A product walkthrough is an interactive tutorial that guides users on how your product operates and what features it offers. They often use a combination of different UX patterns, like modals, tooltips, hotspots, etc., to demonstrate how your product works.
Product walkthroughs are essential for users to achieve the Aha! moment and continue using your product in the long run. Without walkthroughs in place, your users might feel overwhelmed and switch to a competing tool with a better onboarding process.
Walkthroughs are not only meant for new users – you can leverage them for existing ones when announcing new features or looking to engage them.
Why is Product Walkthrough important?
You’ll seldom see a successful SaaS company without some sort of product walkthrough in place. Developing a product takes significant effort and investment, but its true potential can only be realized if users are made aware of its capabilities. Without showing a product’s unique features and benefits, all the hard work and resources spent on development would go to waste.
Here’s why building product walkthroughs is important:
- Improves user onboarding: A product walkthrough educates new users on how your product operates and functions. This can shorten the time to value and reduce any friction from the onboarding process.
- Increases product and feature adoption: By informing users about your product features, you’re essentially communicating how valuable your product is. This will boost product and feature adoption and encourage long-term product usage.
- Reduces customer support requests: Most queries come from people struggling to use your product. Since a product walkthrough gives a thorough understanding of your product, users are less likely to have questions or need support. This can greatly reduce the cost of and burden on customer support teams.
- Increases user retention: Since product walkthroughs help users realize value, they are less likely to switch to a competing tool. Hence, increasing user retention.
Do you need tools for Product Walkthrough?
Is a tool even necessary for creating effective product walkthroughs? Can’t my in-house developers create one from scratch?
While your developers surely can, it’s not the most effective way of approaching walkthroughs. Developers are busy people – they might not have the bandwidth to create a detailed walkthrough from scratch.
Regardless, a developer’s time and expertise are best spent on developing the product, not creating walkthroughs. A no-code tool enables anyone from your team to create interactive walkthroughs without relying on developers.
Other than this, using a tool for creating walkthroughs is essential because it:
- Enables you to trigger guides contextually, based on user segments and actions. This will help in creating personalized user experiences.
- Allows you to track the performance of walkthroughs through product usage analytics. You can see which users completed the entire walkthrough and identify any friction points along the way.
- Provides A/B testing functionality to see which version of the product walkthrough performs better.
What are the best tools for Product Walkthrough?
Looking for the best tools for creating interactive product walkthroughs? You’re at the right place since the below list of tools is the top-rated in town.
- Userpilot – recommended for contextual interactive product walkthroughs (best value for money)
- Pendo – recommended for creating walkthroughs on third-party apps
- Appcues – recommended for creating walkthroughs on mobile apps
- Chameleon – recommended for designing highly customizable walkthroughs
- WalkMe – recommended for employee onboarding
Let’s explore which tool is ideal for different company sizes, budgets, and jobs to be done.
What are the must have features of Product Walkthrough tools?
There is an abundance of tools that enable you to create product walkthroughs. But which one is worth your time and money?
To create effective walkthroughs, the tool you decide on must include the below essential features:
- Multiple UX patterns: Your chosen tool must host a variety of UX patterns, like modals, banners, tooltips, driven action, hotspots, and checklists, to create an interactive walkthrough.
- Customization: It should enable you to customize the walkthroughs with your brand color, logo, and style to give a native look.
- Segmentation: The tool must support segmentation so you can create personalized experiences for different user personas. Look for a tool that enables you to segment users based on multiple dimensions, like JBTD, roles, demographics, etc.
- Analytics: You should be able to track how many users completed the walkthrough, the time spent on each step, and where they face friction.
- A/B testing: The tool should let you test different versions of an interactive walkthrough to determine the best-performing one.
The above list is just a starting point. Considering your product, you might require more features, like localization and integrations with third-party tools.
Check out how Userpilot helps you with Product Walkthrough!
