A welcome experience is an easy way to get started with Appcues and will have a great impact on a new user's perception of your application right from the start. Why? A welcome message:

• Is a way of introducing the human side of your product and lets users know you appreciate their business
• Sets the stage for more content to come (maybe immediately)
• Can expedite users completing tasks toward "activation"

In this guide we'll cover creating a welcome experience that is personalized to the user. We'll cover:

• Building the modal
• Setting the Theme
• Targeting the correct users
• Using the events

The final product of your modal will look something like this when we're done:

Building the modal

Let's begin by creating the actual content.

First, launch the Appcues Builder to create a new flow

There are multiple ways to create a new flow, one is from the flows page in your dashboard by clicking the green Create a Flow button:

Create a Modal step

Once in the Appcues Builder, start by creating a Modal:

Customize

Edit the image, header text, sentence content and more. With Themes (discussed later) you can edit colors and fonts as well. This modal is your "landing step" and the next few are where we'll ask users some information.

Add a modal (to the current group)

You can "start from scratch" on this one. Add a text block that asks your first question, for example:

Once you have the question and maybe some explanation, add a button:

Create the answers

Now the fun stuff. We're going to be creating a few buttons (depending on how many answer you want) and within each button we'll create an 'event' that will track which option the user clicked. We'll use the event later in targeting.

Pro tip: create a consistent naming structure (ie, campaign_question_answer) so you know which events are from where in the future.

For each button, set it to go to next step, give it a unique event to track, and change the name of the button (by clicking on the button itself) to the appropriate answer.

Move the buttons around as you see fit. You can align left or right, and add some margin between them.

Remove the built-in buttons, and uncheck the "skippable?" option as well if you want to ensure the user completes the flow.

Repeat these steps on another modal with you next question. We recommend you limit the modals to 3 or 4 and make the questions simple to answer while helpful to you.

Complete the flow

On the last question, set up each button similar to this if you want to redirect the user elsewhere in order to complete their first task.

If you want another flow to start when the user reaches the next page, go to the settings page of the flow you want to trigger and grab the permalink to use as the URL. (the flow needs to be published for the Permalink button to appear)

If you simply want to close the modal and track their answer, set the button to "Go to next step". Since there is no next step the flow will close and mark as completed.

Good work! You're ready to make sure your Theme is set correctly and target the proper users. Read on!

Setting a Theme

See the Theme Overview doc if you haven't already set a theme for your Appcues content.

If you have a Theme you're ready to use, make sure this modal is using it:

Targeting the correct users

There are two main considerations around which users should see this welcome modal. One, that the user is actually a new user and, two, that this welcome modal is seen before any other content you may have created.

To be able to target you'll need the applicable User Properties being sent to Appcues. You can see what you're sending on the "Events and Properties" tab of the Settings section. And recommended User Properties to send are in the User Properties Overview doc.

New user targeting

The targeting measure is mainly to ensure your existing users don't see your welcome modal. In settings (either in Target & Publish from before or in the Web Dashboard), select the "created at" (or whatever name your team gave the property) and set the date to the day you will set the modal live.

This will ensure only users who sign up after 12/30/2021 will see the modal. ie, no one would see this until 12/30/2021 in their timezone.

Show the welcome modal first

To accomplish this you'll set your other flows to only show if the user has seen this welcome modal. You can do that specifically in the targeting of the other flows by adding a rule:

Or by creating a Segment and adding the Segment to the other flows.

Using the events

Once they have been clicked at least once (you can do that in testing), the events from each of the buttons will be available for targeting. In the flow settings, or while creating a Segment, you can target by whether that event has occurred. The "occurred" here means the user clicked that button.

Set other flows in your onboarding to only show to certain people based on what they selected in that initial flow.

That's it!

When you're ready you can use Test Mode to see what your modal will look like and publish your flow when you're ready. And remember, you don't need to wait to build all the content you're hoping to build to set this flow live; and you can always iterate on each flow once you know how your users are interacting with them.