For a holistic user experience when it comes to an app, it would have to be personalized to the user’s preference. This happens during installation and as a developer the more information you can have on the user, the better your app will be in tailor – making their user experience to be one they truly enjoy. However, on the other end of the spectrum, you have the user who couldn’t care less on why you would want a lot of their information; they will get irritated by having to jump through too many hoops before they can even access the app and might end up not signing at all.
Developer Revenue Losses
When a user installs an app, if they don’t already have an account, the first thing they will have to do is sign up for an account. This step is really hard to skip because if a user isn’t signed in then there’s a broken link between their use of the app and other social networks they are on already. These are social networks that will help in bringing the user base for that app through sharing links, etc. Not all users like signing up if they don’t have accounts and this is the first part that a developer loses revenue.
The ones who soldier on and sign up sometimes as a developer you want them to add their social network groups or share the app with others. If they are already bored with the whole process and aren’t seeing much value in the app, then they don’t do anything. They neither use nor share the app.That’s another revenue loss to the developer. What’s even worse is that there are costs to the developer of them signing up for that app, a slap on the cheek to the developer who ends up paying for costs where there was no revenue.
So all the way the developer continues losing revenue – however if the app is one that people make use of everyday then the problem of onboarding is highly reduced.
You could however consider the possibility of getting the user to download the app and then provide much more information on a website – it’s a larger screen and they can do it at a different time. However there’s still the possibility of the user never getting to do that. Downloading and installing an app is still considered to be the biggest source of friction so everything else like the extra sign – up process steps or the app functionality are an additional stress to the developer. If a user can stay long enough on an app to sign up without reaching their boredom threshold within a few minutes then the better. The trick is then in developers ensuring that the sign – up process is not boring – how to achieve that, hopefully some developer can come up with that solution soon.