WELT News App Mobile Onboarding Teaser
WELT News App
UX Concept case study for a mobile app onboarding
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My role
Benchmarking
Research
Facilitator
UX Concept
Prototyping
The team
Product Owner
Premium Team
Editorial Team
UX Team Lead
UI Designer
UX Researcher
App Developers
Deliverables
Stakeholder interviews
Brainstorming Workshop
App Onboarding
Plus Onboarding
Mid Fidelity Prototype
Project Vision
Providing an effective mobile application onboarding can significantly impact customer retention and churn rate reduction. According to a 2022 study, despite having an average of 40 apps installed, users spend around 89% of their screen time with a mere 18 applications. Securing a spot within these preferred 18 apps, as opposed to being overshadowed by competitors, depends highly on the user's very first encounter with your app.
In this project, I worked on a mobile app onboarding strategy and concept. The primary objective was to spotlight the most sought-after features within the WELT News app, catering to users during their first journey with our platform. The project had another dimension due to the concurrent task assigned to our UX Product team—creating an in-app onboarding experience tailored for fresh WELTplus subscribers. This specialized onboarding aimed to emphasise the added benefits coming along with their recent WELTplus subscription.
Core Objectives
From the very beginning, a multifaceted challenge underscored the project as I needed to create two distinct onboarding concepts, while focusing on various aspects like avoiding information overload, and following UX best practices. To be successful in my work, I needed to make sure that I am keeping all the five goals in balance and in front of my eyes.
Navigating the Landscape
Throughout the project, I observed a certain fluidity in the terminology when discussing onboardings and recognized instances of using specific terms interchangeably. This made me to undertake a comprehensive exploration of the realm of "first-screens”, that involved a thorough understanding of distinctions between launch screens, splash screens, and the rest. To bring everyone working on the project aligned, I gave a presentation that showcased an array of initial mobile app interactions designed to welcome, inform, or guide users effectively. By synchronising our terminology and by having a shared understanding, we could ensure a united approach moving forward.
Ideation & Brainstorming
Once everyone was up-to-date about the different kind of welcome screens and onboardings, I facilitated a brainstorming session where the participants (our stakeholders from the Product, Editorial, Developer teams) were encouraged to envision the ideal onboarding experience and generate different ideas based on the earlier introduced industry best practices.
Relying on the data I gathered through user interviews, benchmarking and the brainstorming workshop, I defined the how might we statement and started working on the onboarding concept.
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“How might we create an engaging and informative onboarding experience for both WELT News app users and new WELTplus subscribers, effectively introducing core features without overwhelming them?”
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To avoid ambiquity and misunderstandings, I am going to call the onboarding displayed to new users introducing our features, App onboarding, while the second onboarding will be referred to as Plus onboarding, displayed only for new WELTPlus members.
Onboarding Strategy
I continued my work by creating a comprehensive user journey for an onboarding concept that included the following key components:
- an app walkthrough showcasing our highlighted features
- a login/registration screen
- a progressive onboarding, when prompted, showing our users our best features
- Plus / Premium onboarding, provided by the WELTplus team (below)
The initial concept appeared substantial, yet a closer examination of the user flow unveiled clashes between the App and Plus onboarding triggers. These conflicts hinged on the timing of user subscription to the Plus account. New subscriptions could occur any time: during registration, before content engagement, upon accessing the first Plus article, or even months post-download after consuming numerous free articles.
The user flow above displays a possible way of how users might encounter the app and plus related screens. It also shows why the app onboarding would not be in sync with the recommended onboarding I got from the Plus team. I used this flow to backup my reasoning when presenting my suggestions to the stakeholders.
Optimizing User Experience
After the stakeholder check-in, I came up with a more unified concept, where the App onboarding screens were prioritised while the Plus onboarding, that became a walkthrough, is only shown to the user after they "completed" the App onboarding.
This userflow was more refined, but somehow it still felt overwhelming. Given the numerous possibilities of how readers interact with our app, with this concept implemented they would encounter a new piece of information on almost every screen, potentially ruining the first experience due to information overload. A quick guerrilla research reassured me in my assumption and I decided to adjust the flow in a way that users always encountered an intermittent screen between two onboarding tooltips, with no new piece of information.
The blueprint below proved to be a helpful aid for me to oversee this extensive userflow.
Relying on this blueprint, I created the complete onboarding concept, showcasing both the feature-related onboarding and the plus subscription benefits in a well-timed manner.
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Please note: The user flow below shows a case when a new reader interacts with the app the first time and signs up for WELTplus only after having spent a certain amount of time with browsing and reading articles.
User Feedback & Insights
Once the concept was accepted by the stakeholders, it was high-time for testing! Accompanied by our user researcher, I conducted a remote user feedback coffee session with 5 WELT readers. We presented the onboarding concept in a clickable prototype format to get their first impressions, collect their feedback and to figure out whether they understand it.
Our test participants demonstrated a clear understanding of both the App onboarding and the WELTplus onboarding. Their feedback was positive, with only minor, constructive remarks.  A participant expressed his interest in having some degree of customisation as part of the onboarding experience. He felt that being able to choose topics of particular interest to them could enhance their initial interaction. We liked this idea but we were putting it in the backlog, considering the business needs at the time.
Final Refinements & Handover
After presenting the refined onboarding concepts to stakeholders, the reception was positive, with key elements of the design resonating strongly with the project's goals. The proposed concepts effectively addressed user pain points and aligned seamlessly with the business needs. My concept was handed over to the UI Designer of our team, where it underwent the transformation from idea to tangible design.