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Introduction
User Onboarder shows onboarding content inside your website or web app: product tours, checklists, announcements, hotspots, surveys and a resource center. You build guides in the dashboard, point them at parts of your app with the visual builder, and decide who sees them and where. Everything people do with a guide is recorded, so you can see what works.
Who these docs are for
- Guide authors (product, support, customer success) create and publish guides. No coding needed. Start with the Quick start, then Product tours and The visual builder.
- Developers add one snippet to the site and tell User Onboarder who is signed in. Start with Install the snippet and Identify users.
The building blocks
| Term | What it means |
|---|---|
| Workspace | One website or app. It has its own snippet, guides, users, analytics and team. You can belong to several workspaces. |
| Guide | One piece of onboarding content. There are four types (below). |
| Snippet | A small script tag your developers add to every page. It loads the guides and reports what users do. |
| User | A person using your app (not a dashboard member). Identified users have the id your app gives them; anonymous visitors get a random id. |
| Draft / live | Every guide has a draft that you edit and a live version that users see. Publish copies the draft to the live version. |
| Targeting | Rules for which pages and which users a guide appears for, and how often. |
Guide types
| Type | Looks like | Good for |
|---|---|---|
| Product tour | A series of tooltips, each pointing at an element, or centered modals | Walking new users through a workflow |
| Checklist | A launcher button in the corner that opens a task list with a progress bar | Onboarding goals that take several sessions |
| Announcement | A centered modal or a banner across the top | Release news, maintenance notices |
| Hotspots | Pulsing dots on elements; clicking one shows a hint | Pointing out features without interrupting |
| Survey | A card in the corner (or a modal) asking one question at a time | NPS, feedback, research |
| Resource center | A help button that opens a panel with search, guides, a checklist, articles, links and contact | Self-serve help people can come back to |
How a guide reaches a user
- A user opens a page of your app. The snippet loads and asks the server which live guides this user may see.
- The server checks the guide's user rules (plan, role, sign-up date…) and the user's history (already completed? dismissed?).
- In the browser, the snippet checks the page rules against the current address, then shows the guide. Only one tour, announcement or survey is on screen at a time; checklists, hotspots and the resource center launcher can appear alongside.
- Views, steps, completions and dismissals are sent back and show up in Analytics.