User on boarding : What do you want the user to do?

While on boarding users whether it be games, a service landing page or a product beta sign up. We often lose focus on "Why are we doing this?" & "What do we want the user to do?".

It is important to step back every iteration of the design, the debate on how orange should orange be or the 4 hour brain storm session. And ask what do we want the user to do?. What do I want him to look at? Okay now he understands the whole bit what is our desired outcome and how do we get it.

When reducing things, we need to keep an eye on the target. I find myself saying the following on a regular bases. "Remove that text", "Make it larger", "Put more focus on X, "that sounds brilliant let's get rid of that button". During the process I've created something that may be great to hang on a wall, but its useless for on boarding.

He wants to buy what I'm selling and I'm showing him these pretty layouts with three words and no buttons to click. He wants to take that crazy power up but its on the 15th level, he's never going to see it because he thinks your game sucks at level 1.

Choices are great, a difficult pathway with double jumps - even better. But you know what's awesome? Big pretty gold stars guiding the player on the double jump combo path.

Different kind of people are going to arrive at your page. Some need to see all those fancy slides and the explainer video you got made from the film grad for $15k, some are convinced at the word GO!. Cater to them and to the guys who want to read every single letter and then sign up.

Let's not get lost in details and keep an eye on what result do we want at the end of it.