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@ freecritter
2024-03-20 23:18:57
There's been an influx of new users to Nostr in the last few weeks. I decided to create an onboarding survey to see what insights could be gained.
18 npubs participated. My hope was at least more than 2 or 3 so by that measure it was a wild success. Even more so because 2/3 of participants indicated they would be willing to do follow-up interviews.
Let's see what the results were and I'll include brief reflections after each.
This is great, and a bit surprising, there was NO negative reactions to Nostr Onboarding! Overwhelming positive and that credit goes to the culture of OG npubs and those that are actively sharing Nostr with friends.
[Primal](https://primal.net/) having a dominate showing is to be expected because they have repeatedly said they want to be one of the best at onboarding new users to Nostr. Also they have clients with some of the best UX, but most importantly they have three options of clients - iOS, Android and browser.
Damus continues to make progress on their iOS, recently launching [Damus Purple](https://damus.io/purple?r) while continuing to make progress on an Android client. And they arguably have the best "client culture" although an Amethyst user might argue with that, haha.
This section IMO is one of the most insightful findings. Clients have clearly made receiving an npub incredible easy as there were no complaints about this process. That's a ton of progress because I personally remember how difficult of a task it was over a year ago. Only people that really, really wanted it seemed to make it through.
The next two questions are where it seems a lot of value can be added for new users to Nostr. Specifically in explaining features and improving navigation.
The network effect of Nostr's interoperability (use #nostrability to highlight any issues discovered) is one of it's superpowers. But at the same time it presents one of the steepest learning curves.
The Twitter clones are pretty familiar to most new users. But Nostr is so much more than that. And now with new users coming from other apps besides the dead bird, like TikTok or Substack, there's a need for better ways for users to discover these Nostr clients/apps.
Looking at the latest stats from [Nostr.band](https://stats.nostr.band/) the retention rate doesn't seem to be improving much with the last few new user cohorts.
How can we move this curve up to start and retain more users with each cohort?
Discoverability is a key I believe. But not just discoverability for other npubs to follow. I think discoverability of novel apps is equally as important.
How many new users are even aware of the [Nostr Apps](https://www.nostrapps.com/) site that Karnage has curated?
Yes a better Twitter experience, or even YouTube and Substack is desirable. But IMO the 1M+ new users to Nostr will be as a result of the unique experiences that the Nostr protocol allows. Whether zaps, social network portability or the new business models that could never have been tried before.
And speaking of zaps!
It was great to see that most new users are able to experience the newest innovation in social media. Credit to the clients for making this easier, [Alby](https://getalby.com/) for their [NWC](https://nwc.dev/) work and the users that are hand holding their friends along the way.
Besides the insights from features/navigation IMO the NPS is the next most important finding from this survey. It's a solid start for Nostr to have such positive scores when it's so fundamentally different in social media and apps in general as far as UX. Credit to the Nostr OGs, builders and educators that have helped with this so far. There's still room for improvement but this increased how bullish I am on Nostr to see new users have this type of enthusiasm.
The final part of the survey asked for new users favorites parts of Nostr and what they'd like to see. The latter was all over the place. However with the favorites, given a little interpratation I was able to stack rank the top three favorites.
Not really a surprise but rather validation of what should continue to be the focus. Even today as I'm writing this I'm seeing Jack offer another bounty to further implement the gossip model in hopes of increasing censorship resistance.
IMO these favorites need to continue to be top of mind as building continues. The "north stars" of Nostr if you will.
I'm going to be building and sharing more about how I'll be contributing to improve the Nostr Onboarding. My focus will follow what I've found through this survey: better features and navigation explanations while keeping the Nostr north stars in mind.