Growth Hacking acquire new users
with better activation

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

OH: The internet is so
complicated #OMG ” “

Remember first signing up for
Twitter?

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 “ ”

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

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

Activation, isn’t just for social
products.

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

So what exactly is activation?

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..

Activation is the process of
getting a new user

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

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

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

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

The best activation won’t involve
too much process.

Instead it mixes selling, educating
and using your product.

..without much
friction.

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

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

Why does it work?

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

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

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

So how can we learn
to do it well?

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

The best way to learn
is from other products.

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

Here are some tactics pulled
out from the best..

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

Your most powerful lever, will
likely be motivation.

The right motivation leads us
to do crazy things.

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

But this will be a
happy place to start.

you ready?

Front load your user experience

Minimalism

Simple, clear value proposition

A subheading for more detail

Visuals

Social Sign in, with an
option for email Quora

Say you won’t post on
their wall

Embedded form on homepage

Prefilled forms

42% completion time Inline form
validation

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

Stick to simple, clear language

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

William Shatner

..Or just an interesting waiting
screen

At least tell them to
expect a wait

Import contact address books, early
on. Facebook

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

..the main ones are gmail,
yahoo, hotmail

Import phone contacts Step 2Step
1

“skip this step”

Pre-populate with APIs

Link to confirm email

Use a progress bar LinkedIn
Groupon

Big, clear calls to action

And again scrolling down...

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

Say “it’s free”

Consistent calls to action

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

Social Proof: Quantity

Social Proof: People

Social Proof: Shares

Social Proof: Press

Social Proof: Customers

Arrow pointing to your call
to action

Include nav links in the
footer

No footer below the fold
for direct URL Nothing here

30%
conversion
Localization
English Spanish

Tailored landing pages
AmazonWillCall

Call-to-action button in the same
spot

Call-to-action button in the same
spot

Call-to-action button in the same
spot

CEO Email

Relevant Email

How about some
worst practices?

Auto-carousels
See: shouldiuseacarousel.com

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

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

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

Unnecessary form fields. Do you
really need all this?

To many, conflicting, calls to
action

Horizontal navigation

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

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

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

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

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

And split each into its
own page.

When you use weak calls
to action..

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

Who really wants to “submit”
anything anyway?

Do as Unbounce.com says
and..

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

Too Strong on Design

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

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

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

Explainer video for new product
categories

Helps define the problem to
a user

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

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

Let’s talk mobile for a
bit

Asking for permission

This is what happens if
someone says no

Preface permissions
Poker Friends

Preface permissions

If someone doesn’t FB Connect
Poker Friends

Make what you want someone
to do really obvious SnapChat

Initial Screen and Description
Tinder

Pre Onboarding
Tinder

Learn by doing
Tinder

Focused feature set
Tinder

Tuck away advanced features
SnapChat

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