Welcome back to the Orient Express. The proverbial train has finally left the station. Last week, we pushed the new onboarding experience live for all users. Regular users of Pendo will notice that the launcher within the application has now changed. Instead of showing just the onboarding walkthroughs, you’ll now see that the launcher experience is now has a sub-menu with three items: ‘How to’ Walkthroughs, Pendo Overview, and Help Center.
The ‘How to’ Walkthroughs will take you to specific step-by-step instructions for most of the commonly used features in Pendo. The Help Center link provides a direct link out to our more detailed technical help articles, and the Pendo Overview option will launch the new overview experience that we developed based on the wireframes I discussed in the last post.
Rather than starting with detailed step-by-step feature instructions, this new experience provides an initial tour of the product, explaining what Pendo “does” to new users prior to walking them through “how” to use the product. Each tile in the experience opens into a short carousel that explains what the key functions do.
Current users can access this function from the launcher, but it will also now become the first thing presented to new users when the log into the application for the first time. The design point is to provide an important level-set for users who are entering the product who may not have much familiarity with what, exactly, it is that Pendo does (it’s surprising how often this happens). With this new system, users will have an understand of what features they’re really like to learn how to use and become slightly more self-directed when they decide what additional onboarding content to consume.
So We’re Done, Right?
Not so fast. What we have deployed is really only the first part of what will ultimately be a broader redesign of all of our onboarding content. We are testing the first part of the experience to confirm that the approach is working before following on with additional updates. As I discussed in the first blog in this series – if outcomes aren’t defined before you begin to build something, it will be very difficult know if it’s working or not. Our basic objectives were simple. We wanted to:
- Ensure that every new user gets value out of some portion of the onboarding experience, and takes action in the product as a result.
- Shift customer success conversations from “how-to” tactical topics to more strategic discussions.
- Increase overall participation in our onboarding experience and completion rates.
With the deployment of this new experience, we will be measuring against all of these goals to understand if we’re moving in the right direction. Then we will update as needed and continue to build out the remainder of the experiences.
In the meantime, we would love your feedback. Even if you’re a regular user of Pendo, pull up the new onboarding guides from the launcher. Take a look at the tour, and let us know what you think. Thanks also to everyone who participated in our user onboarding survey. We will be sharing those results shortly. It’s been a great ride on the ‘Orient Express’. Thanks for coming along with us.
Learn about the rest of Pendo’s onboarding journey:
All Aboard the ‘Orient Express’ – Part 1