Imagine grabbing your users' attention from the beginning, creating an emotional connection, and guiding them effortlessly through user onboarding. Wondering how? Well, videos can help you do just that!

Videos have emerged as a powerful tool to deliver impactful onboarding experiences. With their ability to convey information visually, videos can effectively guide users, simplify complex concepts, and create an engaging learning environment.

This blog will explore the use of videos in user onboarding and the benefits of leveraging videos. Whether you are an entrepreneur, product manager, or marketer, understanding how to leverage videos can help you streamline onboarding, enhance user engagement, and ultimately drive the adoption of your product or service.

What does “User Onboarding” mean?

User onboarding is a crucial component of any business, as it introduces new users to your products or services while providing them with a positive first experience. The onboarding process typically starts when a user signs up for a digital product, be it an app or a website.

The process is meant to help them become familiar with the platform or product and guide them toward becoming engaged and active users.

Approximately 63% of customers believe that onboarding is crucial in their decision-making process when considering a product subscription.

A successful user onboarding experience involves more than just providing a simple welcome message. Instead, it should be a comprehensive process that helps users figure out how to use your product or service and demonstrates how to use it to its fullest potential to meet their individual goals.

Effective onboarding requires careful planning and execution and a deep understanding of your target audience. Businesses can design an onboarding process tailored to their users' needs and interests by analyzing user behavior and preferences. This could include interactive videos to help users achieve their goals more quickly and efficiently.

Types of Videos to Use in User Onboarding

Product Demo Videos

Product demo videos provide a detailed walkthrough of the product's features and functionalities. They showcase how the product works in real-life scenarios, highlighting its key benefits and demonstrating its unique value proposition.

Product videos effectively showcase the product's capabilities and help users visualize how it can address their specific needs.

Tutorial Videos

Tutorial videos offer step-by-step instructions on how to use the product. They guide users through various processes, functionalities, and settings, providing a clear and systematic approach to learning and using the product effectively.

They are valuable in helping users efficiently and quickly learn the product's functionality and become proficient in its usage.

Explainer Videos

These videos provide a concise and engaging overview of the product, its purpose, and its value proposition. These videos simplify complex concepts and explain how the product solves specific problems or meets customer needs.

Explainer videos help users understand the product's core features and benefits in a compelling and easily digestible format during the initial stages of onboarding.

Testimonial Videos

Testimonial videos feature satisfied customers sharing their positive experiences and success stories with the product. These videos build trust and credibility by showcasing real-life examples of how the product helped customers realize their goals or solve their problems.

Testimonial videos are impactful in establishing social proof and can motivate new users to explore the product further.

Best Practices for User Onboarding Videos

Keep it Concise

People have short attention spans when consuming content. In today's content-saturated world, people are often bombarded with information from various sources and tend to skim or quickly move on if something doesn't capture their interest instantly.

It is vital to keep your videos short and to the point. By presenting your message concisely, you increase the likelihood of grabbing and maintaining viewers' attention.

To ensure that users stay engaged throughout the onboarding process, you must convey your message within a few minutes.

It helps to structure your content logically and organized, ensuring that each video segment contributes to the overall objective without unnecessary tangents or distractions.

Start with a Hook

When creating a successful user onboarding video, one of the essential factors is capturing users' attention right from the beginning.

This is why starting your video with a compelling hook is vital. It could be an intriguing question, a problem statement, or a captivating visual that immediately grabs viewers' interest and makes them want to continue watching.

The hook should be short, catchy, and strongly related to the content of the video so that viewers know what the video will be about.

Highlight Key Features and Benefits

Use onboarding videos to showcase your product or service's key features and benefits. Focus on demonstrating how these features address user pain points and add value.

Highlight the unique selling points and advantages of your offering to capture users' attention and drive adoption.

Besides highlighting key features, anticipate and address common questions and challenges in your onboarding videos. This proactive approach demonstrates that you understand potential obstacles users may encounter and provides solutions upfront.

Gamify the User Onboarding Process

Infuse gamification elements into your onboarding videos to make the experience more interactive and enjoyable. Incorporate challenges, rewards, or progress indicators to motivate and engage users. Gamification helps in enhancing the onboarding experience and encourages users to complete the process successfully.

Interactive elements can enhance engagement and make the onboarding experience more enjoyable.

Don’t forget to add interactive elements to your videos, like clickable buttons, quizzes, or guided exercises, allowing users to participate and reinforce their learning actively.

Show, Don't Just Tell

Videos provide an excellent opportunity to demonstrate how to use your product or service. Instead of relying solely on verbal explanations, show users the actual steps, actions, and interactions involved.

Use screen recordings to showcase the actual usage of your product or service in real-time. It allows users to see the interface, buttons, and features in action, providing a clear visual representation of navigating and interacting with the product.

Animations can illustrate complex concepts, workflows, or interactions in a simplified and engaging manner. They can demonstrate the flow of actions, highlight essential elements, and showcase the desired outcomes, all in a visually compelling way.

Provide Context and Real-life Examples

To effectively convey the value and benefits of your product or service to users, context and real-life examples work best.

Demonstrating how your offerings can be used in different scenarios enables users to understand their practical applications and relevance to their lives.

Users can visualize how your product or service will provide a solution to their problems or meet their needs, making it much easier for them to see its value.

Practical demonstrations and relatable scenarios help users grasp the potential impact and advantages of your offering, enhancing their overall understanding and engagement.

Use Storytelling Techniques

Incorporating storytelling techniques into your user onboarding videos will make the process more engaging and memorable.

Craft a narrative that emotionally connects with users, highlighting how your product or service addresses their problems or fulfills their needs.

Storytelling fosters a relatable bond with your brand, creating an impactful onboarding experience. You can effectively convey your message by using characters and a problem-solution framework.

Authenticity is crucial, so ensure your story aligns with your brand values and employ visuals, music, and narration that enhance the storytelling experience.

This technique cultivates a deeper connection with your audience, boosting engagement, loyalty, and brand presence.

Benefits of Using Videos in User Onboarding

Visual and Interactive

Videos are a compelling way to capture users' attention, as they are a highly engaging, visual, and interactive medium.

Not only can videos help simplify complex concepts, but they can also help users understand how to use a product or service. Through videos, users can be guided through a process, making it easier for them to comprehend and follow along.

Videos can showcase the benefits of a product or service you are offering. Visual and interactive videos are easier to remember than long explanation text. More than 90% of businesses state that explainer videos have helped increase understanding of their products.

Role of Videos as a Marketing Tool

The popularity of videos as a popular marketing tool for businesses is ever-increasing. A staggering 85% of businesses incorporate video into their marketing efforts.

Video holds a significant role in the marketing strategies of companies, with 92% of marketers acknowledging its importance. And 48% of people believe videos are the most engaging form of communication.

The impact of video marketing goes beyond mere recognition, it also proves to be a lucrative investment.

An impressive 88% of marketers revealed that video marketing yields a positive return on investment (ROI). This statistic highlights the effectiveness and value that videos bring to promotional campaigns.

Increased Customer Engagement

Research illustrates that people are more likely to remember information when presented visually rather than simply through written or spoken words.

This is why adding videos to your marketing strategy can be so beneficial. Videos will give users a memorable and engaging experience while learning about your product or service.

Showcasing your product or service's key features and benefits via videos can ensure that users better understand what you're offering them, leading to higher engagement rates.

Boosts Adoption Rates

Onboarding customers correctly ensures they can make the most of your product. It guarantees that customers can quickly understand how to use and become comfortable with the product.

Onboarding videos can provide a concise and engaging overview of a product's features and functionalities.

They can walk new users through the setup process, demonstrate key product features, and showcase best practices for using the product.

Cost-Effective

Onboarding users can be costly and time-consuming, particularly with traditional onboarding methods. Traditional onboarding requires considerable resources and personnel to complete the process correctly and efficiently.

Onboarding videos are a one-time investment and can be used repeatedly without additional costs.

74% of marketers say that leveraging videos has produced a higher return on investment than using images alone. Users can watch onboarding videos at their own pace and flexibly. Users can watch the videos as often as they want until they understand the concepts.

Brands that Got User Onboarding Videos Right!

Slack

Slack has gained acclaim for its impressive user onboarding video, which effectively introduces users to its complex platform in a captivating way.

The video utilizes animated visuals, simplifying and illustrating the platform's features and functionalities.

This visual approach enhances users' comprehension of navigating Slack's interface and executing actions.

The incorporation of visuals also ensures a more engaging and memorable onboarding experience.

The video breaks down Slack's components, like channels, direct messages, and file sharing, in a clear, step-by-step manner.

Each feature is accompanied by concise and easily understandable explanations, enabling users to grasp the core concepts swiftly.

These straightforward explanations are vital in instilling confidence in users from the outset.

Dropbox

Dropbox, a popular cloud storage and file-sharing service, and its user onboarding video are designed to introduce new users to the platform and showcase its simplicity and convenience.

The video aims to demonstrate how easy it is to use Dropbox for uploading, sharing, and collaborating on files.

The user onboarding video employs relatable scenarios to help viewers understand how Dropbox can be integrated into their daily lives.

For example, it may show a person working on a project and needing to share files with team members. By showcasing these relatable scenarios, Dropbox aims to establish a connection with the viewers and emphasize the practicality of their service.

Dropbox's user onboarding video emphasizes the user-friendly nature of its service.

By showcasing its simplicity and convenience through relatable scenarios and providing clear instructions, Dropbox aims to make the onboarding process smooth and intuitive for new users.

Conclusion

Incorporating videos into your user onboarding process can be a game-changer when engaging and educating your users effectively.

By adhering to the strategies listed in this blog, you can leverage the power of videos to create compelling onboarding experiences that drive user adoption and satisfaction.

So, start creating engaging, informative, and visually captivating videos using StoryXpress for your user onboarding today, and watch as your users become enthusiastic advocates of your brand.