Product designer Andres Gonzalez explains user onboarding, from bank sign-ups to today's digital forms. A 2% drop in Tinder's signup conversion costs tens of millions. Modern fixes include social logins, biometric auth, and platforms like Frontegg that handle user management.
Chapters
This is a signup form. This is also a signup form. And so is this one and this one. And all of these are signup forms. Since the dawn of computers, these forms and others like it have continued to pester us with our names, emails, and passwords. But why? Why are signups needed? And what does user onboarding even mean? And how can we design for a signup of the future? My name is Andres Gonzalez. I'm a product designer that often designs these sort of signups and onboarding experiences. And if you hate signing up to new accounts as much as I do, then hit that like button.
Boom, they sign up.
Sign up. Most people are signing up. They've heard about it. They don't know exactly what value they're going to get. They don't know if it's really for them. See, despite the way that we think about signups and sign-ins today, this concept isn't really new. Companies have always required their customers to sign up to things to get access to specific services, products, special discounts, and more. For example, banks are some of the oldest institutions with customer-specific accounts. Instead of signing up through an online form, it was through pen and paper where you would quite literally write your signature, a.k.a. sign up. And instead of using email and password, password, people used their Social Security numbers or other forms of ID. So the origin and meaning of the word sign up means to sign one's name as to a contract in order to obtain a product, join a club, or get a service. Now let's fast forward to 2022. Everything is at our fingertips. Convenience is the name of the game and people want self-service. Are you hungry? Order a pizza with the tap of a button. It arrives at your door within 30 minutes or less. Are you bored? Swipe through 15-second videos on TikTok that are designed to keep you hooked for hours. Are you lonely? Download a dating app, set your filters, and start swiping. You want to buy something, check out in one click. The environment has changed to be faster and more convenient, and it's not slowing down. So it makes sense that a 1 to 3 minute onboarding process to a new app sounds exhausting. So why don't companies just get rid of their signups and make it easy for people to use their stuff? Well, it's not that simple. This is Tinder, but any dating app could work in this example. If their signup only required a name and an email, a lot of users would see a blank profile with no photos or information about who they're matching with. This design would create a terrible user experience. But if their signup asked for too many photos, questions, and other personal information, then a ton of users will quit the app because it takes too much work to create their profiles. This design would also create a terrible user experience. As UX or product designers, it's our job to optimize a balance between these things. It's actually where we could show our value. A simple change on how a user inputs their birthdays, for example, could mean millions of dollars in additional revenue. Don't believe me? In 2021, Tinder made $1.6 billion in revenue. It had 75 million monthly active users and 9.6 million paying subscribers. Based on their 2021 numbers, if Tinder signup rates dropped from an assumed 45% to 43%, a mere 2% drop, they could see a decrease in revenue by about $71.1 million. Of course, these are just estimates, but you get the idea. And that's why product designers and developers have thought of new ways to make it easy for people to sign up. You can sign up using your phone or use uniquely generated codes so you can never type in your password or sign up via Google where you can connect your Google account and you're done. And all these different methods of signing up are trying to reduce what we call friction in the UX design world. It's the feeling of dread that we all feel when doing something something like creating new accounts, and Frontegg is leading the way. They give companies the ability to allow users to sign in through SMS, their fingerprints, or even a USB key. But they're more than just a sign-up/sign-in tool. They're a user management platform that helps product teams provide end users with easy ways to manage their own accounts. Whether users have to change their subscription plan or change their password, Frontegg has you covered with their self-serve features that eliminate that in-app friction. There's no need to code a user management system from scratch. It's a powerful API plug and play. See, sponsors like Frontegg give me the ability to create types of videos. It's a complete passion project. So if you're in the market for using a tool like this, check them out in the description down below.
User onboarding.
User onboarding. User onboarding. Now, what does that even mean? Well, let's hear from James Gill, CEO of GoSquare.
User onboarding is everything. It's not just about the interface of the app. It's about so much more than that. It's really from like step one when they first see your website through to the point of them being a happy, successful, onboarded customer.
To understand user onboarding better, let's take a step back from the signup process and imagine the step a user has to take before and after signing up. And let's take TikTok for example. You see, before I decided to sign up to the black hole that is TikTok, I first had to go through the App Store, see some reviews, and download the app. And before going to the App Store, one of my friends texted me a funny TikTok video, and that's where they got me, those sneaky bastards. All these steps before I decided to sign up are a part of the user onboarding process, and the steps afterwards, like TikTok showing me how to swipe up, nudging me to follow my contacts, and showing me informational pop-ups, are also a part of the user onboarding process. You see, the goal of user The goal of onboarding is to get users from step 1, awareness, to the final step, a fully addicted— I mean, active user. So how can we design a sign up for the future? Well, by getting rid of signups as much as possible. Let me explain. Social logins remove the need to create a password. This deletes an entire step of the signup process. But how can we take this even further? Some signups require more than just our name, email, and password. For example, Airbnb requires that we provide our driver's license, phone number, verify our phone number, our age, payment information, and more. So what if we can create our profile once and never do it again? We'll create our profile on our phones, connect it to our iCloud, and share it when we sign up to things. But we decide what profile data to share with apps like Airbnb, and we control our own personal information. Imagine signing up to Airbnb, tapping a sign up with my profile, and your name, email address, payment information, driver's license, license is shared automatically. Sign up with one tap of a button. Now that's a signup of the future. And if you want to become a UX design rock star, then you gotta check out this next video. Trust me, it's worth the watch.
