Mentioning brands I recognise (Spotify, Pocket, Pinterest) is good. Makes me curious to know more. But I'm not sure exactly what a teardown is.
- Ahhh, so there's a book that I'll like if I enjoyed the teardowns. I guess I'll look at a teardown and then maybe I'll look at the book afterwards.
- Once on a teardown page (eg. http://www.useronboard.com/how-shopify-onboards-new-users/) there's nothing mentioning the book at all.
- I am now addicted to teardowns and have forgotten about the book. The Training & Contact links at the top do not get my attention. Which is a shame because I think https://www.useronboard.com/training/ does a pretty good job overall.
- Completely ignored the Latest Posts bit at the bottom of the homepage. Looks very similar to the Less Accounting one (http://www.useronboard.com/how-lessaccounting-onboards-new-u...)
Maybe it's not actually trying to sell very hard the book and I'm over thinking it a bit, but I did find it interesting to try and apply what I'd just learned.