5 ms·

Ask HN: Examples of Great Getting Started Wizards

11 points by JangoSteve 16y ago

What examples do you have for great "getting started" wizards, preferably in web applications? My latest web application, LeadNuke.com, seems to be suffering from the all-too-familiar blank canvas problem. Potential customers seem to love the idea of LeadNuke, and indeed I have several paying companies "using" it at the moment. But I use the term "using" loosely. The biggest problem is that it's a unique kind of application with a unique setup process, and my users aren't necessarily the most web-savvy demographic. But I digress. Point is, until you get it set up and tweaked, it's essentially useless, and I'm trying to avoid a crippling churn rate. I've already automated as much of the setup process as possible (or at least as much as is plausible for now). I think the best thing for me to do, after talking to users, is to create a simple and elegant "getting started" wizard when users first login. And this comment in another thread referring to Skype [1] has motivated me to move this task up the queue. I don't want to reinvent the wheel. So, what web applications have already hit this out of the park? [1] http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1569147 EDIT: rmah on IRC pointed out that needing a "getting started" wizard may be an indicator that the app is too complicated. He is right, and I totally agree. In this case, it is too complicated for its target user. But I built it from need, and it does what it needs to. In the future, I plan on making it simpler.

ABrandt 16y ago
Even though dropbox is probably simple enough to use without one, their "getting started" walkthrough is really the golden standard in my mind. Grooveshark is a little different, but whenever you access the site from a new IP, their little tooltips are informative yet unobtrusive. They're constantly improving their product too so they help with that too. Just signed up for LeadNuke though, if anything comes to mind while I try it out I'll add it later.
- JangoSteve 16y ago
  Thanks! I hadn't even thought of controlling tips or the wizard by tracking IPs. That's an interesting idea.
hcho 16y ago
Android's widgets widget is quite good. Simple and to the point. Think Microsoft Office's paper clip, only that you can get rid of and which has 5 or 6 tips in it.
teyc 16y ago
The Obama campaign intranet used game mechanics to show people what task they can perform. http://www.empowerbase.com/index.php/organizational-change/organizing-like-obama-web-20-enabled-change-agents-in-action/ http://www.empowerbase.com/index.php/organizational-change/o... Some photo retouching tools show a grid the possible actions, so that users can select "brighter, more like this". etc.
coryl 16y ago
Why aren't you pricing lower to draw in startups? There is still some automation that could be done to make the process easier. For example, why not let users give you keyphrases, and you pull in "relevant" blogs/posts/sites that they can filter through? That helps reduce search time. (not sure what feed2lead does with RSS). Email templating is nice to have, but IMO most businesses probably won't use more than 3 different kinds of message. CRM add-ons are also useless IMO, unless your customers are specifically asking for integration for it. I would think most people who use your service wouldn't do enough volume to warrant it. Ideally in the future, you'd also want to integrate email directly through your app or the client's server. That way, you can send all at once, track responses automatically, and maybe do a few neat things with that. I had the same idea for this app while doing cold email sales to drum up business. The hardest part isn't sending the email, it's finding more and more sources.
- JangoSteve 16y ago
  I think you totally missed the mark on my target market. It's not aimed at startups. It's aimed at B2B companies, usually ones with sales teams. I actually had it priced much lower, but given what it does on the back end it wasn't sustainable. Also, I had many many people in the industry (including customers) telling me it should be priced 10X higher. Concerning allowing users to give key phrases, and it pulling relavent posts/sites/etc, it does that too. Email templating is nice to have, and you are correct, most businesses won't have more than 3-5 templates. But you'd be surprised how many variations you can come up with when you start emailing potential customers. Anyway, the limits that are there are the result of user feedback and monitoring actual use and interaction. CRM add-ons are not useless. Again, you're missing the mark on the target market. My target market uses CRM, and it has come up a lot (mostly customers asking when Salesforce integration will be complete). Anyway, I originally built in CRM integration because I needed it ;-) And finally, integrating email directly through the web app would actually be a detriment. Once again, this is a target market thing. Companies love that this "integrates" directly with their Outlook clients. They don't care that it was actually easier for me to do it that way. Quote from one potential customer (who is now an actual customer): "You might think about having it integrate with the customer's default email client like Outlook, because a lot of us in the industry use the built-in contacts feature as our directory and need it to go through that... Oh, it does?! I'll sign up today."
sr3d 16y ago
I checked out Dropbox's Getting Started page after reading the comment and liked it alot. In fact, I spent today implementing a getting-started page similar to Dropbox's one. In my case, Marrily is a B2C app, and the first impression of the average user (presumably females -- excited, frustrated, and maybe choosy because they will be emotionally attached to the app and the planning) will probably be critical. I have not looked around that much, but Dropbox's implementation is nice, and in my case I only had to tweak some code to get the Getting Started checklist to work. I'm not sure how well the Getting Started list would work when people use the app, but my gut feeling so far, as I pretended to be a new user, is that having a list of concrete steps to start without too much thinking is a no-brainer. Combining with a guided tour (e.g. mqmouse's suggestion of amberjack) with the list will be a good way to familiarize user with the app, and build up their engagement from passive (the app is there to be discovered) to guided (the app is presented visually and very direct). My take on this is the getting started should only highlight the most critical features of the app, while not forcing users to go through a lengthy wizard. This app comes to my mind as one of the worst wizards I've seen: http://www.rsvphere.com/ http://www.rsvphere.com/. Good luck and keep us posted with your progress.

11 points by JangoSteve 16y ago

ABrandt 16y ago

Even though dropbox is probably simple enough to use without one, their "getting started" walkthrough is really the golden standard in my mind. Grooveshark is a little different, but whenever you access the site from a new IP, their little tooltips are informative yet unobtrusive. They're constantly improving their product too so they help with that too. Just signed up for LeadNuke though, if anything comes to mind while I try it out I'll add it later.

JangoSteve 16y ago
Thanks! I hadn't even thought of controlling tips or the wizard by tracking IPs. That's an interesting idea.

hcho 16y ago

Android's widgets widget is quite good. Simple and to the point. Think Microsoft Office's paper clip, only that you can get rid of and which has 5 or 6 tips in it.

teyc 16y ago

The Obama campaign intranet used game mechanics to show people what task they can perform. http://www.empowerbase.com/index.php/organizational-change/organizing-like-obama-web-20-enabled-change-agents-in-action/ http://www.empowerbase.com/index.php/organizational-change/o... Some photo retouching tools show a grid the possible actions, so that users can select "brighter, more like this". etc.

coryl 16y ago

Why aren't you pricing lower to draw in startups? There is still some automation that could be done to make the process easier. For example, why not let users give you keyphrases, and you pull in "relevant" blogs/posts/sites that they can filter through? That helps reduce search time. (not sure what feed2lead does with RSS). Email templating is nice to have, but IMO most businesses probably won't use more than 3 different kinds of message. CRM add-ons are also useless IMO, unless your customers are specifically asking for integration for it. I would think most people who use your service wouldn't do enough volume to warrant it. Ideally in the future, you'd also want to integrate email directly through your app or the client's server. That way, you can send all at once, track responses automatically, and maybe do a few neat things with that. I had the same idea for this app while doing cold email sales to drum up business. The hardest part isn't sending the email, it's finding more and more sources.

JangoSteve 16y ago
I think you totally missed the mark on my target market. It's not aimed at startups. It's aimed at B2B companies, usually ones with sales teams. I actually had it priced much lower, but given what it does on the back end it wasn't sustainable. Also, I had many many people in the industry (including customers) telling me it should be priced 10X higher. Concerning allowing users to give key phrases, and it pulling relavent posts/sites/etc, it does that too. Email templating is nice to have, and you are correct, most businesses won't have more than 3-5 templates. But you'd be surprised how many variations you can come up with when you start emailing potential customers. Anyway, the limits that are there are the result of user feedback and monitoring actual use and interaction. CRM add-ons are not useless. Again, you're missing the mark on the target market. My target market uses CRM, and it has come up a lot (mostly customers asking when Salesforce integration will be complete). Anyway, I originally built in CRM integration because I needed it ;-) And finally, integrating email directly through the web app would actually be a detriment. Once again, this is a target market thing. Companies love that this "integrates" directly with their Outlook clients. They don't care that it was actually easier for me to do it that way. Quote from one potential customer (who is now an actual customer): "You might think about having it integrate with the customer's default email client like Outlook, because a lot of us in the industry use the built-in contacts feature as our directory and need it to go through that... Oh, it does?! I'll sign up today."

sr3d 16y ago

I checked out Dropbox's Getting Started page after reading the comment and liked it alot. In fact, I spent today implementing a getting-started page similar to Dropbox's one. In my case, Marrily is a B2C app, and the first impression of the average user (presumably females -- excited, frustrated, and maybe choosy because they will be emotionally attached to the app and the planning) will probably be critical. I have not looked around that much, but Dropbox's implementation is nice, and in my case I only had to tweak some code to get the Getting Started checklist to work. I'm not sure how well the Getting Started list would work when people use the app, but my gut feeling so far, as I pretended to be a new user, is that having a list of concrete steps to start without too much thinking is a no-brainer. Combining with a guided tour (e.g. mqmouse's suggestion of amberjack) with the list will be a good way to familiarize user with the app, and build up their engagement from passive (the app is there to be discovered) to guided (the app is presented visually and very direct). My take on this is the getting started should only highlight the most critical features of the app, while not forcing users to go through a lengthy wizard. This app comes to my mind as one of the worst wizards I've seen: http://www.rsvphere.com/ http://www.rsvphere.com/. Good luck and keep us posted with your progress.