Understanding In-App Flows

What is a Flow?

A flow is an interactive layer, activated in real time, that overlays your product interface. It consists of a series of steps designed to onboard, guide, engage, and educate users, ultimately enhancing their experience with your product.

Flows are incredibly powerful yet simple to create, requiring no coding skills. They help improve user activation and feature adoption by driving meaningful real-time interactions and streamlining the onboarding process, making it easier for users to navigate your app.

Each flow is composed of individual steps, which are essentially different UI patterns like modals, slideouts, or tooltips. These steps can include elements such as text, buttons, HTML, or media, and are fully customizable to align with your desired look and feel.

These UI patterns can be combined to form comprehensive flows or used independently to achieve specific objectives. For instance, you could create a single-step flow to announce a webinar or a multi-step flow to introduce new users to your app and showcase key features.

What Do You Need to Start Creating Flows?

To create, edit, and design flows, you'll need the Usertour Chrome Extension builder. Chrome Extensions enable users to customize the functionality and behavior of the Google Chrome browser to suit their needs. With our builder, you can easily create well-designed, contextual product flows.

If you haven’t installed the Usertour builder Chrome extension yet, you can download it for free from the Chrome Web Store.

Note: The Usertour Chrome extension is only for authoring content (creating and editing flows). The flows themselves are browser-friendly and work across multiple browsers for your end-users.

Best Practices for Creating Flows

Here are a few important tips to consider before building your flows:

Keep Messaging Short and Concise

To create effective product flows with high completion rates, keep your messaging brief and to the point. Avoid creating lengthy flows with unnecessary steps—typically, flows with no more than five steps are optimal to prevent overwhelming users.

Define Your Target Audience

Identify the audience and specific page locations that should trigger the flow. For example, it wouldn’t make sense to show new users a flow promoting a secondary feature. Instead, focus on offering helpful tips about essential features relevant to their user journey.

Understand Your Users' Needs

Before creating a flow, think about the outcome you want to achieve. Are you highlighting a feature users haven't explored yet? Or are you helping them understand a workflow they may be struggling with? Having a clear goal will make your flows more effective.