10 Effective Ways to Improve Your UX Onboarding

Products feel easy on the first task and hard on the tenth. G2 reviews of onboarding tools show it plainly: in the reviews we read in October 2026, "easy to use" was the most-praised trait of Appcues (186 of 294 reviews), Chameleon (179 of 300) and Userpilot (166 of 300), and "learning curve, hard-to-find settings" was among the top complaints for all three (54, 73 and 97). So improving UX onboarding means two jobs: a fast first session, and help that's still there when users go looking for the advanced settings.

What is UX onboarding?

UX onboarding is the process of welcoming new users and guiding them into your product so they can use it successfully. In practice, it's a set of onboarding flows after signup: screens, pop-ups and contextual content that lead users to the features they need and explain them.

Picture a complex app you've just signed up for. Good onboarding leads you to the core features and how to use them; poor onboarding leaves you on your own, and you most likely move on to another app with a similar goal. Efficient onboarding is more than a few video tutorials or a tips section: it reduces the chance of errors and makes the whole process easy.

Which UX onboarding pattern fits which job?

Pick the pattern by the job it does and by whether it may interrupt the user:

How do you improve the first session?

The first session needs four things: a welcome, a sense of progress, a short tour and a list of what's left.

1- Saying welcome!

Welcome messages greet new users the moment they log in for the first time, with simple words like "Hello", "Welcome on board" or "Hey!". They give users an instant peek into what's coming, invite them to take a first action, and set expectations from day one. Three examples, at the time of the screenshots:

Grammarly

Grammarly's welcome email greeted the user by name ("Welcome to Grammarly, Anna") and led straight into the features that would get their writing up to speed.

Notion

Notion's welcome was a private "Get Started" page to play around with: a to-do list of first actions, with the first two already ticked.

IKEA

IKEA's welcome email showed the new account's profile bar as complete and offered one next step: joining its free member programme.

2- Showing progress

Right after logging in, users meet your product's interface for the first time, and you can lose them there if it feels too complex to figure out alone. Progress bars, checklists and other gamification elements help users discover the product in more detail and reduce support costs. They also motivate: people like to know how far they've come and how close they are to finishing.

Duolingo is all about gamification: a progress bar across the top of each lesson, then "Lesson Complete! +10 XP" and a streak counter, so first-time users can see their success grow.

3- Providing product tours

Product tours are interactive walkthroughs of your product's UI that show newcomers the key workflows. They're built from UI patterns such as modals, tooltips and highlights, sometimes with short videos. Use a tour when you want users to complete a particular process or start with a certain action.

Evernote's walkthrough began by asking "What brings you to Evernote?" (Work, School or Personal) with a note that you can always change your mind later, so the steps that followed fit the answer. Rule: keep a first tour to about three to five steps and let users skip it.

4- Checklists

If you're, like me, obsessed with task management and to-do lists, you'll appreciate these little fellas. Checklists show users the tasks they have left; like progress bars, they motivate users to tick off one task after another and work on the ones still unticked.

Keyhole's checklist sat behind a "Get Started" launcher in the corner, with a counter on it, so it never blocked the page.

How do you help users after the first session?

After the first session, users stop following you and start looking for things, which is where the "hard-to-find settings" complaint comes from. Help has to be where they look, when they look.

5- Hotspots

Hotspots are small pulsing dots that draw attention to a particular element, section, button or feature. Use them when you need attention on an important feature without interrupting the user's workflow: users click if they're curious, and the hotspot opens a tooltip or a short explanation.

Indicata used a hotspot to announce a new feature: the hotspot opened a tooltip with a video in it, as described in our write-up of Indicata's announcements.

6- In-app surveys

In-app surveys reach active users while they're using your product. They collect feedback to tailor the UX, and the answers help you segment users for more personalisation.

At the time of the screenshot, Twitter invited a selected group of users with a post in their feed, then asked one question per screen ("How often do you Tweet with emojis?") with five answers. Notion's survey prompt did something similar and said up front it would take 20 seconds. Rule: one question per screen, and say how long the survey takes.

7- Tooltips

Tooltips draw attention to one element and explain it in a sentence. They're the right fix for hard-to-find settings: put the explanation next to the setting, at the moment the user reaches it.

Facebook's tooltip for Reactions was contextual and short: "New! React to a Post. Hover over the Like button to see all reactions", 14 words pointing at the button they described.

Since this post was first written, onboarding and support tools have added AI assistants that answer questions in the product. As of October 2026, Chameleon's 14-day trial includes 10,000 AI credits, and Intercom charges for Fin AI Agent outcomes from $0.99 each (their pricing pages). An assistant can only point users to a hidden setting if your help content documents it, so write that first.

8- Try in-app gamification

Gamification adds badges, discount coupons and leaderboards to the experience. It answers the basic human urge to compete and to try hardest when a reward waits at the end, and it rewards users for engaging. For a gentle version, see how Impulse's first-day screen celebrated with confetti and invited users back the next day.

How do you know the changes worked?

You know from metrics and from iteration: measure before and after each change, and keep adjusting.

9- Track the relevant metrics

Once your new UX is live, check that it works. Pick the metric that matches the change: session duration, activation rate and depth of product usage for a new tour; engagement, time to value and feedback for longer-term changes. Knowing the right onboarding metrics saves time and effort; see user onboarding metrics for the full list.

10- Optimise

Optimisation never ends, because customer needs keep changing. Check regularly for room to improve, and watch real users go through the flow: user testing your onboarding shows why they get stuck, which metrics can't. For the opposite list, see the 16 user onboarding mistakes.