Onboarding

Onboarding is the process that merchants follow to set up your app. The onboarding process is crucial to merchant success.

Purpose

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Onboarding should welcome merchants and make them eager to use your app or feature. Onboarding makes merchants comfortable and sets their expectations as soon as they start using your app.

Merchants should feel like they know what to do in your app after they’ve completed the onboarding experience. This leads to higher usage retention.

Onboarding screen welcoming merchants to the Puzzlify app, with onboarding steps presented in separate, dismissible cards. Each card has a title, body text, and a button that merchants can click to complete the onboarding step and learn about the app.
Onboarding is about sharing your app’s benefits and quickly getting merchants ready to use your app.
Onboarding screen welcoming merchants to the Puzzlify editor, with onboarding steps presented in separate, dismissible cards. Each card has a title, body text, and a button that merchants can click to complete the onboarding step.

Must Do

Onboarding must be brief and direct. Provide clear instructions and guide merchants to completion.

Guidance

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Onboarding experiences efficiently guide merchants through your app’s features so that merchants don’t have to discover them on on their own.

A great onboarding experience presents the basics of your app to merchants as quickly as possible.

Onboarding screen showing three different options to choose in the Puzzlify puzzle editor. There are options to edit an existing puzzle, start from a template, and start from scratch.
Onboarding experiences can also come in the form of a selection of actions that are quick and easy for merchants to understand.
A dismissible onboarding screen with a primary button to proceed and a secondary button that's labeled "Remind me later".

Tip

In some cases, complex onboarding can take longer than expected. Give merchants the option to complete the onboarding at a later time to avoid stopping their workflow.
An onboarding interface with steps, checkboxes, and a progress bar indicating how far along the user is in the process.

Tip

While there isn’t a ready-made Polaris pattern for setup guides, you can compose your own with Polaris components and look for examples across the Shopify admin. A good setup acts as a quick start, with discrete steps that are automatically marked as complete. Including a progress indicator is another good practice that provides encouraging feedback to merchants.
A dismissible onboarding step that asks merchants to name their first puzzle, with a primary button that's labeled "Create puzzle".

Must Do

Request information from merchants only if it’s necessary.
An onboarding screen with the "X" icon for dismissing the screen highlighted in the upper right corner.

Do Not

If your onboarding isn’t essential, then make it dismissible using a Polaris Cancel icon.
An onboarding screen showing that the merchant is currently on step six out of eight.

Do Not

Don’t have more than five steps in your onboarding process. This can lead merchants to drop off and not use your app.