Growth hacking techniques startups are using to onboard and activate new users. Learn more at learn.growhack.com

1. Growth Hacking
acquire new users with
better activation

2. What’s one of
the biggest
bottleneck’s
startups face?

3. OH: The internet is so
complicated #OMG
”
“

4. Remember first signing up for Twitter?

6. We dug in and tried
to learn what the
“aha” moment was
for a new user and
then rebuilt our
entire new user
experience to
engineer that more
quickly.
Josh Elman, Partner at GreyLock and
Early Product Lead at Twitter
“
”

7. While Josh was
there, Twitter’s
active user base
grew 10X

8. It’s now one of the most
influential products today..

9. Activation, isn’t just
for social products.

10. Uber, Square and DropBox work hard
to educate their first time user.

11. So what exactly is activation?

12. I’m Conrad Wadowski, a
Partner at GrowHack which
works with venture backed
companies.
I also run an online school
which brings together leading
practitioners and resources to
teach your team user growth.
Some background..

13. Activation is the
process of getting
a new user

14. to a must have
experience.
Activation is the
process of getting
a new user

15. it’s a set of best practices
to get them active.

16. it’s a set of best practices
to get them active.
..and it’s that
really common
bottleneck.

17. Activation is similar to
“onboarding” although
onboarding suggests a
process.

18. The best activation won’t
involve too much process.

19. Instead it mixes
selling, educating
and using your
product.

20. ..without much
friction.

21. When you get it
right, what happens
is the boundary
between trying out a
product and using it
disappears.
Ben Chow, Product Designer
“
”

22. Good activation
also helps protect
current users
from things like
fake accounts and
spam.

23. Why does it work?

24. Gets new users to
understand your
product’s value now,
instead of later.

25. Isolates variables to help
you understand what
motivates or prevents
someone from becoming
active.

26. In an ideal world you already know
which user to focus on, which is hard.

27. So how can we learn to do it well?

28. We actually have the tool
chest available to us at all
times..

29. The best way to
learn is from other
products.

30. So we went through
and documented the
best in the
industry..over 70
activation flows from
homepage to the
“must-have”

31. Here are some
tactics pulled out
from the best..

32. Word of Caution
Mileage will vary by audience, product, stage and resources.

33. Your most powerful
lever, will likely be
motivation.

34. The right
motivation
leads us to
do crazy
things.

35. Focus on testing these
ideas out and actually
talking to your end users.

36. But this will be a happy
place to start.

37. you ready?

38. Front load your user experience

39. Minimalism

40. Simple, clear value proposition

41. A subheading for more detail

42. Visuals

43. Social Sign in, with an
option for email
Quora

44. Say you won’t post on their wall

45. Embedded form on homepage

46. Prefilled forms

47. 42%
completion
time
Inline form validation

48. Pop up navigation, but just
because it’s easy to create.

49. Stick to simple, clear language

50. Relevant Faces (if not distracting)
Celeb
Customer
Friend
Smiling
Attractive
Female

51. William Shatner

52. ..Or just an interesting waiting screen

53. At least tell them to expect a wait

54. Import contact address books,
early on.
Facebook

55. You’ll reach a lot more people that
way, so test it out.
Step 1
Step 2
Step 3
Step 4
100%
20%
5%
1%
Homepage
Import
Select Category
Rate Books
UsersStep

56. ..the main ones are gmail,
yahoo, hotmail

57. Import phone contacts
Step 2Step 1

58. “skip this step”

59. Pre-populate with APIs

60. Link to confirm email

61. Use a progress bar
LinkedIn Groupon

62. Big, clear calls to action

63. And again scrolling down...

64. Large, relevant images
(They’re easier to design too)

65. Say “it’s free”

66. Consistent calls to action

67. 768 - 800 Pixels
Consistent calls to action, above the fold

68. Social Proof: Quantity

69. Social Proof: People

70. Social Proof: Shares

71. Social Proof: Press

72. Social Proof: Customers

73. Arrow pointing to your call to action

74. Include nav links in the footer

75. No footer below the fold for direct URL
Nothing here

76. 30%
conversion
Localization
English Spanish

77. Tailored landing pages
AmazonWillCall

78. Call-to-action button in the same spot

79. Call-to-action button in the same spot

80. Call-to-action button in the same spot

81. CEO Email

82. Relevant Email

83. How about some
worst practices?

84. Auto-carousels
See: shouldiuseacarousel.com

85. They introduce too many
variables so you can’t figure
out what’s working.

86. IF they can get to it in time,
people just click the first
image anyway..

87. “Carousels are effective
at being able to tell
people in Marketing/
Senior Management
that their latest idea is
on the Home Page.”
-Lee Duddell

88. Unnecessary form fields. Do
you really need all this?

89. To many, conflicting, calls to action

90. Horizontal navigation

91. As soon as we get on a computer,
we all start acting like we have a
major case of A.D.D.

92. Each additional link takes
focus away from your most
important call to action.

93. At a certain point this makes
your site pretty much unusable.

94. Just think deep when
you’d like to “cross-sell”
a feature or product.

95. If you really need to add a link,
why not include it in the footer?

96. And split each into its own page.

97. When you use weak calls to action..

98. ..like “Submit” you lose an
opportunity to teach users
what happens when they click.
?

99. Who really wants to
“submit” anything anyway?

100. Do as Unbounce.com says
and..

101. Side note
..anyone wanna do
a flower startup? :)

102. Too Strong on Design

103. Take 3 seconds to figure out
what this page is about. ..

104. While it’s beautifully designed,
there just isn’t much being
accomplished here.

105. Spending too much time on
form over function can
cripple your iteration speed.

106. Explainer video for new
product categories

107. Helps define the problem to a user

108. DropBox new users didn’t
realize they had a problem.

109. Consider longer form copy for this or
for high priced products where it’s
difficult to immediately get trust

110. Let’s talk mobile for a bit

111. Asking for permission

112. This is what happens if someone
says no

113. Preface permissions
Poker Friends

114. Preface permissions

115. If someone doesn’t FB Connect
Poker Friends

116. Make what you want
someone to do really obvious
SnapChat

117. Initial Screen and Description
Tinder

118. Pre Onboarding
Tinder

119. Learn by doing
Tinder

120. Focused feature set
Tinder

121. Tuck away advanced features
SnapChat

122. click here to learn more
about our online school
Thanks!
or find me @conradwa