for developers

Building User Onboarding That Actually Works

The Open Graph #1

Welcome to The Open Graph, a newsletter by Gravatar that’s all about helping you create better user experiences on the internet. You’ll also learn how Gravatar can be the foundation to making your users’ lives better on your application and across the whole web. Read on, and become part of our mission to create a more open, connected, and user-centric internet.

—

Today, let’s talk about user onboarding. Not the theoretical, picture-perfect kind you see in UX case studies, but the real, practical process of getting users to understand and embrace your product.

The Real Cost of Poor Onboarding

Here’s what we often see: developers spend months perfecting their product’s features, only to lose users in the first few minutes because of a clunky onboarding process. It’s like building a beautiful house but forgetting to put in a front door.

The truth is simple: the first few minutes of user interaction with your product can make or break their entire experience. No pressure, right?

Starting Right: The Sign-up Sweet Spot

The first rule of user onboarding? Don’t make users think more than they have to. Here’s what works:

  1. Minimize Initial Friction
    • Ask only for essential information
    • Implement social logins strategically
    • Use progressive profiling (gather more data as users engage)
  2. Smart Defaults Matter Consider this: every field you auto-fill is one less reason for users to abandon your signup flow.

Here’s where Gravatar comes in. When you integrate Gravatar, you’re not just adding avatars – you’re tapping into a pre-existing user profile system that can:

  • Auto-populate user information
  • Provide consistent identity across platforms
  • Reduce signup friction significantly

Our new native integrations for the Gravatar mobile SDK make it even easier to integrate Gravatar into your app, giving you ready-to-use UI components and streamlined avatar management through the new Avatar Change Flow. Our Gravatar mobile SDK got called one of the best tools for iOS developers by iOS Dev Tools this month, and also got a shoutout in Android Weekly! How’s that for a ringing endorsement?

Beyond the Basics: Personalization That Works

The key to effective onboarding isn’t just about getting users in the door – it’s about showing them the right path once they’re inside. Here’s how:

  1. Smart Segmentation
    • Use brief, focused microsurveys
    • Adapt the experience based on user goals
    • Show relevant features first
  2. Progressive Discovery Instead of overwhelming users with features, guide them through progressive stages:
    • Essential features first
    • Advanced features as users grow
    • Contextual help when needed

Don’t overwhelm your users!

A common mistake in onboarding implementation is trying to show and explain everything at once. Instead of building an onboarding flow that dumps all features on your users immediately, structure it around their goals and progress. 

Think of it this way: rather than having steps like “show all features,” “explain everything,” and “hope users figure it out,” build your flow around “identify user goals”, “show relevant features,” and “celebrate their first successful action.” This goal-oriented approach keeps users engaged and helps them find value faster.

A couple of examples

  1. On Gravatar we just rolled out a new guided onboarding which only includes the four features and areas that we know encourage users to come back in the future and share their profiles publicly. It was tempting (and hard) not to include more!
  2. Our favorite podcasts app, Pocket Casts, is working on providing better podcast recommendations to users. We’re helping them use our free and open APIs so that the millions of users who have provided interests to Gravatar can have their interests pre-loaded in Pocket Casts. Resulting in a much faster and tailored onboarding experience.

Measuring What Matters

The difference between good and great onboarding often comes down to what you measure and how you act on those measurements. While it’s tempting to track everything, focus on these key metrics that directly impact user success:

  • Time to first value (TTFV): How quickly users experience your product’s core benefit. The shorter this time, the more likely users are to stick around. Industry leaders aim for TTFV within the first 1-2 minutes of signup.
  • Completion rate of key actions: What percentage of users complete crucial setup steps? This tells you if your onboarding is actually guiding users toward success or losing them along the way.
  • Drop-off points: Where exactly do users abandon your onboarding? These points of friction are your biggest opportunities for improvement and should guide your optimization efforts.
  • User activation rate: The percentage of users who become truly engaged with your product after onboarding. This is your north star metric – it tells you if your onboarding is actually creating active users or just completing a process.

Quick Implementation Checklist

✓ Minimize form fields
✓ Implement social/Gravatar authentication
✓ Create clear success metrics
✓ Design guided first-time user actions
✓ Set up analytics tracking

Get Started with Gravatar 

Using Gravatar as your website or application’s profile system is a gamechanger for onboarding – it saves your users time at the profile creation stage, and gives you access to more immediate data that lets you segment your audiences and create personalized onboarding experiences for each user group. Check out our developer documentation for a quick implementation guide.

P.S. Have questions about implementing better user onboarding?
Reply to this email – we’d love to help!