How Patrick McKenzie Reduces Churn Through User Onboarding

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Software developer

Patrick McKenzie⁠

aka

@Patio11⁠

(easily one of my favorite marketers to follow and learn from) asserts that 40-60% of users who sign up for a free trial of almost every software or SaaS application will

use it once and never come back⁠

. Sometimes they forget they even signed up for the application, or they realize it simply wasn’t a good fit.

Often, however, they’re unable to see the benefit of using the software. Patrick claims that abandonment of this kind can be decreased by both making the software better and by better communication with users.

The Research

Patrick’s

Bingo Card Creator⁠

is designed to allow elementary school teachers to use a list of words to create classroom learning aids. Here are funnel analytics for the Bingo Card Creator new user experience:

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image source⁠

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Though it’s not possible to track when cards are actually printed, downloading the PDF file for printing is used as a proxy for tracking printing, since that’s the last observable step of the process.

There is a drop-off of around 5% between teachers visiting the dashboard and actually creating a list of words, with more substantial declines between “Create List,” “Customize,” and “Schedule Print.”

Though the application is designed to take seconds, Patrick hypothesizes that many users are unaware of this fact and assuming the process will be too drawn out or complicated, they quit.

The Execution

In an attempt to increase the number of teachers who complete the Customize step, Patrick added a visible progress indicator (pictured below). Furthermore, teachers were given the option of moving forward without making changes to the default settings, further speeding up the process.

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image source⁠

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These small changes had a big impact. Whereas before only 82% of users completed the customize step, close to 90% made it through the test version.

Why Did This Happen?

When using a product for the first time, users have no idea what to expect. A good onboarding process walks them through it, demonstrating the benefit and teaching them what to expect along the way.

(Note: Check out

User Onboard⁠

by Samuel Hulick for onboarding teardowns.)

According to Patrick, the goal of Bingo Card Creator’s new user experience is getting the teacher through the funnel—and to the point at which she walks to her printer, sees the cards, and thinks, “Wow, my class will love these”— as quickly and painlessly as possible.

Bingo Card Creator’s progress bar helped get more teachers to this point by making it clear just how close they were to printing their cards.

Actionable Advice

For a lot of companies, the new user experience is an accident or afterthought, but expecting users to simply “get it” from the beginning is a recipe for churn. We should craft an onboarding process that moves them toward the benefit of the product as quickly and simply as possible.

Product tours should not feel like work, and intelligent defaults are a great way to balance choice vs. ease—give users the freedom to customize while preserving their ability to move quickly through the process.

Never stop testing and optimizing your onboarding process. Even those with “good” conversions could be better, and small improvements add up over time.

How to Improve Mobile App Retention Through Customization
`https://cxl.com/blog/reduce-churn/#3-how-to-improve-mobile-app-retention-through-customization`⁠
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In 2011,

Fred Wilson⁠

cited the 30/10/10 ratio as a “law of web/mobile physics,” generally true regardless of business or industry—that is, 30% of customers will use a service each month, 10% will use it each day, and as many as 10% of daily users will be using it at any given time.