I just listened to Scott Bellsky explain the importance of a product’s first mile on Intercom’s podcast. The first mile comes right after someone signs up for your product. It is often referred to as an onboarding experience. This is where you orient your users within your product and give them a sense of what they’re going to do next. Careful attention is paid to the type of copy you write, how your tour looks, and what defaults you set for your users.
According to Scott, the key is to have someone do a few key things that shows them the value of your product over the long term.
Here are some of the notes I took from the podcast:
- The first mile is usually the last mile a team focuses on. Teams often spend lots of time building their products and only think about the onboarding experience as an after thought or when they see their users aren’t sticking around.
- Scott believes that in the first 15-30 seconds of every new customers experience, they are lazy, vein, and selfish. Lazy because they don’t want to read or do any work. Vein because they want to know how the product will make them better. Selfish because they want the product to make them look good. These are important characteristics to keep in mind when crafting this experience.
- He suggests that maybe we shouldn’t tell them or show them, but rather we should just do it for them with the defaults completed.
- It’s important to remember we can’t believe people will have a relationship with us if they can’t get through those first interactions. They can’t buy into our vision or to recommend us to other people. It just needs to serve them now!
- The first mile is successful when users reach the “zone”. When they experience that sense of accomplishment and see how the product will serve them in the future.
- Messaging apps like Telegram and Slack have really smooth onboarding. They even think about the small things like the magic link to log you in because when users come back the second time, they don’t usually remember their passwords.
- The first mile isn’t something that can be done once and forgotten about. It’s important to continually optimize the first mile by understanding your users and being empathetic to their needs and circumstances.
You can listen to the full podcast on Intercom’s blog or your can learn more about the first mile by reading Scott’s blog post on Medium.
