At lunch today we were discussing the on-premise to SaaS transition that we’re in the midst of, and as part of that the point was made that the skill of properly onboarding users would increase in value.
One of the key benefits of SaaS is of course that distribution of software is less tedious, but this also means that competition increasingly becomes global. The beauty of SaaS is that it transforms one big purchasing decision into many smaller decisions, but this also decreases the switching costs.
Contrast this to when you had to pay a really big check up-front, and then marginal amounts for maintenance and support. Once you had chosen an on-premise software solution, you were definitely not keen on paying yet another big check up-front for another few years.
It was argued that potential users these days are less committed to really trying one specific solution, due to the above-mentioned characteristics of SaaS. You have an endless amount of alternatives, and all offer free trials and low upfront costs. And that’s why the skill to properly onboarding users will increase in value.
Through this conversation, it was (of course) argued that manuals are outdated, and that all products now should be completely self-explanatory. But then we started talking about cars, and how we’d never be able to maneuver these advanced machines whom we rely so much on without proper instructions and training. And then the analogy introduced in the headline emerged, as it was said:
Imagine your product is a car, and your user is someone without a drivers license. The users has no access to instructions, nor access to trainers. The environment the user starts driving in – that’s your onboarding experience.
And this really stuck with me. You’d never put such a user straight on the highway, nor in a closed garage. You’d place the user in an open space where she by degrees could learn shifting etc, and then gradually you’d introduce more elements. Always striking a fine balance between mastery and challenge. And then eventually the user is experienced enough to master the car in all situations. Or the car start driving itself…