Dan Martell - How To Build The Ultimate SaaS Onboarding Experience

00:00:00.240 There's no bombs, no bombs.

00:00:02.440 Oh, I shouldn't say bombs.

00:00:04.000 I remember my brother saying bombs at the airport

00:00:05.680 and this guy stopped him.

00:00:08.080 He's like, hey!

00:00:09.080 He's like, uh, I'm sorry.

00:00:13.680 I was like, I don't know this guy.

00:00:24.000 Using the power of story to build powerful software products.

00:00:29.040 Now this is a super fun video for me because I know a lot of

00:00:33.240 folks that get challenged sometimes of building the right

00:00:36.080 experience that's going to engage customers right off the

00:00:38.380 bat, get them motivated to sign up for their product,

00:00:41.360 become activated and end up loving, and this is key,

00:00:44.320 referring their software because a lot of them are

00:00:47.460 challenging like how do we get people to take action and I feel

00:00:51.100 like maybe the setup process is too complicated.

00:00:54.300 And for me what I've learned over the years, you know, I was

00:00:57.160 super lucky to share an office building with Twitter.

00:01:01.460 So Flowtown, when I started that company,

00:01:03.300 it was a venture-backed company, social marketing app.

00:01:06.260 We were on the first floor, Twitter was on the fourth floor

00:01:08.500 and one day my friend Laura called me up and said,

00:01:10.800 hey, I want you to meet my friend Josh.

00:01:12.800 He just came from Facebook.

00:01:13.920 He was leading growth there, I believe,

00:01:16.720 and they just hired him at Twitter

00:01:20.220 to fix their onboarding and their growth challenges.

00:01:23.320 So I was like, yes, please sign me up.

00:01:25.160 So I went upstairs, took the elevator,

00:01:26.820 all the way up, and I was talking to Josh,

00:01:29.520 and you know, I had done a lot of market research.

00:01:31.820 When I moved to San Francisco, one of my areas

00:01:35.300 of expertise was marketing and product

00:01:38.000 and trying to understand what caused software

00:01:41.440 and features to grow organically

00:01:44.080 and really get distribution, so I was talking to Josh

00:01:46.000 about some ideas I had, I was just asking like,

00:01:47.800 are you gonna add this, you gotta add that?

00:01:49.340 He goes, no, because it would actually tell

00:01:50.580 the wrong product narrative, and I was like,

00:01:52.480 what does that mean?

00:01:53.320 He's like, you know, and he started unpacking

00:01:55.780 the work he's done, and the short version is

00:01:58.140 that no matter what you do,

00:02:00.660 your product will tell a story to its customer,

00:02:02.920 and that starts with the homepage

00:02:04.920 and the language you use there,

00:02:06.400 the onboarding experience,

00:02:07.660 how you set up that experience for the customer,

00:02:09.720 and finally, what you ask them to do,

00:02:11.660 or what's the first interactions

00:02:13.560 when they first get going in the product, you know?

00:02:15.940 And he explained to me, you know, like Instagram,

00:02:18.500 he goes, a lot of people, they think that Instagram

00:02:21.400 is a social network for photos,

00:02:22.740 and the truth is, is even though that's a byproduct,

00:02:25.100 One of the core aspects of Instagram is to take a photo,

00:02:30.180 add a filter, and share it on social networks

00:02:32.140 as fast as possible.

00:02:33.580 So what I want to share with you guys is

00:02:35.440 the product story framework.

00:02:37.280 How do you think about your software as it relates

00:02:40.040 and the three core areas that you need to identify

00:02:42.860 and kind of move forward?

00:02:43.680 The first one is the homepage,

00:02:45.560 specifically these two characteristics.

00:02:47.620 One is called the hook, the other one is called the promise.

00:02:50.200 The hook is the what.

00:02:51.560 What does your software do?

00:02:52.920 If you go to the sas1000.com list or the Montclair 250

00:02:58.060 top publicly, for the most part, publicly traded

00:03:00.920 at least biggest SaaS companies, software companies

00:03:03.400 in the world, and you look at their homepage,

00:03:05.660 they follow this pattern.

00:03:07.240 It's the hook.

00:03:08.300 What do you do?

00:03:09.780 The easiest way to send invoices.

00:03:11.940 The fastest way to understand your personal finances.

00:03:14.540 Whatever it is, that's the hook that tells somebody like,

00:03:17.580 this is for me.

00:03:18.740 Now, the promise is how they do that.

00:03:21.980 and that might be mobile management of your money,

00:03:26.860 using reports, et cetera, et cetera.

00:03:28.660 Those are usually the features or benefits.

00:03:30.220 They say it in that kind of right underneath it.

00:03:33.160 Again, go look at these home pages.

00:03:34.900 Underneath that, there's usually a button with a CTA,

00:03:37.560 a call to action to sign up for free,

00:03:39.600 no credit card required, in little brackets, et cetera.

00:03:42.260 That is the most valuable area to focus on.

00:03:46.580 At the end of this video, I'm gonna share with you guys

00:03:48.240 a tip on how to really get through those iteration

00:03:52.440 and tests as fast as possible using a quantitative method

00:03:56.420 that you're not gonna wanna miss.

00:03:57.280 But that homepage experience, how you communicate what you do

00:04:01.780 and how you do it is what is going to set the positioning

00:04:06.120 and the frame of the customer in their mind.

00:04:08.300 Once they get into your product,

00:04:09.620 they're gonna be looking for evidence

00:04:11.800 of what you said on the homepage.

00:04:13.900 So if you're not deliberate, you're not thoughtful,

00:04:15.840 you're not intentional about that language,

00:04:18.340 it could really hurt you from activating

00:04:20.280 and engaging customers,

00:04:21.240 especially in that first time user experience.

00:04:23.340 Second big part of the product story framework

00:04:26.720 is to ensure that you have

00:04:28.120 an incredible onboarding experience.

00:04:29.620 The way I like to think about onboarding

00:04:31.020 is it's the setup, it's the level one of a game.

00:04:35.160 It is the three steps that you ask the user to do

00:04:38.120 that it tells a story.

00:04:39.740 It's like why are you asking me to do this

00:04:42.200 and why is this second?

00:04:43.240 So for example, with Josh at Twitter,

00:04:46.340 he said to me, I said,

00:04:47.620 are you gonna add an address book importer

00:04:49.340 to kind of like build a viral K factor?

00:04:51.880 And he said, we could do that,

00:04:52.960 but the truth is is Twitter's not a social network

00:04:55.180 and if somebody came in

00:04:56.320 and that was the first thing we asked them to do,

00:04:58.320 they would go, I already have a social network

00:04:59.860 so I don't need this new product, right?

00:05:01.900 Whereas what Twitter's really about

00:05:03.960 is consumption of media, content.

00:05:06.120 It's a content consumption platform.

00:05:08.400 So the first thing we wanna do is get them

00:05:10.060 to start following people based on their interests

00:05:13.240 and who they know and maybe celebrities

00:05:15.640 and authority figures so that if they went to their feed,

00:05:18.440 even if they never tweeted or shared anything,

00:05:21.040 their personal feed would have incredible content

00:05:23.780 that's relevant to their lives.

00:05:25.180 And if we can do that, then we can get them

00:05:27.280 to stick and stay around.

00:05:28.660 And that was really fascinating for me.

00:05:30.420 It's just the sequence of steps.

00:05:32.460 Now they still had the address book importer

00:05:34.760 so that they could create kind of some distribution

00:05:37.360 for the product, but that was like the last step, right?

00:05:40.640 Not the first thing.

00:05:41.640 And again, how you present your product,

00:05:43.980 how it unfolds will tell a story.

00:05:46.420 Now you can either be deliberate about it

00:05:48.020 or it's just a byproduct of you building your software.

00:05:51.860 I'm a big fan of being intentional.

00:05:54.060 The third big area is the core value.

00:05:56.880 What is that moment in your product

00:06:00.200 that if a customer experiences, they will retain,

00:06:04.500 they will activate?

00:06:05.500 Some people call that the must-have experience.

00:06:07.500 Some people call it the aha experience.

00:06:09.940 I just call it the core value.

00:06:11.500 At the core of an Instagram,

00:06:14.280 it is not about the photo sharing,

00:06:16.380 it's not about the social network of photos,

00:06:18.140 it was about the easiest way to take that photo,

00:06:20.800 add a filter, and share it on the social network

00:06:22.880 of their preference, and that's why they beat out in it.

00:06:25.360 And back in the day of Instagram,

00:06:26.660 there were a ton of photo sharing,

00:06:28.820 or photo taking, editing, annotating apps out there.

00:06:32.420 I mean, probably like 50 of them in the app store,

00:06:37.000 and they just cut through the noise

00:06:38.580 because they said, here's our product hook,

00:06:40.300 or here's the core value.

00:06:41.960 We're gonna just drive people in the signup process

00:06:44.340 to understand that, to get there, to do that action

00:06:47.080 in the first time they sign up and get that experience

00:06:49.900 so that they come back and they tell their friends about it.

00:06:52.840 And that's how you build a product that gets

00:06:54.980 what's called VWAM, viral word of mouth marketing.

00:06:58.320 And it's a beautiful thing that really

00:07:00.460 can expand your distribution.

00:07:01.920 Now, if you wanna learn the right way

00:07:04.400 to test your product hook and your promise,

00:07:06.220 because this is really where people get stuck,

00:07:08.200 My tip is to use AdWords.

00:07:10.040 You know, AdWords gives you a restricted amount

00:07:12.080 of details for the title and the description.

00:07:14.340 Usually the same amount that you'd want on your homepage

00:07:16.980 right above your kind of call to action button

00:07:19.260 to get people signed up in your software

00:07:20.580 or request a demo or whatever your sales funnel looks like.

00:07:23.500 But you can use AdWords to quickly iterate

00:07:26.540 and test different tests, multivariant tests,

00:07:29.100 the specific targeting to just see

00:07:31.300 what the click-through ratio is.

00:07:32.720 And just getting the CTA or the language

00:07:36.700 that gets the highest click-through

00:07:37.700 will give you some real data

00:07:39.000 because most people want to split test their homepage

00:07:41.100 but the truth is they don't get enough traffic.

00:07:43.980 And the fastest way is put that in front of an ad,

00:07:46.680 show it to your ideal customer,

00:07:48.220 see which one gets the highest click-through rate

00:07:49.840 and the most engagement, then test that on your homepage

00:07:52.580 and keep iterating from there.

00:07:54.380 So three core areas.

00:07:55.680 One, just nail your homepage's hook and promise.

00:08:00.220 Two, ensure your onboarding experience

00:08:02.460 is a clear three-step setup process

00:08:05.920 that really tells the story and the narrative

00:08:07.760 of driving them towards finally the third thing

00:08:10.200 which is the core value of your product,

00:08:12.220 that aha, that must have experience 0.74

00:08:14.300 to just make your product deliver for your customer.

00:08:17.740 That is my challenge to you is to build something

00:08:21.900 that is spectacular, leveraging the story narrative

00:08:24.900 so that, and if you're stuck, here's another tip.

00:08:27.380 Ask your customers how they explain your product

00:08:30.220 to a friend or colleague.

00:08:31.320 That question will unlock the language

00:08:34.640 and even the things you might want to front load

00:08:36.840 in your product.

00:08:37.680 Another tip, and I apologize,

00:08:38.820 I'm just really excited for you.

00:08:41.180 There's an opportunity for you to analyze

00:08:42.780 a clickstream in your software.

00:08:44.180 If you have products and users,

00:08:45.420 look at the clickstream of your top customers,

00:08:47.620 top 20 customers.

00:08:48.520 Look at the path.

00:08:49.820 Where did they come in?

00:08:50.820 What did they use?

00:08:51.660 What features did they use?

00:08:52.500 What were they exposed to?

00:08:53.400 What did they set up?

00:08:54.500 And try to figure out what's the 80-20?

00:08:56.500 What's the common path and clickstream that they use

00:08:59.700 that got them to experience that aha or gratitude

00:09:02.740 or whatever moment that will get other customers retained

00:09:06.580 so you wanna front load that in your new user

00:09:09.020 onboarding experience.

00:09:10.180 That's what I got for you today.

00:09:11.340 As per usual, I wanna challenge you to live a bigger life

00:09:13.580 and a bigger business and I'll see you next Monday.

00:09:15.960 If you like this video, be sure to subscribe to my channel

00:09:17.960 for other tips and tricks on how to scale your SaaS company.

00:09:21.260 I'd also encourage you to join my newsletter

00:09:23.360 where I send out exclusive invites to events,

00:09:26.460 free training and other community contests

00:09:28.540 and if you're ready to get going,

00:09:29.700 I got two more videos queued up for you.

00:09:31.540 I will see you next Monday.

Dan Martell - January 15, 2018

How To Build The Ultimate SaaS Onboarding Experience

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