This guide takes you from a completed Appcues installation to a live, targeted experience in your product. By the end, you'll have published your first experience and confirmed it's reaching the right users.

Prerequisites

• Appcues installed and verified. If you haven't done this yet, complete Set up Appcues first.
• The Appcues Builder Chrome extension installed.
• At least one user property (like role or plan) and one event flowing to Appcues so you can target and measure.

Design your theme

Set up your visual theme before building anything. A theme ensures every experience matches your brand and looks native to your product, so you don't need to restyle each one individually.

1. Open Settings > Themes in Appcues Studio.
2. Set your typography, primary and secondary colors, button styles, and corner radiuses to match your product's design.
3. Save the theme. Every new experience you create inherits these defaults.

For more control, add custom CSS to fine-tune the look. If you plan to build multiple experience styles (for example, a dark theme for announcements and a light theme for onboarding), create separate themes. See Styling Flows and themes.

Confirm it worked

Open the Appcues Builder on a page in your product and create a test Modal. The Modal should reflect your theme colors, fonts, and button styles without any manual adjustments.

Choose a use case

Start with one specific, high-impact problem. A focused first experience is easier to build, target, and measure than a broad one.

Good starter use cases:

• Welcome new users — a short Modal or Slideout that introduces your product and points to the most important first action. See Build a welcome message.
• Highlight a key feature — a Tooltip or Pin on an underused feature that explains what it does and why it matters. See Build quick help Hotspots.
• Drive a specific action — a Checklist that guides users through 3–5 steps to reach an activation milestone (create a project, invite a teammate, connect an integration).

Pick one. Write a single sentence describing the outcome you want: "New users complete their first project within 7 days" or "Trial users discover the reporting feature before day 3." This sentence becomes the basis for your Goal later.

Build the experience

1. Open Appcues Studio and go to Experiences.
2. Select the experience type.
3. Configure the content, steps, and settings.
4. For type-specific guidance, see:

• Create a Checklist
• Create a Flow
• Create a Pin
• Create an Embed
• Create a Banner
• Create a Launchpad
• Create an NPS survey
• Create a Survey

Name your experience clearly

Use a naming convention from the start so your team can find, filter, and manage experiences as your library grows. A good pattern includes the use case, the experience type, and the audience:

• [Onboarding] Welcome modal — new users
• [Feature adoption] Reporting tooltip — paid plans
• [Announcement] Q1 release banner — all users

Consistent naming prevents confusion when multiple people build content, and makes it easier to audit and retire old experiences later.

Configure targeting

Targeting determines who sees the experience, where it appears, and when it triggers.

Set the audience

1. Open the Audience section in the experience settings.
2. Add conditions based on user properties or events. For a first experience, start with a clear, narrow audience. Examples:

• New users: first_seen_at is within the last 14 days
• Trial users: plan equals trial
• Specific role: role equals admin

3. Combine conditions with all vs. any logic to refine further. See Audience targeting and Recommended segments for common patterns.

Set page rules

Define which pages or URLs trigger the experience. Use exact URLs for specific pages or regex for dynamic matching. Experiences only appear on pages where the Appcues snippet is loaded and where the URL matches your rules.

Set trigger and frequency

Choose when the experience shows: on page load, manually, or based on an event. Set frequency to control how often it repeats. See Flow trigger settings.

Confirm it worked

Use the Calculate Audience Size button in the experience settings to check how many users currently match your targeting rules. If the count is 0, your conditions may be too narrow or your properties may not be flowing correctly. Cross-reference with the Appcues debugger for a specific test user to confirm their properties match your rules.

Test before publishing

1. Set the experience to target only yourself or a small internal group. Use a property like email equals your email address, or create an internal segment.
2. Navigate to the page where the experience should appear. Confirm it shows, looks correct, and the copy and CTAs work as expected.
3. Open the Appcues debugger to verify targeting rules are evaluating correctly for your test user.
4. Test on different screen sizes and browsers if your audience uses a variety.
5. If your product has a staging environment, test there first to avoid exposing unfinished content to real users. See Preview and test experiences.

Publish

1. Once testing confirms the experience looks and behaves as intended, update the targeting to your real audience.
2. Click Publish.
3. Monitor initial results in the experience's Analytics tab. Check impression count, completion rate, and any early drop-off points. See Flow analytics overview.

If you want to minimize risk on your first launch, keep the audience narrow for the first day or two. Expand once metrics confirm the experience is performing as expected.

Confirm it worked

Within a few hours of publishing, check:

• The experience's analytics show impressions matching your expected audience size.
• Completion rate is above 0% — users are progressing through the steps.
• No unexpected drop-off on the first step (which can indicate a targeting mismatch or confusing opening copy).

Set a Goal

Attach a Goal to measure whether the experience drives the outcome you defined earlier.

1. Open the experience in Appcues Studio and navigate to the Goals section.
2. Select the event or property change that represents success. Example: if your welcome Flow encourages users to create a first project, set the Goal to the Created Project event.
3. Set a conversion window — the time frame in which the action should happen after the experience is seen (7 days is a common starting point).

Appcues tracks conversion rate and attributes results to users who saw the experience. Compare results against a control experiment to measure lift. See Goals overview.

If the experience isn't showing

No impressions at all: Check that the Appcues snippet is loaded on the target page (use the debugger), that the experience is published (not in draft), and that your targeting conditions match at least some users.

Shows to the wrong people: Review your audience conditions. A common mistake is using "any" logic when you mean "all" — this broadens the audience instead of narrowing it. See Targeting logic: all vs. any.

Tooltip or Hotspot appears in the wrong position: The target element may not be visible, may have moved. See Tooltips and Hotspots placement.

Shows but users immediately dismiss: The copy or timing may not be relevant. Try adjusting when the experience triggers (add an event condition), or shorten the content. Review the drop-off data in Flow analytics to identify where users leave.

Contact support

If you can't resolve the issue, collect the following and contact support@appcues.com:

• The experience name and ID (found in the URL when editing the experience in Studio)
• A screenshot or screen recording showing the issue
• The URL of the page where the experience should appear
• A screenshot of the Appcues debugger for a test user on that page
• Your targeting conditions