In-App Guidance for SaaS: Best Practices, Examples & Tools [UPDATED for 2024]

In-app guidance enables new users to quickly get comfortable with your product and allows existing users to find new features and get more value from your product.

In this post, we discuss:

• Different types of in-app guidance prompts that help users navigate your app
• Examples for each type and how to best leverage them
• best tools for onboarding users and introducing new features

Let’s get right to it.

What is in-app guidance?

An in-app guidance prompt offers contextual support to new and existing users in your app with short messages and walkthroughs that drive user engagement and product adoption.

With in-app guidance, you can help users discover your products and services, adopt your processes, or learn how to use a new feature.

Benefits of in-app guidance

In-app guidance helps onboard new users in your app and allows existing users to find new features and get more value from your product.

It helps drive new user activation and boost user engagement and adoption for advanced users.

Moreover, in-app guidance streamlines the learning process, improves digital adoption levels, reduces the need for training sessions, and empowers users to take action with a learning-by-doing approach.

Challenges of in-app guidance

In-app guidance can significantly enhance user experience but it also presents several challenges.

One major issue is intrusiveness; overlays and tooltips can disrupt users’ workflows, leading to annoyance, especially if they repeatedly reappear after being dismissed.

Additionally, overwhelming information can deter users; presenting too much content at once may create frustration and confusion, driving them away from the platform.

Finally, user resistance is a concern, as some individuals may prefer to explore a new application independently and find mandatory tutorials patronizing.

Balancing these challenges is crucial for effective in-app guidance that truly supports users.

8 Types of in-app guidance in SaaS

In-app guidance appears in many forms. These all serve a different purpose so can guide each user as per their needs.

1. Product tours

A product tour shows a sequence of messages to demonstrate various features so new users know where to find them. It is a popular form of user onboarding.

But do end users need to see all the features at once? And how much will they remember after a tour like that?

Once the product tour is over, end users are essentially left with no contextual help or in-app support messages. And that’s where the problem lies.

Product tours have several issues that impact the user experience:

• They are boring – who likes clicking on all the ‘next’ buttons, and seeing all the irrelevant features? This works horribly for user engagement and user adoption.
• They ‘frontload’ information – instead of ‘teaching by doing’, they show all the features you may not even need until much later in your user journey. This goes against the “just-in-time” user behavior psychology.
• They only touch the surface – showing you “what”, but not “why” and “how”.
• They don’t encourage user adoption – introducing too many features might overwhelm users and potentially discourage them from using your product.
• They don’t provide contextual guidance – they aren’t well-adapted to new user needs.
• They are not personalized to the user’s needs – they are a “one-size-fits-all” and aren’t interactive – the next step doesn’t change based on what you did in the previous step.

More from experts 👇🏻:

2. Interactive walkthroughs

If product tours are so ineffective, what’s the alternative? Let’s see why interactive walkthroughs are more effective.

An interactive walkthrough is similar to a product tour but with one key difference.

Product tours are passive, interactive walkthroughs aren’t.

They require user input after showing each step and don’t progress until the user takes the action, making them a more effective UI pattern in the user onboarding process.

With only a quarter of SaaS companies currently using interactive in-app guidance, this presents a great opportunity to one-up your competitors, improve your onboarding process, and provide training without developing comprehensive training webinars.

Moreover, you don’t need a special software platform to start building them. You can use almost any digital adoption platform.

Since people learn better if they learn by doing, interactive walkthroughs have a lot of advantages over linear product guides:

• Interactive walkthroughs are far more engaging because the user needs to act. They have to click certain buttons or enter text to proceed. They can’t see step 4 before they complete steps 1, 2, and 3.
• App walkthroughs provide value upfront – they drive users to perform actions that show them the value of your product (the key activation points) – and experience the Aha! Moment.
• Product walkthroughs increase user engagement by actively involving each person in learning new features.

3. Tooltips

A tooltip is an in-app guidance feature that offers a single prompt. It helps users gain a better understanding of a specific feature of your product.

You add docked prompts to a specific element on your UI that is not self-explanatory pushing for deeper feature adoption.

Here are some use cases for tooltips:

• Offer in-app guidance for the later stages of the customer journey to increase the adoption of more advanced product features.
• Power product launches by adding prompts to new features so users who missed your announcement email still discover it.
• Drive new users to adopt features that you have launched in the past.

4. Banners

A banner is a small bar that often appears on the top of your website, usually used to communicate updates, promote a new feature, or announce limited-time offers.

If your website/app/tool/product isn’t stuck in a static state, then you’ll need to alert and announce updates to your users regularly. How do you do that?

Notification banners are less intrusive and don’t hurt users’ experience. They take up about 5% of the entire page, and it’s not overwhelming for the users. As notification bars are non-disruptive, users don’t feel the urge to dismiss the bar and tend to engage with the product/app more.

Here are some use cases that demonstrate how notification banners can effectively communicate important information and enhance user engagement on your website:

• Important news announcements – Communicate significant updates directly within the app, ensuring users receive critical information that may affect their experience or usage.
• New feature announcements – Inform users about newly released features, encouraging them to explore and adopt these enhancements to improve their overall experience.
• Discount or special offers – Promote limited-time offers or discounts to encourage immediate user action, often enhanced with countdown timers to create a sense of urgency.
• System maintenance and downtime announcements – Notify users about upcoming maintenance or downtime, ensuring they are aware of any service interruptions and can plan accordingly.

5. Modals

A modal is a large, rectangular UI element created by SaaS companies to grab users’ attention.

A modal window appears not as a separate page, but rather as an overlay on the parent page where users were before the modal pops up.

Due to the size of a modal, as well as the fact that modals often contain images, they are ideal for interrupting the user flow.

This makes them useful in urgent situations that require user interaction, such as when a customer needs to renew their subscription but also means that overusing modals rapidly becomes annoying for users.

Similar to other design elements, UX modals have their pros and cons that should be carefully considered before implementing them. Whether you decide to incorporate them in your UX design or not depends on how much value you believe they will bring to your SaaS product.

Pros of using modals:

• Modal windows bring good friction to the workflow. They help to draw the user’s attention towards an important task i.e. alert users whether a data deletion was intentional and not a user error.
• Since modals are used to convey important information, they ultimately add to a positive customer experience and can help you achieve your desired goal, e.g., improving activation.
• Modals correctly used don’t clutter the user interface. They deliver crucial information in a concise, visually attractive way.

Cons of using modals:

• Good friction is friction after all and some users might find disruption caused by modals to be annoying.
• Modals can further add to the customer’s frustration if there’s no way to dismiss the dialog box.
• Excessive usage of modal windows just slows users down from what they’re trying to achieve from your product. The last thing you want is to lose them to a competitor because of this.

6. Slideouts

Slideouts are a less aggressive version of modals. They are very similar in terms of looks, but slideouts only take up a small part of the screen.

They are ideal for:

• Sharing tips, tutorials, or best practices related to using the application effectively, helping users maximize their experience and improve their proficiency.
• Informing users about important account-related updates, such as subscription renewals, billing information changes, or security alerts.
• Presenting special promotions, discounts, or limited-time offers to capture user attention and encourage immediate engagement.

7. Onboarding checklists

Onboarding checklists are especially effective in new user onboarding – they push new users to explore certain features in a specific order – leading them to complete a set of actions.

You can also use them to offer in-app guidance to more advanced users and encourage them to adopt advanced features of your app, thus driving product adoption.

Nobody said you could have only one checklist – you could build one for every area of your product, and trigger them at different times, depending on when your users are ready.

Moreover, you can personalize your checklists based on user JTBDS:

How do you build checklists for in-app guidance?

Building checklists using a no-code digital adoption platform is super-easy and takes minutes:

• Create a checklist widget (use your in-app guidance settings to decide if it’s supposed to open automatically, or be triggered by the user manually).
• Add tasks for users to complete and link the respective interactive walkthroughs to them OR direct users to a specific page.
• Decide if you want the item to be ticked off once the user engages with a specific feature, OR when they complete a specific goal.

8. Self-help resource centers

Resource center is a self-service in-app guidance hub that offers instant answers without real-time human involvement.

It often appears as a pop-up that features videos, guides, tutorials, and more. Users can look up articles simply by searching for a relevant topic. You can also add a “Contact customer support” button just in case.

If you’re using an app guidance tool such as Userpilot, you can also personalize resources for each segment to enhance user experience.

Resource centers are proven to massively reduce the number of customer support tickets. In our case studies, Osano managed to shave off 25% of their support tickets – while Growth Mentor reduced support ticket volume by a whopping 87% after implementing our resource center.

How do you build a resource center?

Building a resource center is simple with an in-app guidance platform. Many tools allow you to drag and drop content into a pre-built widget. Then, you can fully customize the help widget to match the style of your app’s native UI.

Use cases for in-app guidance

Let’s go over the most popular use cases:

During user onboarding

User onboarding is a critical phase where first impressions are formed. In-app guidance can streamline this process by offering interactive walkthroughs, tooltips, and contextual messages that help new users understand how to navigate the application and utilize its features.

This approach not only reduces the learning curve but also fosters a sense of confidence as users become familiar with the product.

Here are some ways to implement the different types of in-app guidance discussed above:

• Use modals to create engaging welcome screens and collect customer data.
• Create checklists that guide users through essential tasks they need to complete to get to the Aha moment.
• Create short interactive walkthroughs that introduce new users to key features of your app. You can trigger them from an onboarding checklist.
• Provide contextual help by adding tooltips next to complex features or buttons.
• Offer a hub where users can search for articles, videos, and tutorials related to their questions or issues.

During new feature announcements + adoption

When new features are introduced, it’s crucial to ensure that users are aware of them and understand how to use them effectively.

Here are some ways how to do it right:

• Use interactive walkthroughs to get users to perform specific actions related to the new feature before progressing.
• Add tooltips next to new features or buttons, explaining their purpose and how to use them effectively.
• Use modals for new feature announcements.
• Offer a resource center where users can find articles, videos, and tutorials about newly introduced features at any time.

For continuous customer education

Customer education is an ongoing process that helps users maximize their experience with your application.

In-app guidance can deliver regular tips, best practices, and tutorials that keep users informed about advanced features or lesser-known functionalities.

• Create checklists that encourage users to try out advanced functionalities as they become more familiar with the application.
• Create a knowledge base with different modules such as educational videos, FAQ sections, and documentation to enhance customer education.
• Send out relevant webinar invites with a modal or a slideout.

To remove friction points

Reducing friction helps increase product adoption and improve free-to-paid conversion rates.

It also enhances customer experience and boosts customer satisfaction, which are priceless for reducing churn and building brand loyalty.

You can analyze user behavior to identify common friction points. Once you identify them, use the following in-app guidance elements to remove them:

• Add tooltips next to buttons or features that users frequently misinterpret or overlook, providing clarifying information.
• Use notification banners to alert users about changes that may affect their workflow, such as system updates or new processes.
• Use slideouts to share quick tips about features that often confuse users.
• Use banners with NPS surveys to collect user feedback regarding specific pain points.

Effective in-app guidance examples

It’s all well and good talking about how great in-app guidance can be, but let’s observe some real-world examples.

Groupize gamifies user onboarding with in-app guidance

Groupize is a modern meetings management platform that unifies travel, spend, and compliance. The company utilized Userpilot to create a gamified onboarding so new users would be eager to learn their app.

Groupize’s onboarding agent, G.G.

The same character helps new users progress through the onboarding, guiding them through the product features. Groupize used clever copy and interactive dialogue to make this in-app onboarding stand out.

Talana uses a combination of in-app guidance elements to facilitate onboarding

Talana is a company offering human resources solutions. It offers 8 products that help companies recruit staff, manage payroll and benefits, improve communications, and build workplace communities.

Talana is a complex product that requires extensive onboarding.

Talana uses a checklist and interactive walkthrough to guide users through their product.

They also communicate with their users using Userpilot’s engagement features. This includes triggering banners, modals, and tooltips.

Userpilot has also enabled Talana to improve its self-service support via its resource center. This gives users easy access to articles and guides.

Platformly uses step by step guidance in their onboarding

Platformly is a marketing automation tool. Their wide range of features can be overwhelming for new users, so Platformly adds in-app guidance with Userpilot.

Platformly’s in-app onboarding

As well as providing users with a checklist and utilizing the empty states, Platformly offers an interactive walkthrough to help users get started.

Platformly’s interactive tooltips

Rather than simply showing users how to build a dashboard, it walks them through it step-by-step. These interactive walkthroughs exist for all of Platformly’s main features, accessible at any time.

This led to completion rates of over 40%, which is exceptional for a complex SaaS product.

Tools for creating in-app guidance

This section discusses tools for user onboarding, not for employee onboarding such as building Salesforce in-app guidance prompts for training purposes.

Here are the best in-app guidance tools according to users from G2 and Capterra.

Userpilot: Best no-code builder for onboarding

Userpilot is an easy-to-use product growth tool that offers all the UI patterns needed to guide users through your app (product tours, walkthroughs, tooltips, checklists, resource centers) without limitations. Moreover, pricing starts at only $249 per month.

 

Here are some features worth noting:

• Build interactive in-app flows and personalize them based on images, colors, text, and more. Add multiple UI elements and tooltips in one flow for an immersive walkthrough.
• Create personalized onboarding checklists for your users. Customize the design and track key performance metrics such as completion rates for each checklist.
• Build resource centers with several customization options and monitor resource center analytics to track user interests and behavior patterns.
• Create in-app surveys to collect user feedback, understand user needs and sentiments, and make necessary improvements to your app right away.
• A/B test different in-app guidance elements to see which one results in higher engagement.
• Access a range of robust analytics for your in-app flows, checklists, resource centers, and even event tracking. The analytics dashboards also let you access all your favorite reports in one place.

Appcues: Easy-to-use in-app guidance builder

Appcues is often praised as the easiest-to-use platform for onboarding users.

You can create flows in Appcues really fast, but the lack of a resource center and limited analytics mean it’s not the best value for money (and it limits you to only a basic resource center with Appcues design and 5 user segments in its basic $249 plan!)

Some users have also noted issues with setting up flows and surveys:

Intercom

Intercom is a popular customer support tool but it also offers product tours for in-app guidance. It comes with support for linear product tours (so no branched walkthroughs). Its limited analytics mean you won’t be able to understand your user behavior with Intercom.

Userflow: Fastest flow builder

Userflow allows you to build in-app guides on its dashboard but unlike Userpilot and Appcues, it doesn’t have a Chrome Extension letting you build on top of your product.

Whatfix: For building in-app guides for employee productivity

Whatfix is a no-code digital adoption platform and product analytics tool that’s used to create in-app experiences to drive adoption for customer-facing teams, product managers, and IT support teams.

Whatfix lets you create interactive product tours for both users and employees. This reduces the time to value (TTV), whether it’s for customers using your product or employees learning how to use a solution in the internal tool stack.

It also lets you create checklists as widgets that target specific segments and group tasks under headers. Whatfix’s gallery of direct integrations with tools like Salesforce, Amplitude, SurveyMonkey, and more helps you centralize all onboarding data.

However, Whatfix has several drawbacks, including its high cost, an overwhelming number of features that may not be necessary for all users, and a lack of focus on end-user experiences compared to more specialized alternatives like Userpilot or Appcues.

Some users have also experienced issues with bugs:

Conclusion: How to create in-app guidance?

Before we part ways, here’s a summary of in-app guidance best practices:

• Always have a goal in mind – approach onboarding users with a certain outcome in mind. For example, you might want your users to add a team member, or to drive adoption of a new feature.
• Make it interactive – walk your users step by step, show them what they need to achieve their immediate goals, and avoid front-loading information (e.g. with lengthy step-by-step tours!)
• Offer in-app guidance to advanced users too – aka continuous Onboarding – (e.g. a tooltip informing them about a new feature) not just flows for new users.
• Keep it short and sweet, so that users don’t get bored, and you’re good to go.

Want to drive users to adopt your product faster? Book a free demo with Userpilot today!