In Pursuit of Product-Led User Activation
Franciska Dethlefsen and the Iteratively team want to give their users an awesome first-time experience with their product to ensure user activation and adoption. In the early life of their product, calls and demos were a key part of their sales process, but they wanted to move to a more product-led approach. To avoid having to spend expensive developer time to solve this challenge they started looking for a no/low-code solution to build in-app product tours.
Initially they decided on one vendor they used for other purposes and built out a simple tour that they planned to use for a big launch. Unfortunately, just before the launch, they had to disable it, due to a bug with the vendors’ system. The launch still went well, but due to the bug and general lack of features, they started looking for a more advanced solution.
The challenges
- Activating leads to convert more trials
- Building product-led user onboarding
- Finding a solution that could be managed by non-developers and yet support advanced customization
Why they chose Userflow
- User-friendly and advanced flow builder
- Ability to iteratively test and improve their onboarding
- Advanced feature set including Segment Integration and version and environment control
The results
- High completion rate of onboarding flows
- A smooth experience without bugs
- A trend towards higher user activation
Evaluated Several Vendors and Chose Userflow
After the experience with their other vendor, Franciska and Iteratively went looking for other options. They tried at all the major players before finally deciding on Userflow. Franciska especially liked the feature set of Userflow as well as the powerful flow builder, which gave a better user experience than the screen-by-screen editors she had seen at other vendors.
“Userflow checked all the boxes. It had all the advanced functionality we needed, as well as a strong UX—it was easy to use from the beginning.”
- Franciska Dethlefsen, Iteratively
Franciska and the Iteratively team also liked the abilities to better customize flows, such as inserting tooltips in dropdowns and branching flows via if this, then that rules. They were also impressed by the strong environment and version control, which allowed them to easily do iterative testing while keeping track of versions in different environments. With other vendors, they had to duplicate the content for each environment.
Finally, they enjoyed that Userflow was eating their own dog food and was using Userflow own in-app onboarding tools to onboard users. This also gave inspiration for how Iteratively could build out their onboarding flows.
“Userflow gave us an awesome first-time experience with their platform, exactly like what we want to provide to our own users - And since then they have only kept impressing us”
- Franciska Dethlefsen, Iteratively
Iteratively Building Out Onboarding For Activation and Adoption
With Userflow, Franciska and the Iteratively team built a general onboarding flow for their trial—and the results spoke for themselves. Unlike their previous vendor, they encountered no blocking bugs disrupting the experience, and completion rates have been strong.
Looking ahead, they plan to enhance their flows with onboarding checklists and a Segment integration, allowing them to trigger experiences based on real user actions and attributes. Launchers and surveys are also on the roadmap as they focus on long-term retention. Throughout it all, the ability to move fast without pulling in developers has proven invaluable—letting the team test, learn, and improve on their own terms.
"Taking ownership of product onboarding has been a game-changer for us. I no longer have to bug engineering and wait for availability–I can move fast and experiment as I go.”
