3 frameworks for designing user onboarding experiences

In this post, I tie together research I did on best practices for user onboarding in SaaS products.

• The first section pulls together quotes from different sources about the purpose of onboarding and the mindset you should have when designing it.
• The second section covers three frameworks for designing onboarding, cobbled together from multiple sources.
• The third and final section summarizes what I found — the main lines of advice that most sources cover and unique tidbits I thought were especially helpful — and ties it into broader frameworks and mental models.

Quotes on how to approach onboarding

Onboarding is part of your brand

[It’s a mistake to] treat onboarding like it starts in the product. Onboarding starts the second someone interacts with your brand.

— Wes Bush (OpenView blog)

Onboarding is about your users — not you or your product

People aren’t using the app because they like the app or they like you. They’re doing it because they like themselves. What are you doing to enable more of that?