I always like seeing how different companies onboard their customers. Some approaches work really well and some … don’t.

Some companies just try to get you to perform a task or action in their application right away.

Others want you to get a PhD in the application before you can use them.

I recently onboarded two new apps at ScreenSteps. One was an enterprise grade application complete with documentation, onboarding tutorials, a full university, one-on-one office hours, and a collection of webinars.

Clearly their philosophy was, “more is better.”

The second was from a small start-up that instantly presented me with guides that helped me accomplish a key task in the app right away.

Both are excellent applications.

But both were missing a key ingredient — the big picture.

As I was getting started with the enterprise-level app there were several tools that seemed useful. Their university showed me how to do everything I could possibly want to do with the features. But nowhere could I find the answer to these questions:

• “Why would I use this feature?”
• “How does this relate to other features?”
• “What are the consequences of using this feature?”

There was a lot of information on the how but almost nothing on the why.

For example, in one of the areas of the app it let me define core competencies that we wanted to use in our employee reviews. Along the competency feature was a Themes option. While there was plenty of information about how to set up Themes, there was nothing telling me what problem Themes were designed to fix. 

That was true for many aspects of the tool. I am still struggling to understand how all the parts fit together so I have scheduled some time with their CS team to talk it through with them.

The second app did a good job of helping me accomplish something quickly. It is much simpler — aimed at single users. While I found I was productive right away, I also saw a lot of other features that looked interesting. But it wasn’t clear how everything connected together. 

For example, there was a Media option in the sidebar. It was clear I could upload media, but it wasn’t clear why I would want to do that.

I later had a conversation with one of the co-founders and he explained it all to me. Once the co-founder had explained the purpose of each feature, everything fell into place.

Do you see the common thread?

The Importance of Foundational Knowledge

In the above examples, both companies had failed to provide a resource that could give me foundational knowledge. What is foundational knowledge?

Foundational knowledge is the background information you need to understand the environment you are working in. It focuses on:

• Why a feature exists
• High-level overviews of what you will use a tool to do
• Simple explanations about how different parts of an application interact

Without this understanding, I find myself wandering around trying to find clues as to why something was created and why I would use it.

When you present foundational information to your employees or customers, you will greatly improve the onboarding experience.

We used to have users get confused about our app all of the time. We were making the same mistakes these companies are!

But then Jonathan created a ScreenSteps Basics course that customers take right when they get started with the application. It’s short, high-level, and low on detail. But it helps users see the big picture. And once they understand the big picture, it’s much easier for everything else to fall into place.

So, if you are building an onboarding program (either for customers or employees), take a moment to evaluate how well you are painting the big picture. Improvements there will pay big dividends later on.

And, if you'd like to learn a bit more about what to include in your foundational knowledge resources, check out this YouTube video from Jonathan.  

Talk soon,

Greg