Diagonal row of smartphone mockups displaying various WELT app screens.

Designing a Scalable Onboarding Strategy

Balancing product onboarding and premium conversion without overwhelming first-time users

Click on the flag for the German version!

My role

Benchmarking
Research
Facilitator
UX Concept
Prototyping

The team

Product Owner
Premium Team
Editorial Team
UX Team Lead
UI Designer
UX Researcher
App Developers

Deliverables

Stakeholder interviews
Brainstorming Workshop
App Onboarding
Plus Onboarding
Mid Fidelity Prototype

Context

The goal of this project was to improve first-time user engagement by introducing a structured onboarding experience to the WELT News app. At the same time, a parallel initiative required a dedicated onboarding flow for new WELTplus subscribers, focused on communicating premium value.
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This led to two onboarding systems being developed in parallel, both targeting users at the beginning of their journey, but with different goals and triggers. To guide decision-making early on, we defined a set of principles the onboarding experience needed to satisfy.

Providing an effective mobile application onboarding can significantly impact customer retention and churn rate reduction. According to a 2022 study, despite having an average of 40 apps installed, users spend around 89% of their screen time with a mere 18 applications. Securing a spot within these preferred 18 apps, as opposed to being overshadowed by competitors, depends highly on the user's very first encounter with your app.

As a UX Designer, I worked closely with Product Owners, the Plus team, a UX Researcher, Editors, and developers in an iterative, cross-functional setup.

The Challenge of Balancing Two Onboarding Experiences

Designing onboarding screens was not the core challenge. The real challenge was aligning two competing onboarding flows within a single user journey.

App onboarding introduced core features
Plus onboarding promoted premium benefits
Subscription timing was unpredictable
Users could encounter both flows at different moments

Without coordination, this created a high risk of:

overlapping triggers
repeated interruptions
fragmented first-time experiences

The complexity was not in the individual flows, but in how they interacted.

Collaborative Framing

To align the different perspectives across product, editorial, and engineering, I facilitated a collaborative workshop to explore how onboarding should function across the WELT ecosystem.

Rather than focusing on individual features, the discussion shifted toward the overall experience, specifically how onboarding could balance product understanding and premium communication within a single journey.

Combining insights from stakeholder input, prior research, and benchmarking, I defined a shared problem space:

“How might we introduce core features and premium value without overwhelming users during their first experience?“

Design Approach

Users don’t experience onboarding as separate systems, but as a single continuous flow. Early concepts combined both onboarding layers into one sequence, leading to dense and fragmented experiences.

This approach created multiple issues:

overlapping onboarding triggers
repeated interruptions
too many consecutive information screens
unclear separation between product and premium content

Instead of guiding users, the experience risked overwhelming them during first use. Through iteration and quick feedback, the focus shifted toward pacing, reducing density and distributing onboarding more deliberately across the journey.

Core Product Decision

To manage the complexity of multiple entry points and onboarding triggers, I mapped the onboarding logic across user states, content types, and interaction moments.
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This blueprint defined when onboarding should appear, preventing consecutive information screens and separating product onboarding from premium messaging. This shifted the problem from “what to show” to “when to show it.”

Based on this structure, the onboarding was redesigned as a sequenced experience:

App onboarding establishes core understanding
Plus onboarding is delayed and triggered contextually
Onboarding elements are spaced across the journey

Sequence of mobile screens illustrating an onboarding user flow.

This ensured that users were not introduced to premium value before understanding the core experience, while reducing interruptions and improving overall clarity.

3. Exploring Onboarding Best Practices

Throughout the project, I observed a certain fluidity in the terminology when discussing onboardings and recognized instances of using specific terms interchangeably. This made me to undertake a comprehensive exploration of the realm of "first-screens”, that involved a thorough understanding of distinctions between launch screens, splash screens, and the rest. To bring everyone working on the project aligned, I gave a presentation that showcased an array of initial mobile app interactions designed to welcome, inform, or guide users effectively. By synchronising our terminology and by having a shared understanding, we could ensure a united approach moving forward.

Launch & Splash screens

They should lead to the sense of decreased loading times
Provide a teaser of the actual UI, branding to the app
Apple states that “it isn’t an opportunity for artistic expression”

When to use them?

A launch screen must be provided in both iOS & Android
Placeholder UI is a great way to convey a sense of loading
Branded launch screens as a brief brand exposure

Personalised set ups

Used for apps that require personalisation in order to provide value, or a personalised experience to the user
Users are asked to select / set up things they are interested in

When to use them?

When the app only becomes valuable once personalised
When the task at hand needs further information to be completed

Tooltips & Coach marks (Progressive Onboarding)

The most commonly used method for progressive onboarding
Shown to the user exactly when they need to see them
Appears at the first interaction on certain stage

When to use them?

Showing the user where to start with a task
Pointing out a new feature
Explaining how to use a custom interaction

It’s common to be asked to login or sign up at first use
Multiple ways for a user to login; email, username, password, phone number, social media logins

When to use them?

When you have a pre-existing user base
When most functions can be used only when logged in

Walkthrough (Function-oriented onboarding)

Focuses on functionality, teaches the user how to use the app
Specific instructions on how to perform certain actions
The user is taken to a journey right away at the start

When to use them?

When most functions can be used only when logged in

Walkthrough (Benefit-oriented onboarding)

Focuses on the benefits and the value it can provide to users
Aims to increase your conversion rate
Motivates people to use your app

When to use them?

If you want to showcase the value proposition of your app
When presenting the core benefits of your app

6. Refining the User Flow to Prevent Overload

After the stakeholder check-in, I came up with a more unified concept, where the App onboarding screens were prioritised while the Plus onboarding, that became a walkthrough, is only shown to the user after they "completed" the App onboarding.

This userflow was more refined, but somehow it still felt overwhelming. Given the numerous possibilities of how readers interact with our app, with this concept implemented they would encounter a new piece of information on almost every screen, potentially ruining the first experience due to information overload. A quick guerrilla research reassured me in my assumption and I decided to adjust the flow in a way that users always encountered an intermittent screen between two onboarding tooltips, with no new piece of information. The blueprint below proved to be a helpful aid for me to oversee this extensive userflow.

Relying on this blueprint, I created the complete onboarding concept, showcasing both the feature-related onboarding and the plus subscription benefits in a well-timed manner.

Please note: The user flow below shows a case when a new reader interacts with the app the first time and signs up for WELTplus only after having spent a certain amount of time with browsing and reading articles.

Testing: User Feedback & Insights

Once the concept was accepted by the stakeholders, the concept was tested using a clickable prototype with five users to identify friction points and comprehension gaps.

Illustration showing user feedback quotes from onboarding testing.

Key observations:

Users understood the distinction between feature onboarding and premium messaging
The sequencing reduced perceived interruption during first use
No major confusion occurred across different entry scenarios

Minor feedback highlighted interest in personalization, which was considered for future iterations.

Results & Outcome

After implementing the new onboarding experience, we observed significant improvements in key user engagement metrics. Beyond metrics, the project established a scalable structure that aligned product and premium onboarding within a single, cohesive experience.

Metric

Before Onboarding

After Onboarding

Change

Users completing App Onboarding

❌ Not applicable

45%

+45%

Churn rate (first week)

34%

30%

-4 PP (-12%)

Users completing Plus Onboarding

❌ Not applicable

35%
of those who start it

+35%

Users adopting features

❌ Not applicable

50%

New engagement
metric

User feedback score

4.1/5

4.3/5

+0.2

Reflection

This project showed that onboarding is not a single flow, but a system shaped by timing, context, and user state.
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The key challenge was not designing better screens, but coordinating multiple product goals within one experience.

By focusing on sequencing rather than adding more information, onboarding became more effective in guiding users without overwhelming them.

Let’s talk!

If you’re exploring collaboration or want to understand how I work, reach out directly.

Drop me a lineor reach out to me on LinkedIn.