You may have already heard the term on-boarding experience. If you haven’t, in short, it refers to the very first moments a user has with a new service. These few minutes, or even seconds, are crucial for the success of a product in the market.

Ask too much during account creation and say Adieu to your new users. Ask too little, and the users might not get enough from your service. Strike a balance and you increase the chances to retain your users. Services like Linkedin, Foursquare, and Tumblr have already been doing this by asking just enough information from their users in the beginning of the on-boarding experience. Once a basic profile is created, they find the right moments to ask their users for more information.

In Agora, we followed a similar approach focusing on the absolute important we need for a user to create an account; that is the user’s public name and profession. Once a basic profile is created we use cards to prompt the user to enter more information.

To get a taste, click on the GIF below, work in progress:

Work in Progress: Enhancing a user’s profile progressively with cards (GIF)

This tactic of enhancing progressively a user’s profile, increases the chances of success as it reduces the friction in account creation. By making it easy for users to place one foot onboard, we hope they’ll trust us and place both feet onboard.

What do you think?