Best practices for building onboarding flows that stay short, clear and easy to maintain.
Think about what type of flow you want to create upfront, e.g. do I want to use a Walkthrough flow or a Hotspot flow. See our FAQ for the differences between these flows.
Try to keep a flow concise and short, to prevent a flow from becoming too complex and cluttered. This will make maintaining it much easier. Also it will be easier to link to a specific flow if this isn't part of a larger flow.
Think about the step order in advance. It's possible to add steps to a guide (group of steps) later on and to change the order of them but you cannot move a step from one guide to the other. So try to group steps as much as possible.
Try to avoid linking text heavy manuals. Doing this will invalidate the power of the Experience Layer since you don't want to distract a user from his or her task. It's better to make a more comprehensive guide in this case.
When it comes to text in your steps, there is no set number of words or characters you can or cannot use. The essence of it all, is to think about your audience. Understand them. And understand the attention curves. If you understand those, you can help your audience digest what they need to hear.
The caps lock key is a key that builder users should rarely use. In emails, using all caps is a sign of bad manners. In design, using all caps is a sign of bad readability. Know when and when not to use all caps, and you'll have a better chance of keeping your users and your job.
In some cases, the users may perceive the flow as inconvenient or intrusive, so it's very important that you think carefully about when you want to show it. Is only once when they come on a page or for example every time.
