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

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

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

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

Engaging &
Onboarding

Invite Homesteaders

Private Beta

Exclusivity

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

Seeding

Potemkin Village

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.

First
Awareness

Awareness News articles, facebook and
twitter shares

Direct Invitation

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

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

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.

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. •

Beware of spamming friends right
after registration

Education
“The Sell”

Homepage - try before you
buy

Homepage with large call to
action

Landing Page

Landing Page

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

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

Registration

Alternatives to the large form
Traditional reg form

Could be as simple as
no sign up

Making it fun - DJ
name

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

Start the activities as part
of the sign up process

Keep it simple - assign
it to someone else

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.

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).

Onboarding

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

Build something as part of
the sign up process

This list looks scary

The easiest activity is offered
first

Suggest a list. One item
is already crossed off.

Offer a tour of what
to do first

2nd visit: Reflect back and
offer another activity

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.

Re-engagement

Introduce new features

Use social peer pressure -
all the cool kids are here

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.

Care and Feeding of the
Passionate

Feature people & contributions prominently

Reward usage - compare stats
with network

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

Badges, points & high reputation,
reward use & quality

Learn from games photo by
kurtxio

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.

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.

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.

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.

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).

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

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

At hand

Tools for sharing are in
prime real estate locations

Tools for sharing are in
prime real estate locations

Tools for inviting are in
prime real estate locations

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

Frictionless

The default errs on the
side of the most viral option

The default errs on the
side of the most viral option

Auto add - any member
can add another

Respect the ethical dimension Respect
the ethical dimension

Impactful

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

What’s your default? Email this
Network / Newsfeed

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.

Connectedness

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

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.

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.

A word about the Password
Anti-Pattern DON’T

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

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

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