5 of the Best User Onboarding Tools for Walk Throughs
See 5 user onboarding tools that help you walk a customer through your site without needing to code.
Even when a customer needs your tool, some of them still don’t use it and eventually they churn. It’s because they don’t understand how to use it despite your great user interface. We’ll show you 5 user onboarding tools that help you walk a customer through your site without needing to code.
What are walk-through tools?
Walk-through tools sit on top of your website to guide customers step by step when they first sign up.
They’re often pop-ups like the image below that tell you where to click and what that feature does.
They generally don’t require any coding.
We’ll show you 5 tools of which 4 are automatic and the 5th is manual, for guiding non-tech users where real people need to be involved.
Many of these walk-through tools have a very similar feature set but the look and feel of each, as you play with them, is quite different.
1. WalkMe is the original walk-through tool with everything you need
WalkMe allows you to build walk-through tutorials for users with no installations.
It includes tools like pop-up balloons, notification bars, and call-to-action buttons to “walk users through” every step of any process until completion.
‘WalkMe is used by Enterprises from a wide range of industries and verticals to increase sales and conversion rates, boost UX, reduce support costs, and improve employee productivity.
Our vision is to match the capability of people with the capability of technology.’
Main Features
Unlimited Walk-Thrus, Multiple Support Options and Domains, Full Help Desk Integration, Design Flexibility, Full Interface Control, Advanced API Support, Multi-language, Self-Hosting Option, Analytics, SSL Support.
Pricing
WalkMe offers two enterprise pricing plans —
- An unlimited time free plan in which it allows you to make three walkthroughs
- A custom plan which you need to get a quote custom built for your company
See more: https://www.walkme.com
2. Appcues make personalized products that your users will love
Appcues is a non-code, user experience guide tool that allows you to build walk-throughs on your own site.
This app is more about the design of the walk-throughs, also focusing on personalization. You can customize patterns such as how, when, and where to show tooltips, modals, and hotspots.
‘Emails and blog posts just aren’t cutting it. Call out features inside your product, when users are ready and able to take action.’
‘You’ve brought personalization into top of the funnel interactions. Apply that same level of targeting inside your product to increase engagement.’
Main Features
Unlimited flows, Audience targeting and personalization, Flow analytics, Advanced behavioral targeting, A/B testing, Customization, Advanced user permissions.
Pricing
Appcues pricing is relative to the amount of active users you have. You guessed it… the more users the more you pay!
They have starter, standard, and enterprise options, with the enterprise option always being set to ‘Let’s talk’.
2,500 users is $199 / month
20,000 — 50,000 users is $779 / month
See more: https://www.appcues.com
3. Analyze and Engage with WhatFix’s captivating designs
Design, engage, and analyze are the three key words WhatFix base their product on.
WhatFix created an app where real-time interactive guides and attractive designs are the focal point of capturing the user's attention.
They hone in on the importance of analyzing the user's engagement by measuring with advanced analytics.
‘Whatfix is a performance support platform for businesses to ease onboarding, improve support, and reduce training effort for its users.’
Main Features
Easy Guide Creation, Rich Display Options, Multiple Touchpoints Engagement, Multilingual and Multi-Device Support, Zero Code Integration, Smart Targeting, User Level Tracking, Compatibility And Cross Browser Support, Frames Support.
Pricing
Whatfix customizes their pricing depending on their customers' specific needs though according to their user reviews, they are significantly cheaper than WalkMe.
See more: https://whatfix.com
4. Nickelled understands the need for speed for efficient onboarding
Nickelled can be deployed straight from the website so that visitors can instantly get access to the knowledge they need.
They pride themselves on users being able to update their guide in just two minutes — with no coding and no changes to your website required. You can also share guides with others simply by copying and pasting.
‘Just point and click. Create your first guide in 2-minutes (no coding required and no changes to your website — for real)’
Main Features
Custom Tutorial Creation, Responsive Web Demos, Theme Creator, Multiple Language Support, Collaboration, Guide Link Sharing, Guide Feedback Gathering, Branded Domain, Analytics, Weekly Progress Reports, Integrations.
Pricing
Nickelled's pricing plan is based on how many guides you need; this can be added to once you are signed up.
For creating and deploying 10 different user guides, it’s $99 / month
For 50 guides, it’s $249 / month
See more: https://www.nickelled.com
5. For onboarding even the toughest non-tech users? Get UserView
Does the following personality sound familiar?
- This person doesn’t understand your automated walk-through steps.
- They don’t really take in your other help guides or videos.
- They will ask you lots of questions and take up lots of time.
- Even after asking lots of questions, they will not use the product much.
- They will never subscribe to a paid plan.
- However, they do want your product and are able to pay.
What went wrong?
Some of your toughest non-tech users need to be shown your site MANUALLY 1 to 1 by a real person.
You have to sit next to them and explain things and click for them.
You mean screen sharing?
No, with screen sharing, you have to ask them to download software and go to some other link.
They will struggle to do that. It takes too long.
You need something instant and without downloads.
Is there such a thing?
Walk them through your site as if you’re sitting next to them using UserView co-browsing.
Co-browsing is when you can instantly see their screen and browse the website together while talking. No downloads nonsense!
You can remotely scroll for them, click for them, highlight links, and even draw circles around buttons to show them where to click.
Find out more about UserView here:
New entries we've come across: Userlane
Userlane is the navigation system for software that understands how to guide users to customer success.
Userlane is both a customer onboarding automation platform and user guidance solution for mid-sized to large enterprise SaaS companies looking to increase engagement and activation via interactive performance support.
With Userlane, users are guided logically through processes in any browser-based software application in real time, directly on screen. The platform requires no coding and offers a customizable solution.
SaaS companies embed Userlane directly into their software and use the platform’s interactive guides to create easy-to-understand process walkthroughs and product and onboarding tours.
Main Features
Customer segmentation (creating different discovery journeys and walkthroughs for different user segments).
A Virtual Assistant (users can access it on demand).
A powerful editor to build guides.
Contextual guides can be triggered automatically or via hyperlink, fully interactive experience.
Contextual segmentation, browser neutral, an overlay that blocks out every element in the UI except for the one the user needs to interact with.
Ability to add media elements (videos or pictures) in steps, multilingual guides, analytics, ability to interact with every possible in-app event from page changes to text input and autofill, single or double right/left clicks, hover, drag and drop, and more.
Pricing
Userlane’s pricing is modular and is based on the number of users, features, deployment, and additional services. The customer success program, which comes with each plan, is free. There’s no limit in terms of the number of guides.
See more:
Related: 4 statistics on why companies are rapidly taking up co-browsing