Increasing user engagement and feature discoverability through user onboarding in business-to-business applications

Sammanfattning: User onboarding has become an increasingly important aspect in applications due to the shift towards the Software as a Service business model in software companies. This results in that companies need to make sure their customers are successful with the service, or they will loose customers. An effective user onboarding strategy can give the user a good start in becoming successful in the service. However, so far it is most common in business-to-consumer applications. This thesis aims to investigate how to create a successful user onboarding strategy in a businessto- business application. User onboarding strategies used in business-to-consumer applications will be investigated and adapted to a business-to-business context. We will also investigate how these concepts can be applied over a longer period of time to increase feature discoverability and user engagement. First, other application’s user onboarding concepts was researched. The concepts was studied and evaluated of how they would fit in a business-to-business context. Six concepts were chosen and then adjusted according to the context. The concepts were analyzed through a focus group, but theory was also used to evaluate if the concepts were suitable. Three of these concepts were made into hi-fi prototypes which were iterated in two iterations in which both user tests were conducted. Our findings in the user tested showed that by using an adequate amount of gamification in the user onboarding process will motivate users to engage more in filling out personal information in the application that is useful for the user experience further on in use of the application. The use of pop ups for introducing features to the user was also shown to be efficient. The frequency of occurrence of a pop up is crucial since an over use of this could have a negative effect. However, this aspect was not investigated in this thesis, and needs further research to establish.