This is part one of our six-part series on optimising onboarding for B2B SaaS. Have a look at the other articles in the series: Part 1: B2B SaaS Onboarding - an intro Part 2: Delivering value, fast Part 3: Showing, not telling Part 4: Evaluating now, learning later Part 5: Discovering features Part 6: Personalising the process When a new B2B SaaS product launches, it’s often built to do one thing really well. But over time, the developer responds to customer feedback and starts adding more features and expanding the software’s capability. Sometimes, product owners can get very excited by new features (and sub features). When this happens, they’re too close to the product to see it as others do: from the outside, with no preconceived ideas or assumptions. And that’s when the trouble starts. Why complexity hurts good UI The product starts to grow and grow. If its been in the wild for three or four years, it’s not uncommon for it to look and feel completely different to when it first launched. That might help with the product’s sales and stickiness, but every new feature brings additional complexity. Complexity is the enemy of great user experience. And great user experience starts with onboarding. It’s very easy to end up with a messy onboarding process when a product has been around for a while. But that creates friction that you need to remove. Research shows there’s a clear correlation between poor UX and conversion1. In 90% of cases, it’s the cause of users abandoning websites. When a SaaS product starts becoming too unwieldy to allow for easy onboarding, new customers quickly get lost in the complexity and need more support. It’s not hard to guess what happens next. To put it simply, companies are leaving a lot of money on the table. But it doesn’t have to be that way. Research backed by insight In Q4 2023, we conducted an extensive study to better understand what’s working, and, crucially, what isn’t, across the different stages of the user journey: from discovery through to account creation, onboarding, first campaign launch, post-launch, and concluding with paused campaigns. We carried out a primary benchmark analysis, integrated insights from extensive desk research, and held in-depth interviews with 10 participants, each lasting 45-60 minutes, where we discussed their business, goals, strategy, and experience with a variety of platforms. Our research uncovered that prospects tend to inherit expectations from other platforms. If one they use regularly launches a feature that makes it easier to do their jobs, they start expecting the same feature on other platforms. Unpacking the user journey Over the course of this series, we’ll unpack the user journey, using our research findings as a starting point. We’re going to make the case that simplifying the UI at the crucial onboarding stage is the way to deliver a great experience. We’ve broken down the path to a clear onboarding strategy, starting with imagining the user’s first 30 minutes with the software, the first day, days 3-5, and the first week. Everywhere along that timeline, you need to make sure you’re serving the user with the right content at the right time in the right cadence. We’ve distilled our ideas down to five themes that we’ll cover in their own dedicated articles: Delivering value fast Showing, not telling Evaluating now, learning later Discovering features Personalising the process It’s worth saying here that we realise product owners don’t necessarily have large budgets for changing their onboarding wholesale. Nevertheless, they know it has opportunities for improvement. We’ll show ways that product owners can increase the value of their product, and deliver that value into users’ hands as quickly as possible, often without incurring massive expense or investment in time. Making targeted changes to onboarding provides a great opportunity to gain, and retain, new customers. It’s time to rethink what users want: as product owners, you need to put yourself in their shoes and see if the software does what they want and enables them to use it effectively. Are there unnecessary barriers stopping them from using the software and getting value from it, fast? Now the question is: does your onboarding reflect that thought process? Let’s start tackling this challenge in our next article: Delivering value fast.