The Aha! moment. The moment when your users first realise the value your product provides. 

Here's how you can get your users to the Aha! moment and convert them to paid users. 💰🧵

To make things easier, I'll use an Email App as an example for all my explanations throughout the thread.

I've tried to be inclusive of whom this can help, from small apps to large apps. Feedback is always welcome!

(1/17) Identify your aha! moment.

If you aren't aware of what value is to your users installing your app. There's no point in building an optimised onboarding flow until you identify it.

So, how do you figure out what the aha! moment for your app is?

(2/17) Start by talking to your most ideal and loyal users

These users are the ones who love your product, who refer other users, started paying without any hesitation. Ask them questions like:

(3/17) Talk to your churned users

This will be difficult, I've reached out to churned users and offered 50$ - 100$ to get on a 30 min call.

You would want to understand why they didn't see value in your product. Ask them questions like:

(4/17) If you have zero/few users

You can still improve your onboarding by using User Journey Mapping which I'll go into detail 🧵(9/17).

(5/17) Analytics

Using analytics tools like Mixpanel and Fullstory, we can understand patterns between paying users vs churned users.

e.g Converted users sent 1st email after they got 100 subscribers. Churned users sent 1 email with 0 subscribers.

(📩 DM if you have  analytics-related questions) 

(6/17) Now that we know what the value is. In case of our example, getting new users to send their first email. We can guide users to the aha! moment.

(7/17) Set expectations on App Store's page.

The first touch point we have with our users is in the Shopify App store. Communicate what your app does clearly so that they use your app with the right expectations.

(8/17) Then comes the onboarding. 

It is a tool we use to help users get to the aha! moment. It helps the user ease into the app, and understand it better.

See how we improved our onboarding journey at @pushowl 

https://twitter.com/adhithya_vijai/status/1564696549380489216?s=20&t=80zKgJEsU28PsHJbtuE-vA

(9/17) Get users to the aha! moment faster.

We'll use a design practice called 'User Journey Mapping'. We simply list down all the touch points a user takes before getting to the aha! moment.

This helps you visualise how long your flow is, and helps you make improvements.

(Analytics tools also provide a User Journey Map)

(10/17) Assume this is our current onboarding flow.

We see it's a 5 step process to get to the email builder. Then the user needs to create the email from scratch before they send it and get to the aha! moment. 

(11/17) Instead of taking a user through the pain of doing everything, we can create templates to reduce their effort. 

This reduces 4 steps. 4 steps that require a lot of cognitive effort from the user.

(12/17) Can we expect them to convert to a paying user now?

Maybe or maybe not. 

Correlation doesn't imply causation. For users looking to just send emails, they've reached the aha! moment. What about the rest of the users?

(13/17) For users looking to recover abandoned carts, haven't reached the aha! moment.

This is why it's important to understand your users. This brings us to the next part. It isn't an aha! moment, it's aha! moments.

(14/17) Sometimes the big aha! moments take time. 

It takes time to gain email subscribers, recover abandoned carts, and attribute revenue. So, it's important to communicate the value that your app is providing every step of the way.

Provide value first, ask for money later.

(15/17) An aha! moment could be:
- Gained 10-100 email subscribers
- Automatically recovered their first abandoned cart
- First 100$ in attributed revenue

(16/17) Have you had a user say, "I forgot I had your app installed, I came back and saw that it had made me some money! I'm upgrading right away."

While I thought that was awesome, I realised it was a missed opportunity at converting them earlier due to lack of communication.

(17/17) Once you've communicated your app's value via the ways above, make sure you nudge users to move to a trial plan or a paid plan.

Get your users to the Aha! moment

Does your Shopify App have a leaky bucket problem (churn)? 🪣

Here is what we did at PushOwl to reduce our same-day uninstalls from 24% to 16% 🧵👇

(1/18) I wish I could explain this in one sub-tweet, but I’m going to give you a fairly detailed breakdown of how I approached this.

If you’re looking to discuss more, drop me a DM or email me at ✉️ adhithya@smoothcode.io

(2/18) Churn is too vast a topic to solve in one go. This process took more than a year, alongside other feature developments.

Start by asking the right questions. We categorised our uninstalls by asking these questions (of course there were a lot more) 

(3/18) Make data-informed decisions
It’s well-known but well-forgotten that every data point is a human story. So, how do you get the data?

📱Qualitative: Call &amp; ask users why they uninstalled

📊 Quantitative: Amplitude, Fullstory and Metabase to identify patterns in data

(4/18) During our initial analysis, we tried to make sure it was a controlled experiment.

We picked a time period where we weren't running any ads/promos, there were no major changes from Shopify/App Store, no festive seasons, and no new feature updates.

(5/18) We saw that our same-day uninstalls were really high (~24%), of which most of the uninstalls occurred in the first 10 mins of installation. 

The graph for the first 1 hour looked something like this. 

(6/18) So, there was a clear issue with such a high uninstallation rate right after installing the app.

In order to understand this better, we dug into the 'Uninstallation Reasons' that merchants give when they uninstall an App. 

(7/18) Here's how you can get it for your App👇
1. Create an API key on Shopify Partner Account
2. Make an API call to Shopify using “…” request
3. Do this for every uninstalled Shop

Once you have the CSV. Run an analysis to understand why different store types are uninstalling

(8/18) How did we understand what their need was?

We just asked them. 
1. We called everyone who uninstalled within 10 mins.
2. We also added a form at the first screen of the onboarding to understand what people were looking to get from installing PushOwl. 

2200+ entries 👇 

(9/18) Now, our entire focus was to fix the top of the funnel.

The foundation of our onboarding:
WHY - Why do merchants need our App (Value Proposition)

HOW - How will their customers feel about interacting with PushOwl

WHAT - What do they need to do to get the best results

(10/18) Implementing the solutions

We added an Intro screen highlighting WHY merchants need PushOwl. These are in order of priority based on what merchants were looking for. (refer to thread 8/18) 

(11/18) Highlighting a Shopper's experience 

A story-based approach to make the onboarding more engaging, while explaining HOW shoppers will experience Push Notifications. This is to show merchants that we care about their customers.

(illustrations by @gareebdesigner) 

(12/18) 14-Day Free Trial

After the WHY and HOW. We needed the merchants to be on the Business Plan to find success on PushOwl. Which is the WHAT. 

So, we promoted the 14-Day Business Trial with a 60-Day money-back guarantee. 🦉 

(13/18) Then came the second part of the WHAT, which is learning the platform.

👩‍🎓We built a learn-by-doing tutorial for our merchants to understand the platform better and reduce the friction of sending their first campaign. 

(14/18) Each store type needs to be treated differently.

Basic - Free plan &amp; custom startup plans

Professional - Business Trial

Unlimited &amp; Shopify Plus - Enterprise Trial + Calls with Sales Teams &amp; Account Managers

(15/18) Basic Plan Store churn is inevitable to a certain degree. They are just trying to install apps to get their first few sales.

It's important that you still provide great support and help them since most of your reviews will come from Basic Plan Stores. 🌟

(16/18) I'm not attributing the improvements in the numbers entirely to the onboarding. 

The customer success and engineering team were a big reason for our success.

This was just the 2nd attempt at improving the onboarding, there's a lot more room for improvement!

(17/18) 🌟Like/Retweet so other Shopify app developers can find this helpful and can also share their experiences with tackling churn.🌟

(18/18) All those who helped me with this project: @shashankkr9 @sachidalmia @eternerd @chinchang457 @gareebdesigner @walkadm (the others aren't on Twitter)

Why How and What was inspired from: https://www.ted.com/talks/simon_sinek_how_great_leaders_inspire_action?language=en

Missed out tagging @approxhuman! 🙏🏽