Reducing Churn with an ‘Aha’ Onboarding Experience
Learn how we improved our onboarding process to impress new users and keep them engaged. By making a strong first impression and delivering value right away, we successfully reduced churn and increased long-term user retention. Discover the key strategies that made our onboarding a success.
Service
UX Design
Sector
Music Education
Year
2022
PROBLEM #1
Riyaz is a music learning app that helps users improve their singing by providing real-time feedback. However, we faced a significant challenge: many users were not progressing beyond the initial stages of the app after installation, failing to reach the home screen.
We had a abandonment rate of almost 50%. This was a critical issue because our data showed that 80% of users who made it to the home screen, where they could access the course catalog, were actively engaging with the app by practicing and singing. Additionally, most of our user base tends to subscribe to the Premium plan after seeing our extensive catalog of courses. This onboarding friction directly impacted our revenue stream by preventing potential subscribers from exploring the full range of offerings.
Therefore, it was crucial to ensure that those who started the app journey were able to fully enter and benefit from it.
Our onboarding process consisted of
Gender and age group were used to determine the Basenote/Shruthi of a singer's voice, ensuring they could sing the lessons comfortably. The language option helped us select the appropriate language for songs in the singing section.
However, these additional screens were creating a lot of Cognitive Load to first-time users, as they wanted to experience the product immediately, without any unnecessary friction.
Cognitive Load - Total amount of mental effort that is required to complete a task
Through user interviews and data analysis, we found that not all users engage with both courses and songs. Some users visit the app specifically to learn courses, with no interest in singing songs, while others are only interested in the songs section and not the courses.
As a solution, we introduced the concept of 'On-demand onboarding' with the thought of using on Progressive Disclosure principle
With this approach, users only encounter onboarding screens when necessary. For instance, the gender and age group screens appear only when a user starts a lesson for the first time. The language selection screen is shown only if the user navigates to the Songs tab. Additionally, the user's name is requested only if they skip the initial login screen.
Progressive Disclosure - Users are less overwhelmed if they're exposed to complex features later.
This streamlined the onboarding process from 6 steps to just 2, significantly reducing churn among first-time users trying out the app.
PROBLEM #2
Through various in-person interviews and user behavior observations, we gathered substantial feedback indicating that users aren't experiencing an 'Aha! moment' while browsing the app before reaching the singing/practicing section
Aha! moment - When new users first realize the value of your product.
We also wanted to offer users a preview of our product, much like a movie trailer.
After some brainstorming, we realized our technology has the remarkable ability to identify a person's base note or sruthi simply from their natural speaking voice.
With this capability at our disposal, we decided to eliminate the need for users to specify their gender or age group. Instead, they can simply speak a word or sentence into the phone, and the app will instantly display their base note.
We introduced the concept of 'Hello Riyaz' to create a more human and interactive experience for users. By saying 'Hello Riyaz,' users engage with the app in a natural way, also allowing the music engine to gather sufficient data to accurately determine their base note.
Additionally, when displaying the user's base note, we highlight popular celebrities and singers who share the same base note, making the user feel more connected and special. This also gave them a feeling of getting a Variable Reward
Variable Reward - People especially enjoy unexpected rewards
This UX change helped give the wow factor to the users and we got a lot of responses of people loving it!
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