How to Build Effective Product Tours: 6 Guidelines & 6 Examples

Product tours are interactive guides that help users navigate through a product's key features, aiming to turn new users into active ones and drive product adoption. They are composed of in-app messages that form the onboarding process and provide contextual guidance while users interact with the product. Creating successful product tours requires design and styling mastery, copywriting skills, data analysis, testing, and iteration until a tour perfectly meets user needs. Key guidelines for creating effective product tours include not lecturing, breaking up long tours into shorter ones, providing value, embracing self-discovery, continuous iteration, and considering timing and context. Examples of successful product tours can be found in companies like Heap, Typeform, Slack, Dropbox Paper, Airtable, and Pipefy. When choosing a product tour software, look for features such as no-code editor, fully customizable styling, deep integrations, native A/B testing, and contextual targeting.