You signed up, went through the initial setup flow, and you land in the first dashboard. But what’s next? How can you plan this screen to drive user activation? You don’t need to limit yourself to displaying one big CTA. So let’s look at some examples.
See 97 examples of First dashboards
Add a personalized Welcome!
Show the setup guide
The most popular approach is to move users to a separate page created solely for user onboarding purposes where they can follow a step-by-step onboarding setup wizard. This way you avoid any confusion as for what users should do next.
Invite for a live demo
Demo environment
This is probably one of the most powerful tactics as it lets users fully experience your app without spending time on the setup.
Create a demo environment filled with data where all the features are already set up, so users can click around and understand how it all works.
And viola—with one move you brought the friction down to zero!
Display sample data
Sample data is a less advanced version of the demo environment mentioned above. Here, you don’t create a separate, interactive instance of the app but rather show sample charts or previews of how it all could look in the future.
Guide attention with arrows/tooltips/hotspots
If your landing page has quite a few elements and it’s not obvious where to start, you can guide users attention with visual cues. It can be especially useful if you don’t have control over the page itself or don’t want to spend resources on lengthy development process. Guide users’ attention with hotspots or tooltips and make sure they know where to start.
Resources:
Tutorials and videos
Relevant content
As one of the secondary actions on the first screen after signup, you can add links to relevant content. Guides or blog posts that help your users achieve their goals will make your brand come as thoughtful and caring. Even, or maybe especially, if they are not related to user onboarding per se.
Just take a look at the example of Shopify onboarding—as you scroll down the page, they suggest you read about managing your finances. It creates the impression that Shopify will help you not only to accept orders but to run the business altogether.
An overview of what your product can do
Send users right to a feature setup
Depending on your software, you may consider moving users to a feature setup right away. It’s a perfect approach if your product has only one main function.
Because what’s the point of introducing an unnecessary step in-between if you can shorten the time to value (TTV)?
Remember: the less clicks, the better.
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