Onboarding and virality involve moving new users through an initial exposure, onboarding process of education and registration, and turning them into passionate long-term users who spread the product or service virally. The key stages in the new user spiral are initial exposure through awareness campaigns, an onboarding process to educate and sell users on the value, and turning initial and repeat users into passionate advocates who spread the service through their own networks. Various techniques like private betas, invitations, simplified signups, tours and onboarding areas, badges and gamification elements can be used to move users through this process and engage both new and returning users over time.

1. Onboarding & Lessons in Virality
Go With
The Flow
erin malone :: BayChi December 2010 @emalone

2. flow:
To move or run smoothly with unbroken
continuity, as in the manner characteristic
of a fluid.
To exhibit a smooth or graceful continuity

3. The new user spiral
Initial
Exposure Viral Spread
Onboarding
Education Registration
“The Sell”
First Time
User Experience The Passionate
Initial User
Exposure
Second Time
User Experience
Education
Third Time “The Sell”
User Experience
Registration

4. The Usage Lifecycle
diagram Joshua Porter
Designing the Social Web
bokardo.com

5. Engaging &
Onboarding

6. Invite Homesteaders

7. Private Beta

8. Exclusivity

9. Private Beta
What
User wants to join a site that is currently in a private beta.
Use When
• Use this pattern when you want to allow people to sign up to join a private
beta.
• Use this pattern when you want to allow a small user list the opportunity to
invite N new users to grow your site virally but in a controlled fashion.
• Use this pattern to seed the community before it’s open for everyone
• Use this pattern to allow a small user list to “kick the tires” and offer
feedback post alpha but before opening to the public

10. Seeding

11. Potemkin Village

12. Instead of building a Potemkin Village,
the architects of the relaunched
dead.net site started with a judicious
few groups and then let the
community spawn the rest.

13. First
Awareness

14. Awareness
News articles,
facebook and
twitter shares

15. Direct Invitation

16. Optimizing email invitations
Good: Uses name in From Good: Uses full name for better recognition
Bad: From is a company, Bad: Erin who?
could be ltered as SPAM

17. Optimizing email invitations
Good: Uses name in From
Good: Uses photos to
show familiarity and that
this is not from a
stranger
Good: Large call to action button

18. Receive Invitation
What
User receives an invitation from a friend or connection to join a site.
Use When
• Use when the experience is enhanced by having a network of
connections.
• Use when growth of the service is dependent on friends of friends.
• Use when you want to supplement traditional user acquisition with
user based referrals.

19. Send Invitation
What
User sends an invitation to a friend or group of friends to have them join in a
site experience.
Use When
• Use when the user experience is enhanced by having a network of
connections.
• Use when growth of the service is dependent on friends of friends.
• Use when you want to supplement traditional user acquisition with user based
referrals.
• Use when a user has participated in the site enough to have formed an
opinion of the value, to then recommend it to a friend.
• Don’t use right after registration when the user hasn’t actually used the site.
When presenting the option to invite others, do so after enough interaction
with your site that the user actually has something to recommend.
•

20. Beware of spamming friends right after registration

21. Education
“The Sell”

22. Homepage - try before you buy

23. Homepage with large call to action

24. Landing Page

25. Landing Page

26. Anatomy of a Landing Page
Header Sign In
Awesome
feature highlight Call to Action
could rotate or be different for
different users Take a Tour
Secondary cool
feature
Feature Grid
Feature X X X X
Feature X X X X
Feature X X X X
Feature X X X X

27. Feature X X X X
Anatomy of a Landing Page
Feature X X X X
Feature X X X X
Feature X X X X
Main feature points
Far far away, behind the word mountains, far from the
countries Vokalia and
Far far away, behind the word mountains, far from the
countries Vokalia and
Far far away, behind the word mountains, far from the
countries Vokalia and
Call to Action
Footer

28. Registration

29. Alternatives to the large form
Traditional reg form

30. Could be as simple as no sign up

31. Making it fun - DJ name

32. Keep it simple - 1. 2. 3.
1
2
3

33. Start the activities as part of the sign up process

34. Keep it simple - assign it to someone else

35. Sign Up / Registration
What
User wants to access their personalized information or an application
that is stored on the host site.
Use When
• Use when personal data needs to be stored or when there is
customization or personalization unique to the particular user.
• Use when the site is a repository for user generated content and the
submissions or les need to be identi ed and/or managed by the
author.
• Use when there are security or privacy concerns and the user's data
needs to be protected.

36. Authorize
What
The user wants to participate on a site by bringing their data and les
over from another site.
Use When
• Use this pattern when features on your site are enhanced by
accessing data and les from another site (Site A).
• Use this pattern when user generated content or data on your site
has the potential to enhance or enable other sites that your users
may be participating in (Site B).

37. Onboarding

38. Ease in to the breadth. Offer one or two things to do

39. Build something as part of the sign up process

40. This list looks scary

41. The easiest activity is offered first

42. Suggest a list. One item is already crossed off.

43. Offer a tour of what to do first

44. 2nd visit: Reflect back and offer another activity

45. Welcome Area
What
A user registers for a new service and needs to have a sense of what
can be done at the site and how to get started.
Use When
• Use this pattern when a new user rst accesses the site.
• Use this pattern to acquaint the user with important or useful
features.

46. Re-engagement

47. Introduce new features

48. Use social peer pressure - all the cool kids are here

49. Re-engagement
What
A user of your site hasn’t visited or participated in awhile.
Use When
• Use this pattern when you want to entice users back to your site.
• Use this pattern when you want to inform users of new features.

50. Care and
Feeding of the
Passionate

51. Feature people & contributions prominently

52. Reward usage - compare stats with network

53. Badges, points & high reputation, reward use & quality
Both system generated
& community awarded

54. Badges, points & high reputation, reward use & quality

55. Learn from games
photo by kurtxio

56. Named Levels
What
Participants in a community need some way to gauge their own personal
development within that community: how far they've progressed; how deeply
they've interacted with the community or its offerings.
Use When
• You want to enable consumers to discover and identify high-quality contributors.
• The community is competitive, but not highly competitive. While Named Levels
can have a competitive edge to them (my Wookie beats your Jawa!) they are
perceived as less competitive than some other patterns (e.g., Ranking, Points,
Numbered Levels) perhaps because they are less-empirical in nature.
• You want to enable your users to track their individual growth in the community,
and suggest ways that they may attain the next level in the hierarchy.

57. Numbered Levels
What
Participants in a community need some way to gauge their own personal
development within that community: how far they've progressed; how deeply
they've interacted with the community or its offerings. Additionally, these same
measures can be used to compare members, to understand who has more or less
experience in the community.
Use When
• You want to enable your users to track their individual growth in the community.
• A large (or open-ended) number of levels are desirable. For example, World of
Warcraft currently allows users to advance to Level 70.
• You want to enable easy comparisons between users. (At a glance, 'Level 1' is
more junior than 'Level 5'.)
• You're trying to encourage a more-competitive community spirit.

58. Collectible Achievements
What
Some participants in communities respond to opportunities to earn or win
awards that can be collected and displayed to other community members.
Use When
• You want to leverage users' compulsive natures. They may seem silly or trivial,
but Collectible Achievements can have an addictive quality when done right,
and may compel your users to explore parts of your offering that otherwise
might not appeal to them.
• You want to encourage the community to try out all aspects of your offering.
• There are speci c features or facets to your product offering that you'd like to
promote: for instance, if you'd like to encourage more trades in a fantasy
sports context, consider rewarding users with an achievement upon the
completion of their 10th successful trade.

59. Points
What
In some communities, participants want a tangible measurement of their
accomplishments for personal satisfaction and to make comparisons with other
competitors.
Use When
• Use this pattern when the community is highly competitive, and the activities
that users engage in are competitive in nature (e.g., player-vs-player contests,
or coaching a fantasy football team).
• Points are generally discouraged, except in cases where the fundamental,
primary purpose of the community is competition, such as fantasy sports or
games.

60. Leaderboard
What
In highly competitive communities using a ranking system, users may want to
know who are the very best performers in a category or overall.
Use When
• The community is highly competitive, and the activities that users engage in
are competitive in nature (e.g., player-vs-player contests, or coaching a
fantasy football team.)
• You want to enable player-to-player comparisons, or permit users to
de nitively settle "Who is better?" arguments.
• Don't use this pattern when the activities that users engage in are not
competitive in nature (e.g., writing recipes, or sharing photos).

61. Share and
share alike
With some viral patterns totally
stolen from a presentation by
Christina Wodtke

62. B=f(P,E)
Behavior is a function of a
Person and his Environment

63. At hand

64. Tools for sharing are in prime real estate locations

65. Tools for sharing are in prime real estate locations

66. Tools for inviting are in prime real estate locations

67. First in list - incentives also give people a reason to share

68. Frictionless

69. The default errs on the side of the most viral option

70. The default errs on the side of the most viral option

71. Auto add - any member can add another

72. Respect the ethical dimension
Respect the ethical dimension

73. Impactful

74. Email this Network / Newsfeed
vs. consumer
broadcaster consumer
consumer
consumer broadcaster
consumer
consumer consumer
One to one consumer
One to many

75. What’s your default?
Email this
Network / Newsfeed

76. Share This
What
User wants to share an object (pointer, media, or application) with one or
more people. The application wants to be involved in the sharing in order to
learn who is sharing what with whom, and how often.
Use When
• A user wants to directly send a pointer, invite someone to view something, or
add a copy of or reference to something to a shared or public space they
own or have access to.
• Use when displaying content, resources, or applications on your site or
elsewhere.

77. Connectedness

78. Carefully consider your method to jumpstart connections
Let users walk other
peoples network to
nd people they know
Make recommendations once
you have a piece of data to
pivot on, like work or school
Build on someone
else’s social graph

79. Connections: Find People
What
The user wants to nd people she knows to connect and interact with on a
site or social web service.
Use When
• Use when you want to help users nd people they care about who may
already be using this site.
• Use this pattern to expand user’s circles of connections beyond friends and
family.
• Use this pattern to encourage connections throughout the lifecycle of a
person’s engagement.

80. Connections: Adding Friends
What
A user has found people she knows on a social site and wants to add
them to her circle of connections.
Use When
• Use when user connections are a core part of the site’s experience.
• Use when relationships will be con rmed providing a two-way
reciprocal relationship.
• Use when allowing following, where one user to follow another
participant without reciprocity.
• Use when ignoring a connection request is allowed.

81. A word about the Password Anti-Pattern
DON’T

82. The Password Anti-Pattern
Just because everyone does it
doesn’t mean it’s right

83. Wrapup: The new user spiral
Initial
Exposure Viral Spread
Onboarding
Education Registration
“The Sell”
First Time
User Experience The Passionate
Initial User
Exposure
Second Time
User Experience
Education
Third Time “The Sell”
User Experience
Registration

84. Thanks
erin
@emalone available now!
erin@tangible-ux.com http://www.designingsocialinterfaces.com