Where to land after the onboarding process?

Question

I'm developing a social media app and I'm currently mapping out the onboarding process.

My onboarding process won't include fulfilling profile information, adding profile pictures, etc. in order to keep it short and concise. It will include things like interests and suggested contacts.

In this case, should I have first time users land directly on their profile page straight after the onboarding is complete? (The profile page is not the usual landing page for existing users.)

My aim would be to prompt them to fill out their profile without forcing them to do so in the onboarding process (as customizing your profile would be more of an extension of the onboarding process, but is not required).

• Would this be a generally acceptable method?
• Are there any other methods to prompt users to complete their profile without forcing them through a lengthy onboarding process?

Answer 1

Do it the linked in way. Have a progress bar, showing how much their profile is complete. Gamify it or provide rewards (if possible) as and when users complete their profiles.

So, you could have the user land on your main & important landing page after onboarding. Where, the user could the progress bar.

Answer 2

You should land the users directly to the feed-page, as they(users) have already shared there preferences and if you are able to land them directly to the results/content page that will give a positive impression, as the primary reason users have installed your app is to see the content [as it's a social media app, assuming you are showing some UGC and news as well or suggestions of other persons to follow or add, as per your app model].

No one wants to fill long forms, but by showing the benefit and kind of content, it's easier to motivate them to fill up the form. @Kishan has a great suggestion of doing this the 'linkedin way' even I second that.

The nudge should be soft and should not appear to be like a 'blocker'.

Have implemented the same strategy on one of my project and experimented with both the flows.

1. Landing to profile completion page.
2. Landing the users to feed/content/results page and asking the users softly for rest of the informations.

the second flow has much more significant positive results and one observation was that, some users (in our case ~7%) was filling just the mandatory fields of the form just to get rid of that, when we landed them directly to the profile page.

Answer 3

I agree with what most people here are suggesting. The reason your users are signing up is for the content, so when they are done with their onboarding they should be directed to the feed.

Many sites are using Gamification to encourage their users to complete their profiles. Kishan beat me to it with the LinkIn example. They have done an excellent job at using gamification. I've seen a lot of other examples where users are given a percentage on how finished their profiles are (e.g."65% complete").