Which AI Tool is the best at onboaridng?
I spent 20+ hrs going through the onboarding experiences for a dozen major AI tools: Anthropic(Claude), Perplexity, OpenAI(ChatGPT), Replit, Lindy, Lovable, Manus AI, Cursor, GitHub, Genspark, Bolt and Base44/Wix.
Claude does a decent job, but there's lots of room for improvement. The rest have a ton of work to do.
I put them all on a Miro board with notes and takeaways.
Here’s the TLDR:
1. New Tools Need Instructions
These tools are whole new categories with frame of reference. They require whole new ways of working, using the technology and building.
You need to teach people HOW to use these tools so they get to value fast vs getting frustrated and dropping off or adopting poor practices/inputs and getting sub par outputs.
2. Define what “value” looks like for the user. And coach to that target.
Focusing on the user ensures that you’re coaching to value and minimizing TTV. Engagement and retention will come when users see value faster.
How do you do this?
- Educate IN the workflow, in the apps.
- Lead with Use Cases
- Show Visual Guides
- Summarize New Best Practices
- Use onboarding to show how your tool is different from the rest.
- The features will come through in context and mean more.
3. Start thinking beyond early adopters.
It's still early days. Most users are early adopters, so they’re more open to testing, exploring and dealing with setbacks. The general consumer won't deal with that nonsense.
Use this time to build a meaningful onboarding experience. Learn how to caoch new users how to be power users. Test, learn and refine across channels so you’re ready to properly onboard and educate the general consumer user audiences in the coming months and years.
4. Stop Outsourcing Your Story
YouTube is to AI tools what HGTV is to home renovations.
Podcasts are setting unreasonable expectations for consumers. Writing “build me an app” does not make one magically appear like the podcasters want you to believe.
Taking control of onboarding is another way to take full ownership of your story and the user experience. Great onboarding experiences set clear expectations, educate users on how to get the most value from these tools and coach them towards being better users and, eventually, paying customers.
