Step Forward For In-Person Onboarding to Hive
Onboarding has often been pointed out as a serious problem for Hive. I'd say it's maybe not as serious as low retention, but it has indeed been a big issue, especially when we have so intense competition in the social media, gaming, or defi spaces, where we have some presence, besides our focus on account and asset ownership, censorship resistance, and decentralization, which don't seem to interest many people yet.
I finally paid attention to Keychain's major mobile updates they announced two days ago.
Generated with Venice AI.
Of them, the most important one is the new feature to onboard your friends.
That is essential for multiple reasons, in my opinion:
- in-person onboarding - preferably of friends who expressed interest and not someone who won a lottery - who are more likely to remain active over time (especially if they are coached), than someone who joins by themselves and ends up in the middle of the ecosystem, often with little help or pointers where to start unless they are opened and ask around, which not everyone is (some expect to understand by themselves, and if they don't and they don't quickly understand what to do, they think it's not for them).
- quite easy onboarding process for the new guy - all they have to do is:
- download keychain
- use Create account > Create with a friend
- Choose username, create the private keys and store them privately (remember, someone is near them in case they have questions or if they want to skip stuff that are important like storing private keys)
- Generate the QR code
- their friend (existing user on Hive) will take care of the back-end stuff (all via a Keychain screen in this process)
- use an account creation ticket or pay the 3 HIVE fee to create the account
- optionally offer a HP or RC delegation
- when the account is created, the new user will be forwarded to Keychain's main screen
What does this process accomplish? For one, every Hiver can be an onboarder in real-life for Hive, easily. Especially dolphins and above, the ones who can earn "free" account creation tickets. You don't even need another service (other than Keychain, but with your own tickets or Hive). You can bring someone over yourself, easily!
Then, you are there next to the person when they try to make an account and if they have questions, you can easily answer. Much easier for them to go through an unfamiliar process too.
It will probably be an easy process to use at conferences and other gatherings too. The whole process should be something like... 30 seconds, at most? When you onboard someone who is familiar with the concept of private keys and don't have to explain it. That seems comparable if not quicker to the speed of creating an account on Web 2, if you account for email verification (if you don't create it via a social media account to which you are logged in). If you set 2FA too, that's way longer on Web 2.
Onboarding has been one of the focuses of big projects on Hive. OCD Onboarding, INLEO, Keychain, Splinterlands, and probably others I am missing at a quick enumeration. The latter hasn't yet produced its New Player Experience (except partially), but being an almost year-long project, I expect it be effective... Surely better than what they have now, which is... almost nothing.
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It was easy for my friend to onboard me. I didn’t even have to pay 3Hive tokens
I used Ecency and it worked immediately
I just checked it out, and it looks good their sign up process too. But for in-person sign up, I believe the process Keychain created is better, and also includes in the process the ability to delegate HP or RC to the new user. And because you didn't pay 3 HIVE to create the new account it means someone used an account creation token to create your account for you. It might have been Ecency or a service they use as 3rd party to create these accounts. These tokens aren't cheap. It costs about the max RC of a new dolphin (roughly 5500 HP) to claim one.
I agree with you 100%! In person interactions really help people to get started. Like you said retention is a huge problem. I arrived here because of Splinterlands, and decided to try to blog to earn money to enhance my gaming and earn money to buy more assets. I figured out how to do everything pretty much on my own, and there were a couple times in nearly gave up in frustration.
That's a big part of the reason I teamed up with the Hive Onboarding Committee and created the DUO token was to support onboarding, but more importantly retention. Like you said all these new people need tips and advice as they get started. Retention is really the key to Hive growth and I'm glad you see the same issue.
If you find some new people who need encouragement let me know. I'll do what I can to help out. I'm not dolphin yet but I'm getting close!
The best thing about in-person onboarding and guiding is that you can be asked any questions that can't be foreseen in a guide or FAQ, tutorial or any other process the new user might go through. You also see what the new user does, where they do things wrong, where they can choose an easier route that can improve their initial experience, or where they have doubts even if they don't verbalize them, and so on.
I didn't know about this project you were involved in. So, is curation oriented toward new people, apart for stakeholders?
75%t to reward stake holders, but 25% of HP will be going to curate new members. The big focus is retention since that is a huge problem, it's not easy to get started on your own here on Hive like I did.
@bitcoinman started the initiative and now along with @bulliontools we're trying to get it rolling to start helping out and support the new members.
25% might be enough depending on how many new users you focus on to curate.
I think I prefer Ecency. If I want to refer someone, I send Ecency link. It’s free
People don’t like to pay for something
I’ve noticed them so it is better to give them the free offer and if they feel like they want to invest in Hive, good for them
Ecency is not free. They pay the account creation token. Which is not the same as free.
For the onboarded user, the experience can be similar in terms of how much they pay (meaning nothing) whether they use Ecency's free option with an email or Keychain's option, where the "friend" (you, in this case) either provides the account creation token or the 3 HIVE for creating the account.
I understand why you'd send them to Ecency. And don't get me wrong, I like Ecency, and I think they do a great job with their interface.
But Keychain's option is more... decentralized, among other things, because it "activates" account creation tokens that would otherwise not be used and gives people one more reason to hold on to their HP instead of delegating it out.
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I think that user retention is more important. I have onboarded so many users but very few are active and it's hard to convince them that they should stay active on the hive. We should figure out some better ways of user retention so that whoever joins does not leave..
I agree. I know many who dropped out too. A few who came back after a long time too. I believe they can't be convinced. They need to see something they really want to make them want to continue on the long term. And it can be different from person to person, that's why each dApp on Hive can be a great hook for people, if they have something they are really interested in.
Onboarding is a serious problem here on hive and I think that is a pretty good way to make the process easier. I still think that it does seem a bit too complicated but having more options is better than not having any.
You can't do away with the private keys except if you use a lite account. Other than that, I don't think there's a better way on mobile. Maybe if we do it without downloading an app too. An app might deter some people.
The upside is there is someone in-person to help with the onboarding process, and it's a two step process, one for the new user and one for the onboarder, so it's easy. Also, if the onboarder has account creation tokens to use without creating the accounts themselves so they would have access to the private keys (and thefore the need to change them afterwards) and optionally, RC or HP to delegate, this process makes it easy.