Onboarding experience (NUX)
Built a 0-1 product supporting direct and indirect tax accountants and finance professionals as they close the books at month's end.
I’ve written for many products and publications, but my favorite by far is crafting in-product content, onboarding, and step-by-step tutorials. I thoroughly enjoy working on enterprise products. Knowing people are using the tutorials or onboarding I’ve created to help them get through their workday easier is what motivates me.
Continuous Close product
Closing the books
The purpose of building the Continuous Close platform is to drastically disrupt antiquated accounting processes and methods to change the way accountants and financial experts close the books each month.
The people problem & why we’re working on this
“As an accountant, when I’m trying to complete a reconciliation, I have to sign in to many systems and then download several reports to complete my tasks. I want to be able to find all my reports in one place so that I can finish my reconciliation efficiently, and have a single source of support to give auditors when requested.” – Meta accountant
Users were also concerned about the amount of time it takes them to onboard new users. With ~300 new teams and people migrating into the Continuous Close process, we needed to make this experience as seamless and effortless as possible.
“Accountants work excessively long hours during close time [when accountants close the books at the month’s end]. We want to do more than just shorten the close, we want to get people home to their families earlier. We want people to have a normal working day even during the time of close.“ – Product Manager
How content helped
Building a zero-to-one product and drawing up a set of heavier messaging such as onboarding flows, guided tours, UI text, button labels, error messages and notifications takes time and planning from content strategy.
Desired audience response
Think: As an accountant, I’m relieved and comforted that there are finally new processes and practices available to help us get through the reconciliation process faster, saving us time to do more important things!
Feel: Secure, safe, warm, and motivated. I feel I can trust that this tool is reconciling data accurately and efficiently so I can do more valuable work by adding value back to the business.
Do: I want to save time so that I can add value back to the business by contributing predictions toward spending revenue, assets, liabilities and looking at trends.
The tone
Since accountants typically don’t trust new processes, but deeply appreciate and trust Excel, we needed to work harder than usual to build their trust and break old habits to help them move faster. Accountants are very busy working toward tight, rigorous deadlines, especially at the end of the month. While talking to users, we should be sensitive to their time and use a tone that's intentional and gets them through their workflow quickly.
The appropriate tones to apply to the Continuous Close product are: informational, educational, reassuring, helpful, supportive and encouraging.
Aside from the onboarding and new-user experience, it’s also critical that we use familiar, clear, and consistent terms and language throughout the Continuous Close product to help immediately start building trust with our users.
We'll tell users what’s happening with their data each step of the way by providing messaging in processing indicators that show how long an upload might take, where the data is coming from or other important processing information. We need clear error messages that tell users why they’re seeing the message and provide a clear path to resolve the issue. The product tour should initially offer a strong intro to the value prop coupled with a brief summary and calls to action. Button labels should be specific, clear and active. We need to provide contextual education when it’s needed and especially when expressed by users in research sessions. We should alert or notify users of actions they need to take in careful and non-intrusive ways.
For MVP, we built a welcome page, a new-user experience, and a product tour to help new users onboard their partner teams quickly.
Welcome content for new users
New-user experience
Product tour (phase 1)
Request for data
Here are some key data points I’d like to collect for the onboarding experience:
What: How many hours of training are happening offline now vs how many hours after the NUX was implemented
Why: Is it possible to get this data so that we can track success?
What: Number of people who see the NUX modal
Why: Will help us understand the total audience for the modal
What: Number of people who exit modal before the last slide
Why: Will help us understand how many people don’t find the information valuable and also whether this is the right approach for a new user experience. e.g., perhaps a product tour is more valuable.
What: Number for people who complete modal experience
Why: Indicates how valuable the NUX modal is to help people understand product changes.
What: Number of people who exit per carousel
Why: Will indicate where people lose interest. If they exit on slide 1, then obviously this isn’t the right new user experience and we should probably try something else.
What: Time spent per carousel
Why: Indicates whether people are reading the content on each slide or not.
What: Time spent for whole NUX modal
Why: Indicates whether people are reading the content on each slide or not.