

Ask HN: Can bad onboarding destroy user activation? - curiously

So I&#x27;m bootstrapping a SaaS that lets users upload videos and do data mining on it. I had a few customers so I know that it is working and providing value.<p>But what&#x27;s happening next is really stressful. It goes something like this in a typical week.<p>I see a bunch of trial sign ups. I get excited.<p>User uploads videos but they did not configure the settings correctly so they end up with bad data.<p>User tries a few more times or gives up or reaches out to me.<p>The majority of people are just giving up and never returning.<p>The ones that try it a few more times ends up requiring extra features I need to build that will take a long time and they won&#x27;t pay up front for it.<p>The ones that reach out, I teach them how to use it properly. Only a few of these actually become customer.<p>My question is, is my onboarding broken and is it stopping user&#x27;s from becoming activated? Is the first experience enough to destroy the product&#x27;s value proposition?<p>What about for the people that ask for features so they can get what they want out of it but unwilling to commit up front for it and expect me to work on it for weeks and still trust them to pay for it after?<p>OR is this a completely different issue? am I simply getting non serious people signing up and draining my resources and causing stress?<p>I do have some plans to address both:<p>1) hold webinars or do screen share demo as a mandatory step after signing up<p>2) get rid of free trial<p>3) identify new target customers and discover market channels to reach them.<p>What do you think? Really could use some advice here! Thank you.
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nostrademons
Speaking from experience trying out various SaaS products - if I hit an
obvious bug or get corrupted data when I try out a demo, I immediately give up
on the product and try something else. Reasons:

1.) It speaks really poorly of the level of polish that I should expect in the
product later. You'd think that someone would at least run through the demo to
make sure it works without error.

2.) Usually if I'm evaluating a product I'm evaluating multiple products, and
also have the option of building my own on the table if none of them work out.
An early error is just a signal to focus my efforts on one of the other
products on the marketplace.

I think you might _also_ have a problem with the product concept, if the folks
who do try it without error want additional features or aren't using it even
after training. But to answer your question - yes, a bad demo or onboarding
experience will absolutely destroy interest.

~~~
curiously
1) That's what I suspected. 2) What if I force them to hold my hand so that I
can show them to how to properly use it and convince them that it works?

Since first impression is so important, and the product needs hand holding to
demonstrate it's value, my free trials would essentially be hurting me.

There are some video files that give a lot of trouble so it's really to
support their very custom requirements as the product for the paying users
works fine. It's those people that want the custom work done for free which I
don't think is a great people to target.

~~~
xkcd-sucks
For users that abandon it, you could process the video that they've already
uploaded and email the results to them, along with a short screencast/tutorial
of how you did it? As long as there aren't legal/ethical issues with doing
that.

Also, datamining is like 95% trivial and 5% picking the right parameters, so
you might focus a bit more on making the automagic parameter selection a
little more useful

~~~
curiously
yes I have done that before, record a screencast of how I did it and even
email them the successful result. most of the time I got back no reply.

It works for majority of cases but still the tail scenarios where it will
choke. those edge cases consume majority of my development resources. I'm at a
point where I think I will just say, 'not yet supported but will let you know'
and instead focus my efforts on the cases that I can actually support.

