10 Must-Read Onboarding Books for SaaS
Looking to level up your user onboarding knowledge with onboarding books?
An exceptional user onboarding experience can make all the difference for your SaaS company's growth. But where do you begin? Onboarding books can offer you the knowledge and insights necessary to craft a remarkable onboarding process.
In this article, we've compiled the 10 must-read onboarding books that'll enable you to transform your user onboarding strategies.
TL;DR
- You can try the following books to enhance user onboarding strategies:
- Product Rantz by Userpilot reveals what to do and what not to do for successful onboarding with valuable insights and humor.
- Better Onboarding by Krystal Higginso offers concise yet impactful advice for successful onboarding.
- Continuous Discovery Habits by Teresa Torres provides holistic onboarding practices beyond isolated discovery efforts.
- Product-led Onboarding by Ramli John and Wes Bush highlights the importance of involving multiple teams in onboarding.
- Onboarding Matters by Donna Weber links successful customer onboarding to retention by offering a comprehensive six-stage process.
- The Effortless Experience by Matthew Dixon, Nick Toman, and Rick Delisi debunks customer experience myths and offers practical guidance.
- Here are some bonus books that enable you to effective product management:
- Inspired by Marty Cagan emphasizes understanding users, collaboration, iterating, and refining based on feedback.
- Escaping The Build Trap by Melissa Perri addresses the "build trap" and guides effective execution.
- The Lean Product Playbook by Dan Olsen focuses on addressing real customer needs through Lean Process.
- Product-led Growth by Wes Bush: explores product-led growth strategies for effective onboarding.
- You can book a Userpilot demo to implement the lessons from these must-led onboarding books effortlessly.
Best books to improve your user onboarding process
Let's look at the best books available to help you improve your onboarding practice.
#1 Product Rantz by Userpilot
Userpilot's Product Rantz is a new release from last week. 70+ product marketing managers and product managers joined the launch event in London last week – which shows the credibility of this book in the industry.
Author: Emilia Korczynska is the Head of Marketing at Userpilot. With her extensive background in the field, she shed light on the dos and don'ts of product onboarding in Product Rantz.
Key takeaways:
- Showcases the common pitfalls in user onboarding experience and highlights them to emphasize the importance of user-friendly, intuitive onboarding processes.
- The author injected humor into her anecdotes to make the book enjoyable and easy to read but ensured each had valuable insights.
- It had brilliant lessons from the product-led growth (PLG) methodology and the author's personal experiences.
Where to buy: You can order it on Amazon.
#2 Better Onboarding by Krystal Higgins
Author: Krystal Higgins is an accomplished UX designer and consultant. She has helped several successful SaaS companies improve their onboarding processes.
Key takeaways:
- Offers a unique combination of concise yet impactful advice that can lead to successful onboarding.
- Takes you through the essential stages of customer onboarding to help you comprehensively understand the process.
- Shares strategies to prepare your team for new users in different user interactions.
Rating: It has a high rating of 4.54 on Goodreads.
Where to buy: You can order the book on Amazon.
#3 Continuous Discovery Habits by Teresa Torres
Author: Teresa Torres is an internationally acclaimed consultant and speaker. She specializes in helping businesses build the right products for their customers.
Key takeaways:
- Goes beyond isolated discovery efforts to provide a holistic view of discovery as ongoing onboarding practices.
- Combines scientific research on human resources and real-life case studies to offer practical advice for the whole customer onboarding lifecycle.
- Emphasizes the importance of understanding customers' needs to improve the onboarding experience.
- Has onboarding strategies to incorporate customer feedback and insights at every onboarding phase.
Rating: It has a rating of 4.54 on Goodreads.
Where to buy: The book is available on Amazon.
#4 Product-led Onboarding by Ramli John and Wes Bush
Author: Ramli John is serving as the Managing Director at ProductLed and is a seasoned expert in helping companies grow.
Key takeaways:
- It is important to involve multiple teams in the onboarding process, like product, marketing, success, and sales team.
- Discusses onboarding tactics for effectively converting users into paying customers and overcoming barriers to conversion.
- Showcases setting meaningful metrics is critical to a product-led organization's successful user onboarding, with examples like Slack.
- Introduced the comprehensive EUREKA Framework:
- Establishing an onboarding team
- Understanding user outcomes
- Refining success milestones
- Evaluating the onboarding schedules and path
- Keeping users engaged
- Applying iterative changes
Rating: It has a rating of 4.26 on Goodreads.
Where to buy: The book is available to buy on Amazon.
#5 Onboarding Matters by Donna Weber
Author: Donna Weber is a recognized Customer Success thought leader and influencer. She has helped several successful companies prosper in customer onboarding.
Key takeaways:
- Customer success is directly tied to successful onboarding, and implementing best practices in onboarding can lead to more retention.
- Introduces a comprehensive six-stage process, Orchestrated Onboarding framework, for successful onboarding.
- Adopting the framework can then turn new customers into paying customers who become advocates through positive word-of-mouth.
Rating: It has a rating of 4.24 on Goodreads.
Where to buy: You can order it on Amazon.
#6 The Effortless Experience by Matthew Dixon, Nick Toman, and Rick Delisi
Author: Matthew Dixon, Nick Toman, and Rick Delisi are famous experts in the field of customer experience and onboarding.
Key takeaways:
- Busts common myths about customer experience beliefs and offers practical guidance to help organizations create interactive client onboarding.
- Offers realistic and implementable advice based on solid user research and data for frictionless onboarding.
- Presents data-driven eye-opening insights that bring in fresh and accurate perspectives for creating a good user onboarding.
Rating: This book has a great rating of 4.5 on Amazon.
Where to buy: You can find it on Amazon.
Bonus: Classic books for effective product management
We've some classic books that'll help you in effective product management – be it user onboarding or employee onboarding of new hires.
#7 Inspired by Marty Cagan
Marty Cagan's Inspired is a valuable resource for product managers seeking to improve the user onboarding experience.
Author: Marty Cagan is a renowned thought leader in technology product management and the Silicon Valley Product Group (SVPG) founder.
Key takeaways:
- Highlights the importance of understanding users and potential customers in detail.
- Explains how to identify and solve target audiences' problems and align products with their needs.
- Stresses the need for effective collaboration between product management, engineering, design, and marketing teams.
- Emphasizes the importance of iterating and then refining products based on customer feedback.
Rating: It has a remarkable rating of 4.6 on Amazon.
Where to buy: This book is available to order on Amazon.
#8 Escaping The Build Trap by Melissa Perri
"Escaping The Build Trap" is an asset, particularly if you want to enhance your user onboarding experience and user journey by tackling common issues.
Author:
Melissa Perri is the CEO and founder of Produx Labs and a renowned expert in product management.
Key takeaways:
- Tackles the prevalent issue of prioritizing output over outcomes, known as the "build trap."
- Offers a comprehensive overview of how to translate product vision into actionable execution effectively.
- Provides valuable guidance on approaching problem-solving and solution exploration for issues, like feature death and build-trap, with concepts of Product Kata.
Rating: It has a rating of 4.6 on Amazon.
Where to buy: You can buy it from Amazon.
#9 The Lean Product Playbook by Dan Olsen
This book provides clear guidance on creating successful products, which you can use to enhance your onboarding.
Author: Dan Olsen is an accomplished entrepreneur, consultant, and renowned author in the field of product management.
Key takeaways:
- Discusses the need to focus on problem space and how it'll ensure your product and onboarding address real customer needs.
- Explains the Lean Process pyramid from the bottom to the top layer –
- Target customer
- Underserved needs
- Value proposition
- Feature set
- UX Design
- Identifying the key metrics and establishing benchmarks will help you prioritize features based on the highest ROI.
Rating: It has a 4.7 rating on Amazon.
Where to buy: The book is available to buy on Amazon.
Product-led Growth by Wes Bush
This book's product-led growth strategies can help you achieve the effective onboarding approach you seek.
Author: Wes Bush is the founder and president of the Product-Led Institute. He is also an expert in teaching SaaS businesses how to transform their growth strategies with the Product-Led Growth methodology.
Key takeaways:
- A freemium model requires careful consideration to find the right balance between offering value and retaining paying customers.
- Discusses the importance of eliminating friction in onboarding new employees and users.
- Talks about the importance of product usage to deliver value.
- Explains the necessity of effectively communicating the product's functional, emotional, and social outcomes.
Rating: It has a rating of 4.5 on Amazon.
Where to buy: You can buy it from Amazon.
Conclusion
The 10 must-read onboarding books offer a wealth of knowledge and insights. By delving into these resources, you'll better understand the best practices for your onboarding process.
Want to get started with doing what the onboarding books teach you? Get a Userpilot Demo and see how you can take your user onboarding to newer heights.
