What are in-app tutorials and how they can help you improve user onboarding and product adoption?

In this article, we’re going to talk about:

• How in-app tutorials help improve your user onboarding process.
• Best practices when creating in-app tutorials.
• Tools to use to create tutorials code-free.

We’ll also cover some great examples to inspire you.

What is an in-app tutorial?

An in-app tutorial is an interactive guide that runs on top of your user interface and is meant to provide guidance and in-app training within your product.

These could be video tutorials that run in-app or step-by-step guides (also known as app walkthroughs or interactive walkthroughs).

Tutorial applications for user onboarding

The main purpose of in-app tutorials is to drive feature and product adoption. This is what any product team would want. If you are part of the customer success, product management, or customer support team you want your onboarding experience to guide users to get value from your product and stick around.

That’s where in-app tutorials come in.

Provide self-paced learning

It’s hard for us humans to absorb a lot of information in one go. This is why long, boring product tours don’t work. You can’t expect a new user to sit through a never-ending series of tooltips that walk them through your product’s entire user interface explain each element in one go, and also remember everything.

An in-app tutorial, on the other hand, provides granular bits of information and guides users on how to engage with the product, at their own pace.

Get new users to experience value faster

Getting users to the Aha! Moment is crucial. But what’s more important is to get them to experience that expected value as well.

You see, the Aha! Moment is mostly about users realizing there might be value in using your product.

The potential of value is what makes them sign up. They then need to get to the activation point too.

In-app tutorials help get the users there and experience value faster, as they offer the needed in-app training that shortens the learning curve and keeps new users engaged.

Drive user engagement

Engagement is everything when it comes to convincing a new user to stay. If they simply stare at the first screen they see, then they won’t last very long. You need them to click, to scroll, to type — to interact in some way.

A good in-app tutorial encourages those interactions. It prompts and guides users to do something and means they’re more likely to do it if what you are guiding them to do makes sense considering where they are in their journey.

Clicking on a checklist item, for instance, triggers specific experiences that lead to activation. A checklist works both for new users and for more advanced users who could benefit from discovering other features they are not using. You just need to add specific tasks based on where the user is in the journey.

Increase customer retention

Tutorials are meant to offer in-app guidance where and when the user needs it across the entire user onboarding process. When done right, these interactive walkthroughs help remove frustration caused by steeper learning curves and make it easier for the user to actually use the product.

The more they engage, the more the product becomes part of their life and the more value they get.

Using tutorials to onboard users at every stage of the user journey will ultimately increase retention rates since users don’t churn when they experience repeated value from a product.

Best in-app tutorial examples

I’ve already covered some examples while going over in-app tutorial application’s best practices but here is a collection of some of the best tutorials that follow them too.

Userpilot in-app video tutorial plus a step-by-step guide

Userpilot is a great tool for building tutorials for your users and triggering them at the right time. So it makes perfect sense that we also practice what we preach.

I already showcase how we guide new users to get started so here is a video tutorial example meant to encourage users to build their first flow.

We use a modal with a short video embedded and a simple CTA that prompts users to take action. When they click on Start building, a step-by-step interactive onboarding walkthrough build using tooltips will trigger to take new customers across each step explained in the video.

Why is this a good example:

• Uses different types of content.
• Is contextual: the modal is triggered for new users for the first time they engage with the app page.
• It’s short and focused on one goal.

Kommunicate in-app tutorial guiding users step-by-step

Kommunicate is a customer support automation platform that enables users to build their own AI chatbots without any coding.

When onboarding its users, Kommunicate deploys interactive walkthroughs that guide users on how to customize their chat widget. Step-by-step instructions are given in simple copy and only trigger once the user has engaged with the previous step in the series and follows the instructions.

For example, when a tooltip pops prompting the user to insert text, the next tooltip will only show once the user takes the recommended action.

Why is this a good example?

• Lets users engage and learn at their own pace.
• It’s short and easy to understand.
• Is focused on one goal: widget customization.

Attention Insight improved user activation with Userpilot’s interactive walkthroughs

Attention Insight is an AI-powered tool offering attention heatmap analysis of websites, ads, and other designs before launch.

As they struggled with activating their free trial users, they decided to create in-app guidance to drive user acquisition. They combined several in-app experiences in the bid to boost their user activation with Userpilot:

• An interactive flow (walkthrough) that guided new users through the heatmap analysis creation process with driven actions.

• An onboarding checklist helping the users navigate the process of creating a heatmap and tagging their “areas of interest” on the dashboard screenshot step-by-step

• Hotspots drawing attention to less obvious UI elements, and a Resource Center pulling all the help resources and walkthroughs together to reduce support requests:

Why is this a good example?

• Uses an onboarding checklist to offer a handy task list available as a widget on the screen
• Employs different types of in-app tutorials
• Provides extra guidance with a Resource Center so users can access other tutorials on their own

Groupize gamified their new user onboarding tutorials with Userpilot

Groupize is a software platform that assists companies with managing group and corporate business travel and events, both from the spend management and attendee management perspective.

With the help of Userpilot, they could gamify their onboarding by creating a Groupize Interactive Assistant – G.G.

They use this assistant to provide contextual onboarding guidance for the new users once they sign up.

To make G.G. more subtle and less pushy, they utilized Userpilot’s Resource Center to let users summon G.G.’s help, as well as provide more detailed help articles. Users can trigger guided tours of each page of the app from the Resource Center:

Why is this a good example?

• Offers gamified in-app tutorials to make it more engaging for users
• Delivers subtle guidance without disrupting user experience
• Enables in-app guidance replay so users can access it any time

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Tolstoy uses multiple video tutorials for different use cases

Tolstoy is a platform aimed at boosting digital adoption by leveraging video in customer onboarding. Videos are proven to drive engagement, boost knowledge retention, and increase conversion.

They created different video tutorials and interactive guides for specific use cases instead of one guide to rule them all. Human faces help to add an element of personalization, and this granular approach helps users get exactly what they need from the platform, fast.

Why is this a good example?

• Granular approach: different use cases.
• Small-sized videos help users process information more easily.
• Visual learners are prioritized and this works since the tool itself is a video creation platform for guides.

Best practices when creating an in-app tutorial

So hopefully now you understand why in-app tutorials are so crucial when it comes to driving product adoption.

But what makes a good in-app tutorial? How do you make it as effective as possible?

That’s what we’re going to look at now.

Keep your in-app guides short and simple to NOT overwhelm users

All your in-app tutorials should be on point, focusing on driving users to engage and adopt key features of your product, one at a time.

Your users don’t need to know about those secondary features (at least not yet) so you can make your in-app tutorial more focused. Start with the goal of each tutorial and make sure to guide users on how to reach it.

These goals will be based on where the users are in their journey and where they need to get next. This can be reaching the activation point, adopting a new feature, or learning how to use some advanced features of your product.

Just like how Groupize did in the example above: They allow their users to dismiss the guidance and replay it through the resource center.

Test different formats

A modal, a tooltip, a video, anything can be part of your tutorials that drive customer success. Since users are different they will prefer different types of in-app communication.

You should always test what works best in achieving the goal.

For example, is adding a modal with a clear CTA enough, or should you also use a checklist?

To get your answer, you can use A/B testing and compare your goal completion rate for users who see and engage with a checklist and the ones who don’t.

Note: Not all tools will allow A/B testing so if you want to try this out you should check Userpilot as this is one of its features.

Personalize your in-app tutorials to each use case

Most SaaS products will have a few different use cases or user personas. It’s safe to say that these use cases will often have different needs from your product. So giving everyone the same in-app tutorial is never going to work.

Instead, you should create a separate and personalized in-app tutorial for each use case. Then you just need to trigger the right one for each user that signs up for your product.

Of course, to do this you need to make sure you know which use case your users belong to. The best way to do that is to ask them using a micro survey either during the signup process or on your welcome screen.

Then use the information collected to create different user segments and trigger different tutorials for each.

Make tutorials interactive by letting users choose their path

You can create a different interactive walkthrough for each user segment but you can also use a more engaging approach and let users choose their path as they go.

Both walk new users around the product, highlighting various features, and act as useful in-app tutorials. But there’s a key difference. One lets users feel they are in charge of their experience.

Basically, the interactive nature means that users pay more attention, retain more of what they’ve learned, and start seeing value more quickly.

On top of that, letting users choose their path helps in getting them to experience value faster, by skipping irrelevant steps.

Take a look at how ConvertKit does it.

They ask users a simple question: “Where are you joining us from?”. Since the onboarding experience will be different for a user who is just starting compared to a user who already has a contact list and is moving from another tool, ConvertKit lets users choose the best path for them.

When a user selects one option, they will be presented with different options, that are relevant to their use case.

Trigger in-app guidance contextually

One of the issues with front-loading information to new users is that they’re likely to forget it all within ten minutes of using your product.

That effectively means your onboarding was a waste of time, plus your users will still be in the dark when it comes to using your product.

The solution is to make your in-app tutorials more contextual.

What does that mean in practice? Well, it means that you should only tell a user about a particular feature of your product when they need to know about it.

Let’s say you are launching a new feature and want to help users adopt it using an interactive walkthrough. Would it make sense to trigger this for users who haven’t engaged with key features yet to reach the activation stage?

Of course not.

Instead, use segmentation to make sure your message is shown only to relevant users.

Contextual onboarding can make your in-app tutorials far more effective, and drive product adoption as a result

Make tutorials accessible on-demand

Using product usage data you can understand when and where your users need help. But triggering app tutorials when you think the user needs them is one way to go.

I’m not saying that doesn’t work. In most cases, it will be the best option.

But to make sure users engage with it, adding your interactive walkthroughs to an in-app resource center lets them access it as many times as they need and when they need it.

Track performance and improve

Building interactive walkthroughs, app tutorials, and guides is about promoting user engagement and adoption across the entire user journey through user education.

And how would you know if they are effective if you don’t track performance?

One way to understand the effectiveness is to monitor their engagement with the tutorials and set up path analysis to see if they follow the guided path.

For example, you can track how users progress towards the activation point. Do they follow your onboarding guidance? Do they take any alternative path? Is there any more common and effective path?

With such insights, you can work on refining your tutorials.

Improve your guides based on user feedback

Last, but not least, you should always collect feedback from your users and improve.

Same as with building in-app tutorials, your feedback needs to be granular and contextual.

What does this mean?

Use different types of surveys at different points in the user journey to understand user experience but also where users struggle and a new tutorial would be helpful.

For example, let’s say your user has just finished engaging with your onboarding activation app walkthrough and reached a new milestone.

You’d want to know what their experience was like. You can ask them using a simple micro survey.

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No-code onboarding tools for building in-app tutorials

There’s a plethora of no-code onboarding tools out there if you are looking to get started with in-app tutorials. To make your job easy, here are three choices based on your budget and needs.

If you want an in-depth comparison of Userpilot vs Appcues vs Userguiding you can check it here or get the summary below.

Userpilot- best tool for personalized and contextual onboarding in-app tutorials

Userpilot was built specifically for SaaS product teams that want to improve their user onboarding experience and boost user activation.

You can build a huge variety of user onboarding experiences and in-app guidance flows without needing to code.

But the best part?

With Userpilot you get the best value for your money.

Compared to Appcues and Userguiding, Userpilot allows you to create in-app tutorials with different UI patterns and target different users with advanced segmentation options.

Pros&Cons of Userpilot

✅ UI patterns are not limited by plan – you get access to all of them on every single plan, meaning you get value even with the Traction plan (this is the entry-level one)

✅ Engaging walkthroughs and onboarding tutorials- build interactive walkthroughs targeted to distinct user segments.

✅ In-app help – build a resource center offering self-service support to your users, customize it with your branding, and select from a range of help options to boost user satisfaction (i.e. videos, in-app flows, chat, and more)

✅ Segmentation – build unlimited user segments using the data and use those segments for targeted in-app messages, launches, contextual help, etc.

✅ Advanced analytics – build different reports (paths, funnels, etc.) to analyze product performance, core metrics (i.e. retention, DAU, MAU, usage rate, etc.), and in-app flow engagement.

❌ Browser/web app only – Userpilot won’t run on mobile devices/applications.

❌ Not appropriate for small startups on a shoestring budget (<$100)- Userpilot is a powerful, mid-market to enterprise-level tool. So $299 a month might be too expensive for really small startups. See Userpilot pricing here.

Appcues- best tool for building tutorials for mobile apps

Appcues used to provide onboarding templates, which made it easy to use the tool. However, it provided a predefined way of thinking about onboarding all while having a higher price tag than other onboarding software. As of the time of writing (end of 2022), Appcues has removed its onboarding templates – without really replacing them with another solution.

Appcues allows you to design flows that make onboarding processes a breeze. These flows are what you use to create product tours and other in-app communication with users.

Pros&Cons of Appcues

✅ Can be used on web apps and mobile apps too.

✅ You can use predefined flows or build your own using a good range of UI patterns. Check Appcues features here.

✅ Allows basic segmentation and event-based flow triggering.

❌ It heavily limits the functionality available in the lowest (Essentials) plan. If you need checklists, more than 10 events, or more than 5 user segments, you’ll need to upgrade to the Growth plan (starting at $879/mo payable annually, which means you need to fork out more than $10,500 to start using Appcues for more use cases. Check Appcues pricing here.

❌ Appcues doesn’t have a resource center feature, meaning you can’t use it to offer self-service support to your users.

UserGuiding- best tool when you are on a budget

UserGuiding is a lower-cost, entry-level product adoption tool offering a range of features to help companies onboard new customers and boost product adoption.

It excels at building simple onboarding experiences for users. It includes a no-code builder, segmentation options, and easily added UI patterns like hotspots, tooltips, and modals.

Although it also has some other goodies like a resource center and analytics, the meat of this product is its onboarding flow builder. If all you’re looking for is a relatively easy way to build simple onboarding flows, this could be a great choice for you. However, people looking for more analytics, customization, or complex integrations should probably look elsewhere.

Pros&Cons of Userguiding

✅ For small startups or independent businesses, the price is an attractive element to consider.

✅ A good variety of UI patterns to choose from when building flows and guides

❌ There are many bugs and performance issues when using the tool. The UI is also fairly tricky to navigate.

❌ It has limited functionality, particularly on the basic plan. There you only have a small range of features available – all with the UserGuiding watermark/branding.

Conclusion

A well-made in-app tutorial will always work best compared to a product tour and it will help guide users through your product interface with ease and engage with valuable features without friction.

If you’re looking to improve your user experience, an onboarding walkthrough tutorial is the way to go. Get a Userpilot demo to get started.

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