Learning the many UI patterns accessible to you and understanding their individual characteristics are the first two steps in determining which UI patterns to utilize for your product tour. The five fundamental UI patterns that make up effective product tours are available through a digital adoption platform (DAP). Combine these choices to build the ideal tour with help of the best product tour software for your one-of-a-kind SaaS offering.
Pop-Ups
With pop-up components in your product tour, you can quickly engage consumers and illustrate the value of your software. Simple splash screen visuals can be used as pop-ups. They might also be modal windows that demand users to act.
Walkthroughs That Are Interactive
Step-by-step guidance for important workflows should be provided. These instructions are visible when users progress through the phases of your product tour, learning about procedures as they go.
Product walkthroughs are extremely beneficial for simplifying complicated business application training procedures. You may use them to keep users engaged during onboarding and while releasing new features.
Beacons
Create alerts to direct the user’s attention to certain areas of your app. With these UI patterns, you can communicate critical information regarding feature upgrades, process modifications, and sophisticated use cases. Users may interact with training content when they’re ready with beacons, which is essential for a self-serve onboarding experience.
Tooltips
Give consumers a short summary of the capabilities of a feature or UI element. Users are not prompted to take action via tooltips. Instead of guided product walkthroughs, they provide vital information in a less invasive manner.
Explainer Videos
To build compelling welcome messages for new users, combine this product tour UI style with pop-up modal windows. You may provide a video presentation of your product’s major features when consumers check in for the first time. This is a good technique to engage first-time users and make them more likely to accomplish important tasks.
What are the Latest Trends in the Industry?
Product tours have become more widely accepted parts of the SaaS user experience in recent years, thanks to trends like simplicity, interactivity, and minimal design. And, in 2021, three developments are expected to boost the value of product tours:
- Greater emphasis on self-service: Give consumers more discretion over how they learn in product tours to eliminate friction. Allow users to begin the process and learn at their own pace rather than forcing them to follow a guided tour.
- Deeper personalization: Use sophisticated analytics and artificial intelligence (AI) through devices like DAPs to gain a more detailed understanding of user performance. User-level data allows you to split your product tours into more targeted categories.
- Continual involvement: Extend the idea of product tours beyond the first activation of users. Even after the first activation, you may provide self-service training materials to assist consumers to learn more about the product.
Top Product Tour Software Tools
Digital adoption platforms are where the greatest product tour software tools may be found. These tools interact with your app and display all of the most essential product tour UI patterns to consumers. Here are some of the top DAPs for your product tour software requirements. For a complete summary of each platform’s strengths and shortcomings, see the articles listed below:
- Whatfix: The most adaptable product software solution for developing contextual advice and self-help material segregated by user role.
- Appcues: The focus of this DAP is on product-led growth. It works in tandem with your product to make UI patterns look natural and provide a consistent experience for consumers.
- WalkMe: This DAP has one of the most comprehensive feature sets available. However, it is not the most user-friendly platform. In many circumstances, you’ll require IT assistance to generate product tour material.
- Pendo: Pendo’s key selling point is its product use analytics. The platform gives you a lot of information about how users interact with your product, making it easy to figure out what you need from product tours.
- Userlane: It is a simple-to-use DAP aimed mostly at small and medium-sized organizations (SMBs). For SMB-level product tours, this application includes a lot of content production tools. Enterprises using complicated SaaS products, on the other hand, may want a more powerful DAP with more flexibility and customization possibilities.
The aim stays the same no matter how you mix your product tour UI patterns—give customers cues to understand your application in an engaging way. Product tours that are well-designed engage customers at all stages of the technology adoption curve without upsetting tech-savvy users or overwhelming slower adopters.
