How to effectively get data from onboarding process?

Question

We currently have a very basic onboarding process when signing up for the platform. It consists of 3 screens:

1. Welcomes you to the platform
2. Asks to input personal data (Birthday, gender, city they currently reside in, country, birthplace)
3. Asks you to write a short description of yourself, choose soft skills from a drop-down as well as professional skills form another drop-down.

One can say we are asking for somewhat sensitive data, but the reason for that is team matchmaking. We want to put users into teams based on their current residency as well as the combination of soft and hard skills. However, the onboarding process seems not motivating and rather aggressive.

Reading about different onboarding methods, I mainly gathered information on that there should be an introduction of the platform and then some kind of tutorial (simply put). But I couldn't find anything on how to effectively get data from users in the onboarding process.

So, how can we make it more motivating for users to complete onboarding and not skip? Is there a logical order on what questions to ask first and what last? Make it gamified? Maybe also making chips instead of drop-downs?

Answer 1

Onboarding should not be used to gather such data. It should be a quick intro to the features of the application. Once the user is aware of what the application does, let him/her discover the advanced features layer by layer. Too many questions at the beginning will discourage users from getting to the main features.

You can run a quick Onboarding and then let users sign in. Then display the next steps one by one – 'Add a description to help others know you better. Receive invites based on your interests.' Something of that sort.

Perhaps –

1. Onboarding – success ✓ (You are now ready to try our application)
2. Sign Up – success ✓ (You have successfully created your account. Lets add your interests.)
3. Add interests and description – success ✓
4. …