UX Insider: Product Hunt Roundup - E.17 - Onboarding Makes or Breaks It

Hi, I'm Daniel from Duran, a product design studio for growth-stage tech teams. Together, we explore what's working, what's not, and what you can learn from the newest launches on Product Hunt. Let's dive in. First, we have agentq.com. So let's start with the website. Your product should onboard its own users. Yep, interesting claim. We'll see how it goes. They offer a 7-day free trial. They also display that they are backed by a couple of companies and also the Product Hunt badge is here and the number of votes. So this is all for giving a bit more trust, a bit more credibility for what they are doing. There is also a short video, I assume here on the bottom, just showcasing the product though. It's a bit, it's a bit further down, so it might make sense to maybe move it a bit upwards and showing it before, before the fold or before people scrolling. I'm not sure what's with the in-product onboarding, but yeah, that's there. Okay, a bit of information of how Nina works. The use case is also highlighted here. Problem is highlighted here. And the rest of it, how it works, how you can install it, and so on. Okay, let's try this out. They don't have a create account button. They have a book a meeting and the login, a 7-day free trial, which also leads to the login and The video tutorial or the demo is here. So here first in the navigation, it would make sense probably to make one of the buttons as the main CTA. Right now we have two buttons. There might be a bug then. Let's just check it once more with refreshing the page. Right now the login it's purple. The other one it's white. On hover they change color, which. It's a bit, I would say it can be a bit more polished. Let's put it that way. The hover state here, it's different and yeah, kind of that's it. So let's start with creating an account. This is the sign-in page. Cuts weirdly a bit off here on the side. Not sure what I should do with these. The header itself, it's quite large here. Something that's just supporting the sign-in/create account page. Let's go with create account. I'm not a big fan of these animations, but that's fine. And before actually signing up or creating an account, first we have to give some details. So yeah, that's an interesting take. Usually people like to collect the email address so then you can reach out to people that drop off. But let's try this one. Okay. Company name. So they ask for a bunch of stuff upfront. Looks like I'm configuring or customizing my profile. I didn't create anything yet. Now we get to create the account from the beginning. We have to, as you can see—

Hi, I am Nina. I am your assistant. You can ask me anything.

Oh, there's a lot of stuff happening. Okay, so let me just close this, close this. So straight from the beginning, they prompt to upgrade. We can start a free trial or at least starting with a free trial. But given that, like, I didn't have to add the cart, so it could be just a free trial and then maybe after that asking for an upgrade. So once I see the product, that could be a good idea. So this is the chat here on the side. This is the product. Doesn't look like having an empty state or an onboarding or something like that. So there is a bunch of states of the cards. As you can see, I can hover on the cards and they move, and I assume some of them are clickable, some of them are not. So total projects looks clickable, the other ones not. Total sessions also clickable, but they all look the same, so people expect things that look the same to act the same way. So this might be a bit confusing for some. Let's just close down Nina for now. Then we have projects. Can create a new project here. Create. And then that's the the screen that I see after creating a project. I can make the sidebar smaller. Nothing much here. But yeah, I have agents though. I have to create my first agent. Let's call my first agent Daniel. Agent Voice. Where is my Agent Voice? Okay, let's go with mail. Let's go with this. Guy.

Hi, I'm your AI assistant. Here's how— Hi, I'm your AI assistant.

Okay, let's pick Jason and I can save him. Agent description is required. Oh, another thing, as you can see, the fields look the same, but some of them are required, others are not required. Also, I'm not sure which one are filled in. It's not filled in though. It has a bunch of text in it. These look placeholders. Like this is the one that I actually filled in with my name. So yeah, there could be a bit more work done here. Okay, mission description, welcome message. All of the fields are required, but they are not highlighted as required. Also, there's like a very long list of things, so it might be challenging for some people to fill all this information because some might be quite confusing. So I wouldn't know what to put inside of persona. It might be a good idea to somehow help me generate this. Just, just, just an idea. So there's a lot of stuff that you can do. Another thing which, which might be a bit confusing is the fact that, like, I don't have a progress for what should I do next. I always should come back, I assume, here. But yeah, let's go with setting up the agent queue. Dashboard. Oh, there was actually a couple of next steps suggested. New project.

Welcome. A project is a workspace where you can organize related knowledge sources, settings, and agents for a specific product or use case. Let's create a new project.

Okay.

Click projects in the navigation menu.

The voice, it's a bit too much, I have to say.

Click the new project button to begin. Enter a name for your project, such as customer support. Click the description field. Add a brief description explaining the purpose of your project. Once everything looks good, click Create Project. Your new project is now ready.

Okay.

All done.

It doesn't take into account the fact that I already created the project. So I have the project. Now I have 2 projects. How I can go back? Oh, so probably— where are my projects now? Oh, these are the projects. This can be quite challenging. Can— might make more sense to have like a collapsed view of all of the projects and then somehow clicking on it and then going inside of the project instead of having them laid out like this. Okay. And then I have to create an agent. And let's just say, how can I create a new agent for my project? Oh, that was a weird sound.

To create a new agent for your project, click the agents section inside your project. Then click the new agent button located at the top right corner of the page.

Okay. And now it goes back to new project creation here, but I already have a project.

The agent configuration steps include 4 main steps: uploading knowledge documents, integrating the SDK, configuring workflows, and publishing the agent.

Okay. So should I go back to projects then? Where should I upload the documents? Because it's not very clear. This is regarding the voice, the name and such. But yes, this is a part I would say definitely would need a bit more work to make sure that people understand the next steps here because this is kind of what makes or breaks the product. And yeah, you can fill these all in, but it might be a bit overwhelming with all the information that you have to add. And honestly, I would be a bit lost on like persona, but yeah, it might be just me. And then you have like analytics, cost management. I'm still in trial, as you can see. Notifications and settings. There is also something called theme and versions and such. So kind of standard stuff in settings. This is just going to account and this goes back to the dashboard. So there are a couple of things that I would say would worth investing in. First, the dashboard, especially when I got here, it was very empty. It was quite unclear what should be my next steps. And yeah, there is like a chat functionality, but most of the people don't even know what to ask properly. So highlighting some next steps, giving a bit more guidance that are, I would say, more proactive than reactive could help on this part. And when it comes to the projects, I would definitely rethink this page a bit so I could see all of my projects at a glance instead of having to scroll. And then on click or something, you could see the other details regarding the project. And when it comes to agent creation, Kind of the same. So this might worth splitting it up in steps or something. And a bit more guidance on how to fill especially persona in, or maybe some way of helping you to fill this in. Next one is Prefactor. Evaluate your AI agents in real time. Let's see. The website looks AI, I would say. So it resembles a lot of cloud-related models and radiuses and styling in general. Not necessarily bad, but on the other side, like, there is a lot of information. I'm not sure who will read all of these things here, but yeah, maybe for, for people that are very interested in this, the information is definitely there. This Product Hunt badge, in my opinion, it's a bit way too big. It kind of overpowers even the image that's here. And then, yeah, there are a couple of trust builders here, as you can see how it works. And a bunch of other things. Yeah, let's just try out the product. Okay, the account creation or sign-in page, it's very simple. It's just one button in the middle. Okay, let's go for sign up if it works. It looks like it works. Sign up with Google for now. And now I have to fill in all the details, right? UX testing website promo code we don't have. Okay, account created, and now we are in the dashboard. We have a notification here on top to let us know that profile is updated. Not sure what was updated since I just created it, and we can see now the dashboard. So there is 1 agent, 3 instances, 1 failed instance, and 2 more things. What's in a way missing here as well is that there are no clear next steps. So That could be helpful because this is where I'm landing when I create my account to just have some ideas about the next steps that I should do. I have a Getting Started tab, so probably this is where we can see what should be done. As you can see, installing, signing in, what happens with the agents, and the setup prompt is here. Here we have the agent, which is like a SuperBot chatbot, the one that's active here. You can see the activity across the last 24 hours. Like the dashboard itself and also the agent activity page, I would say it's quite simple. So it's not very complicated or something, but definitely could benefit of a bit more polish, especially on the visual side, not necessarily on how it works. You can register a new agent, which I'm not sure how it works or what, what it does. But yeah, I'm not a developer, so I will just leave this for developers. One thing that's, that's helpful or useful is the fact that they highlight straight on the dashboard if something is not working. So you can see it here. But other than that, not too much on the dashboard. So there are some KPIs, there is the activity and the stuff that you have to act on and kind of that's it. It could be helpful to add some more meat here, I would say. I usually prefer dashboards that are in a way acting like a gate or a door to actions or next steps or areas inside of the product that I should work with instead of like being somewhat passive, if you want, where I just see information but necessarily can't act on it. The next product is Secura, test, monitor, and self-improve voice and chat AI agents. Accept the cookies. There is some trust builders here. As you can see, they are backed by YC. They were number 1 product on Product Hunt and some of the companies, I assume the companies that are using them, though there is no label about that. So it might worth adding a label here. Some highlights of the features of the problem as well. The other tools or products that they integrate with, how it works. As you can see here, the animations are nice. The website, it's clean, so not, not too much information. And also the visuals are quite clean, blog posts and a bunch of other things. The Start Free Trial button looks disabled, and this microphone, it's a bit weird choice for, for this. And there is a request a demo, which is the main CTA. So if I click on this one, I have to fill in a bunch of fields. If I click on start a free trial, then I can go and create an account. The fields— I'm not a big fan of these grayed out fields because they usually look a bit disabled. It's clear once you click inside of them that they are not disabled, but they can be a bit misleading from time to time. Also, as you can see, the password and the name email ones, the placeholder text has a different color, slightly, slightly different color. Agree the terms. Let's continue with Google. Okay, so we have a small onboarding organization name, company size. We are smaller, we are less than 10. That's optional. Free credits, no free credits actually with a personal email. So if we want free credits, we have to sign up with a custom domain and then continue. The product looks clean so far. There are the next steps that you should do. Set up via the UI, set up via the coding agent. Let's go with the UI one. Okay, then what we want to do. So it's, it's nice that it's a step-by-step process and it's not everything just thrown there. Okay. Also a bit of an information about the step is here. You can also see on the top. The number of steps that you will go through. So I would say the onboarding is, it's nice and easy to follow because you have all the information that you need. I would probably just stop here because I most probably don't have all the information. So we can just put there some phone number maybe. Let's see if it goes. Okay, agent name George and the same description of your AI agent. I kind of find this very hard to actually fill in. Once you have an idea about what to put here, it's definitely easier to just write what you want or what you need here, but otherwise it could take a while. And I cannot go here, we'll fill it in later. Let's see if I just write something there if it works. Yeah, it looks like we can go to the next step. Scenarios, and I would have to add the credits, but we will skip or stop here. What we could see about the product, it's clean, it's nicely designed, I would say mostly. It's easy to follow the steps. You have 4 steps that are there to set up the, the whole thing. So yeah, kudos for, for the onboarding. And it was nice that you don't have to complete everything at once. It's Nicely broken down and easy to follow. You can skip the steps and then we go, I assume, straight into the run, but we don't have anything here. So that's, that's all. Okay. The next one is Cleanlist, the growth engine for modern GTM teams. We also have here the product hunt badge. We can enrich, book a demo, start for free, sign in, get a demo again here on top, change From light to dark mode is a video. There are some icons for the trust building part, some highlights here. Easy to follow. I wouldn't say that it's the prettiest website, but it's easy to follow. There is a bit too much information for, for my taste, like too much text. Again, some trust builders from using testimonials. Okay, how it works and how they enrich the data. Comparisons here, prices, and that's it. Okay, let's start enriching. Okay, so the right side, which takes up quite some space, it's just some more information, I would say. On the left side, which is the part that you should actually fill in, it's a bit small. So somehow my eyes are drawn here instead of here. I would probably flip these 2 and this would be less dark, so wouldn't attract that much of attention, especially because these 2 are the same color. So I would try to fade this a bit more and, and make the sign up part more visible. Let's go with Google here as well. Okay, and now we are going through the steps here. We have, I assume, 5 steps. At least that's what we can see on the top. Workspace name, what we would like to do. Let's go with CSV enrichment. Lead search, and you can add other if you want here. You can also skip the step. Continue. My role, I'm a founder. Okay, again, other. This could be just under like an other button or something, so when I click on other or select other, then this could show up. Okay, some highlights of what I can do on the free plan, which is helpful. Continue. And this is the Copilot that helps us getting started. Now this kind of fades in the background a bit. It might be helpful to be a bit more visible. I'm not also a big fan of this box in a box in a box kind of style. So probably you could remove this box and then the text would be just like the input field could be in this bottom half. Let's go with I want to prospect on LinkedIn. But what's the difference between this part and the complete? Shouldn't these be already after I complete everything? Okay, let's go with complete. And now we are inside of the product, but we have another onboarding. Okay, it's a bit too much onboarding, I would say. Now it's building my profile. This is the second step. It says that I can close this page. We will just wait to see what What shows up? Actually, when it says that I can close this page, do they mean the whole thing or just this? Okay, so based on the details that I added, which is basically just the website, you can see that they created a profile. Okay, target personas. I would say they already extracted those, but one probably it's missing, which is the CTO, especially this one. Yeah, the geography, it's somewhat on point. Looks good. And now what's next? And we just close this. Because of this chat, I cannot really see properly the other chat window, but okay. And now let's see. So get started to find next leads. Looks like a proper prospecting tool. Okay, name and LinkedIn, paste LinkedIn. Okay, if I click on confirm, what's the next step here? Basically, I cannot do anything on the free tier from what I see. I should have to upgrade, or I could use the free Chrome extension, but kind of that's it. So if I would be to upgrade, then yeah, these are the upgrade options. Okay, let's go back, let's go back and just explore a bit what's, what's here. So We have the AI chat, which is here centered. The only thing that I would suggest is to make this a bit more visible because it fades too much in the background. Otherwise, it's fine. It's nice that they added this resume a conversation here because a lot of times on these kind of chats, you kind of lose track of all the chats that you started. And then what? There are some use cases, I assume, here at the bottom. And some cards of what you can do, which looks nice and clean. You can start looking for people here. Again, the filters look somewhat similar to what you can see in LinkedIn Sales Navigator, I would say. I'm not sure how this 4 of 5 free searches work, so do I still have 4 or do I have 1? Okay, no people. Okay, so we don't have people here. Probably I should just upload or something, but No worries. We have also a list with extension leads, probably coming from, or once the Chrome extension is uploaded, probably coming from those. And you can see all the table rows here. We also have another list of people, companies, agents that can be created, integrations, extensions, And reports. Overall, the product looks nice, but probably worth a bit working, as I mentioned here on this. And yeah, kind of that's it. Looks somewhat similar to a bunch of other tools, as how it works, not necessarily how it looks. How it works like other tools, and especially probably these people and companies For me, it's somewhat similar to LinkedIn Sales Navigator. Okay, let's see if we upload. Can we add like create a lead list from here? Action. So you can— this is— these are the actions that you can do. You can import, you can add from LinkedIn, you can upload from CSV, you can add them manually, and so on. And what else? Yep, that's, that's nice. Cool. And the last product is Webhound. Agents are lazy at research. So overall, the landing page looks a bit Claude-ish, I would say. Might be on purpose. It might be because it was designed with Claude. So I'm not sure. This, this header for me, it's, it's a bit too much content in a way. But yeah, let's see if we can start the product up. Okay, very simple account creation. We are straight in the product and oh, what's this? How do you want to use WebHound? Okay, web UI, welcome. Usually people tend to skip these, so it's just appear there from nowhere. I'm not sure, it's just like a welcome message, a very small actually on the middle of the screen. Yeah, let's just go through it for, for the sake of doing it. There are like 9 steps, which are a bit long. Pick a mode, plan on one shot, the budget, attach context, advanced. So there are like explanations for all of the buttons and less about what I want to do or the use cases or next steps and such so far. Workspace, your profile is there, start your first session, got it. And then you can also add the phone numbers to get a text when the research is ready. Okay, let's do a research about the role of UX in SaaS companies focusing on the last years, especially since AI. Oh, so I don't have enough credit. I would need $5. I have no credit, so I should upgrade obviously to use the product, which is a bit weird. Like, you start with no credit at all. Can I go like zero? I cannot do zero, right? I have to set at least $1. Okay, there is like a free run here, but the button is very, very small, so it's easy to miss. Um, okay, let's see how it works. And another tooltip series. Okay, and next and next. There are quite a lot of these. So it's easy to just remove them. They want both to full budget. Also, these might work differently, so it might pop up something here and then, you know, just click on it instead of like me typing it in. That might also be a good idea. So now we have a summary of what will be produced, and this is under the plan. As you can see, we have some tabs here: documents, sources, claims, plan, and attachments. This is the plan one. And then here's what we'll cover. And you have all this here and the option to start research. Can I also type in? Yeah, this might be a good idea to just disable and maybe move this here. And then I cannot type in and somehow screw this up. So let's go with start research. And then we have an option to stop. Still option to type in here. I'm not sure if I do that, what happens. It says that it will take quite some time. Okay, so as you can see, it's researching, it creates documents. We have all the steps here, which is nice. It keeps informing of what's happening. What if we navigate around? So the chat is still here. There is an option to use an MCP, APIs, billing, news, which is just news about our product. Okay, I would probably move this from here to somewhere else because most people probably don't want to open it. And then feedback. Which again could be another, another option, or maybe finding another way to, to show this. This is just about the tour, sending feedback, which I assume it does the same thing as this one. And then onboarding tips, you can hide them. Not sure how many people actually do that. And this is the profile, and here we also have an onboarding tour. So let's just go through these. Then what happened here? So I came back and then something showed up now again. Okay, I, I thought that I already saw those, but looks like no. And then we have a couple of things happening here. It's still researching, as you can see. There are a couple of things already showing up here as new tabs which weren't there before, uh, and a lot of the information that you can see is like just appearing here in the chat. So there is like, you are always up to date with what's happening, which is great. And also see the cost on top, and you can add more budget if you want. So yeah, overall the product, I would say at least how it works, it's not very complicated. The onboarding tooltips, that was a bit, at least for me, it was a bit too much. And probably with the chat can be a some improvements, like maybe adding some of the actions on top so I don't have to write them in, similar to how Claude is doing and some other tools when you just pop it up and you can select and just click. So that would be one option. Other than that, this, this top bar, it's interesting if it works. So we will see it. It will take though quite some time. And then once it's done, you can do some other things like sharing it. Exporting it, some prompt. Oh, this is the prompt that I actually used, and then the instructions. And I can obviously delete. This would be probably a logout, but if that's the case, I would just move this inside of this, and it would be like 3 options. So basically under profile, you would have account and the information/help and also the logout. I wouldn't put them here. So yeah, kind of that's it. Uh, thanks so much. Hopefully it was helpful. As you can see, it's really important on how you set up the account. Some of the tools are doing better work than other ones. We had one that break them nicely in steps and it was easy to follow, but we had also a more tooltip kind of layout, which from my experience users tend to just skip. So you might lose interest there and people will just skip it and then they don't know how or what they should do. And also when it comes to all these chats and agents, there are still a lot of information that people might find hard to fill in or quite challenging. For example, like the persona of the agent, that might be a bit too much work. But yeah, other than that, see you on the next one.