5 Great (and Awful) User Onboarding Experiences to Set an Example

Most lists of onboarding examples only show the good ones. This one walks through five flows I recorded in late 2021, from the least satisfying to my favourite, and names what made each one work or fail. Two things decided it: guidance that follows the user's first task beats guidance that tours the screen, and a head start (prefilled links, a half-done checklist) beats an empty dashboard.

The tool used to build the flow didn't decide it. Spotify's flow (the worst) and Calendly's (one of the best) were both built in-house.

First impressions count. According to a study by Phillips and Chaparro, users' first impressions of a website were shaped most by its visual appeal. For SaaS apps, e-commerce sites and mobile apps that live on retention, a poor first experience means less satisfaction and fewer profits.

All five products have changed since these flows were recorded, so read them as examples of patterns, not as a description of what you'll see today.

What separated the good onboarding from the bad?

The two weakest flows either had no guidance or explained the interface in the order it's laid out. The three better ones guided users through their first real task, let them skip what they didn't need, and gave them a head start.

If you'd rather see examples organised by best practice, each with a check you can run on your own flow, read user onboarding examples and best practices. For what five well-known products ask new users to do first, read best product onboarding examples.

#1 Spotify: start with the worst

• Created: In-house
• Average Completion Time: -
• Used UX Patterns: Signup Forms

When I went through it in 2021, Spotify's onboarding had one problem: there wasn't any.

On Spotify's website or in its mobile app, the first thing you did was sign up, which is the first step of most onboarding processes. The desktop signup form looked like this:

It was your everyday signup form, with too many unnecessary fields, which usually means lower conversions. There was no one-click signup with Google either, a fatal sin in my book.

And that was it. Spotify's onboarding ended at signup: no in-app tutorials, no tooltips, no hotspots, no welcome modals.

I get it: Spotify's interface borrows from the music players and libraries we've known for years. That needs no introduction, right?

Wrong. Everyone listens to music, from your average young adult to your great-aunt who just bought her first smartphone. Why make the move from radio cassettes to streaming harder by leaving out onboarding?

Spotify has since used in-app messages for new features: our inspirations library has its Smart Shuffle slideout from 2023. That's feature onboarding for existing users, though, not a first-run guide.

Why Spotify's user onboarding was bad

• The signup form was crowded with fields an account doesn't need. A short survey after login could collect the same information without costing signups.
• Nothing guided new users through the platform. A mobile or desktop app needs at least an optional UI tour that shows users which task they can do where.

#2 Frase.io: better than nothing

• Created: with Shepherd.js
• Average Completion Time: 2 minutes
• Used UX Patterns: Signup Forms, Product Walkthroughs, Tooltips

Frase is an SEO content writing platform. It works like a text editor, with extras that help its AI understand what you're trying to do for search and suggest additions and changes.

Those extras are helpful, but they make the product complex. Even Frase's core features need some introduction before you can use them fully. Frase's team knew this and picked a simple fix (built with Shepherd.js, one of the open-source tour libraries), which in my opinion wasn't enough.

The signup form was simple, with "Sign up with Google" at the top. No sins at this stage:

After signup, you landed on an empty "Documents" page (on Frase you work on individual documents, much like in Google Docs). No checklist or welcome modal told you what would happen next.

So the obvious next step was to create a document. On the document creation page, an interactive tour popped up:

This page is where you enter your keywords and region, the first step of improving your content's SEO, so a tour here made sense. But it tried to educate you instead of helping you finish the task. I'd prefer "Let's create your first document. Fill out your first keyword here:" over "This is where you fill out your keywords."

After you filled in the fields and entered the editor, another tour started:

Another UI tour. It went over the editor's key features one by one, and the information itself was sufficient. As onboarding, though, it fell short:

• It followed the layout, not your progress. The tooltips described the interface left to right, then top to bottom, instead of following the steps you'd take to finish a task.
• It informed instead of assisting. You didn't move along the user journey as you completed the tour; you only learned about UI elements, so it didn't bring you closer to the aha moment. A walkthrough of your first task would have.
• It ignored the other valuable features. Frase also offered real-time content analysis through Google Search Console and an outline builder for content briefs, but no onboarding promoted them. Users would only find them by poking around.

By September 2022 Frase was announcing updates in a video modal with an NPS question, a sign the team kept working on in-app communication.

Why Frase's user onboarding was bad

• The product tours were simple and smooth, but they didn't help users reach the aha moment; they only provided information.
• Hotspots or an onboarding checklist could have drawn attention to the other features that add value (which also means better conversion rates).

#3 UiPath: your average software onboarding

• Created: with Userpilot
• Average Completion Time: 10 minutes
• Used UX Patterns: Signup Forms (One-click Signup), Product Walkthroughs, Tooltips

UiPath is an automation platform that helps teams cut repetitive work. Its onboarding was OK, slightly above average: not much to criticise, and nothing that made it stand out.

The flow started with a simple signup that steered users toward signing up with their Google, Microsoft or LinkedIn accounts. (For enterprise software, knowing the user's company account helps with account-based marketing.)

Simple and smooth. This should be the standard signup screen for every software product.

Once logged in, you saw an empty dashboard that urged you to download the desktop software. If you moved on, a product tour UiPath called "The 6-Click Orchestrator Tour" started:

This tour was better than Frase's because it followed the steps the user would take, instead of going from top to bottom. And unlike Frase's, it was optional, so you could skip it if you knew your way around.

UiPath also used in-app modals to announce changes to its UI and promote other features:

Why UiPath's user onboarding was good

• The product tours were simple and built around the user's workflow, not the order of the dashboard.
• Users could skip the tours, which matters because not everyone wants to go through onboarding.
• In-app modals promoted features and announced UI changes, helping existing users get more from the product or readjust after a change.

#4 Calendly: simple products need simpler onboarding

• Created: In-house
• Average Completion Time: 5 minutes
• Used UX Patterns: Signup Forms (One-click Signup), User Onboarding Checklists

Calendly's core idea is simple. You connect your calendar, and it gives you a link to your own scheduling page that shows when you're free, based on real-time data from that calendar.

Its onboarding applied the same simplicity, and it was outstanding. Signing up and finishing onboarding took under five minutes. First, the signup screen:

You entered your email first, then chose between a password or an account through Google (or another platform). A shorter signup means a shorter onboarding flow, which should mean more activations.

After signup, the dashboard was not empty, unlike every other product on this list. I'd bet most meetings scheduled online are 15, 30 or 60 minutes long, and Calendly can see the durations its users choose. So it had already created your booking links for 15, 30 and 60 minutes, enough for most people to get through a work day:

If Calendly had gone the Spotify route with no in-product onboarding, I wouldn't have complained. Instead, it added an onboarding experience that didn't bother users who didn't want it: a checklist with three simple steps.

Clicking a step triggered no guide. It took you to the page for creating a new event, a simple form you filled out to generate a new meeting link. Once you'd created the event, the last step asked you to try the link:

You clicked your new event link and scheduled a meeting with yourself. That showed you both sides of Calendly (creating events and booking them) and the value of the platform, all in under five minutes.

Why Calendly's user onboarding was great

• It welcomed users with ready-to-use meeting links, so they could start straight away.
• As a simple product, it understood the assignment: three steps and a checklist that ended with the user doing the core action for real.

#5 Genially: the most complete of the five

• Created: with UserGuiding
• Average Completion Time: 10 minutes
• Used UX Patterns: Product Demo Elements, Signup Forms (One-click Signup), Progressive Profiling Surveys, User Onboarding Checklists, Interactive Guides, Tooltips

Genially is a tool for creating interactive, visual media alone or with a team. Its onboarding had nearly every element you could ask for, and the first step wasn't even signup.

Genially demonstrated its product and value on its homepage, with interactive elements that brought the product into users' first impression. It looked (and worked) like this:

That isn't the product itself, but it summarised the platform's value and drew visitors in. Clicking the big blue button under it led to a clean signup screen:

You entered your email or signed up with Google. Genially didn't ask personalisation questions at this point. Not yet.

Once you'd created your account and logged in, you were asked three simple questions. Typed answers would have been annoying, but each answer was a single click:

There was no welcome modal popping up at login, which some people find annoying. Instead, like Calendly, Genially used an onboarding checklist (a more visual one):

If you'd signed in through Google, about half the steps were already done. That tempts users to finish the rest (the last thing I want in the middle of a workday is a full, empty checklist).

Clicking the third step, "Create your first genially", triggered a tooltip pointing to the creation area:

The "Create Genially" button showed dozens of templates (possibly chosen from your answers to the earlier questions). Picking one opened the Genially editor, where a product tour started:

The tour moved from the editing area to "preview", then "share", then the "ALL SET" button: the same order you'd use the product in (edit, preview, share, then download or publish). It could have used a few more steps, such as adding new elements or dragging and dropping, but it showed how to get through the editor in four steps.

Why Genially's user onboarding worked

• Onboarding started before signup, with a product demonstration on the homepage: hard to do, but rewarding.
• Signup asked for very little, and the questions about your background came after the account existed.
• The checklist started half-completed (signup counted), which encouraged users to finish it.
• The editor tour followed the steps of creating a genially, so users understood what to do next.

How do you make your own onboarding good rather than awful?

Good onboarding isn't hard to build. Once you understand what your product does, who your user is and how they move through it, you'll know how to help them. The five flows above boil down to five rules:

1. Cut signup to the fields an account needs, and offer one-click signup (Spotify's form versus UiPath's and Calendly's).
2. Order every tour by the user's first task, not by the screen layout (Frase versus UiPath and Genially).
3. Let users skip guidance they don't need (UiPath).
4. Give a head start: prefilled objects or a checklist that's already partly done (Calendly, Genially).
5. End onboarding with the core action done for real, like Calendly's booking with yourself.

The "perfect" flow that lowers churn, raises conversions and creates loyal customers doesn't come from copying any of these. It comes from measuring and optimising a flow that's already good.