Improving Gamecaster's Onboarding

TLDR

The Challenge

Complex onboarding and setup is a common problem among streaming apps. Not with Gamecaster though.
Although Gamecaster prides itself as being one of the easiest livestreaming app in the market, there’s still room for improvement. Data showed that only 88% of users completed their first stream right after signing up the first time. User interviews and feedback highlighted several pain points:

• Streamlining Onboarding
- Many new users were intimidated by livestreaming, often abandoning the setup process due to its perceived complexity. The challenge was to simplify onboarding to reduce friction while educating users effectively.
• Low Confidence - Many users, especially beginners, were intimidated by the complexity of live streaming.
• Feature Prioritization
- Balancing ease of use with powerful features required careful prioritization. Gamers needed advanced functionalities like overlays and alerts but without overwhelming new users.
• Consistency Across Platforms - As Gamecaster evolved, inconsistencies emerged between the app and website interfaces, causing confusion among users navigating between platforms.
• Understanding a Diverse Audience - Gamecaster's user base ranges from casual gamers to aspiring professional streamers, each with unique needs and expectations.

Our goal was to simplify the onboarding process, reduce cognitive load, and empower users to confidently start their first stream.

Research and Insights

To better understand the user journey, we conducted:

• User Interviews: Spoke with 15+ users, including beginners and experienced streamers, to identify pain points and motivations.
• Competitive Analysis: Studied onboarding flows of competing apps like OBS Studio and Streamlabs.
• Analytics Review: Analyzed drop-off points in the onboarding funnel to pinpoint where users were abandoning the process.
• AB Testing Onboarding Flows: We made 4 variants of the onboarding flow, each varying in options such as a including skips, post-onboarding setup flows, etc.

Key insights:

• Beginners wanted a way to quickly setup their stream without having to learn so much technicalities and jargon.
• Experienced users desired more control but appreciated tooltips and explanations for advanced features.
• Users valued visual feedback (e.g., previews) to confirm their settings were correct.

Design Solution: Onboarding as a journey, not just a door

When we think about onboarding, it’s easy to focus solely on the sign-up process: getting users to create an account and log in. However, the true purpose of onboarding is to guide users toward achieving their desired outcome. For Gamecaster, that outcome is successfully streaming their gameplay. Beyond that, onboarding also plays a critical role in ensuring users can easily return to the app and continue streaming without friction. Here’s how we approached onboarding as a holistic journey:

1. Streamlined Onboarding Flow

Introduced a progressive onboarding approach, breaking the setup into smaller, digestible steps, ensuring users weren’t overwhelmed. Each step was designed to bring them closer to their first stream.

2. Building Confidence for First-Time Streamers

Many users, especially beginners, felt intimidated by the technical aspects of live streaming. A key part of onboarding was building their confidence and reassuring them that they could do it. By addressing users’ emotional needs—not just their technical ones—we made the onboarding process more approachable and enjoyable.

• A feature that Gamecaster has even before I got into the project: optimization based on your specs: the resolution, bitrate, codec, and ingest server. These have micro celebratory animations when users completed key steps (e.g., "Your stream settings have been optimized!").
• Error Prevention: We validated settings in real-time and provided clear, actionable error messages. This reduced frustration and helped users recover quickly if something went wrong.

3. Ensuring Users Can Easily Return

Onboarding doesn’t end after the first stream. A great onboarding experience ensures users can easily return to the app and continue streaming without relearning the process.

• Persistent Guidance: For users who opted out of the initial tutorial, we provided optional “refresher” tooltips and guides when they returned to the app. This helped them rediscover features without feeling overwhelmed.
• Saved Settings: We ensured that user preferences and configurations were saved, so they didn’t have to start from scratch every time they opened the app.
• Quick Access to Key Features:We redesigned the home screen to prioritize the most important actions, like starting a new stream or browsing themes for your stream. This made it easier for users to pick up where they left off.
• Providing resources for when your engagement is low: By the end of your stream, Gamecaster gives you an overview of your stream’s engagement—your views, comments/chat, and reactions. If the numbers are low, Gamecaster provides streamers resources for improving their content and getting it discovered by more people.

4. Rewarding streamers for returning through Season Pass

We reward streamers for completing daily tasks or “bounties”, which earns them various graphics assets they can use for their stream such as animated alerts and themes, Gamecaster Gold, and raffle tickets to win hardware like web cameras, Elgato products, gaming chairs, headsets, and more!

5. Continuous Improvement Through Feedback

• In-App Surveys:After completing their first stream, users were prompted to share feedback on their onboarding experience. This helped us identify areas for improvement.
• Behavioral Analytics: We tracked how users interacted with the onboarding flow, identifying drop-off points and areas of confusion.
• Iterative Testing:We regularly tested new onboarding variations with small user groups, refining the experience based on their feedback.
• Engaging with the community: We provide a space for our community to voice their feedback through our Discord server.

Conclusion

Onboarding is more than just signing up new users—it’s about guiding them toward their desired outcome and ensuring they can easily return to the app. For Gamecaster, this meant helping users confidently start their first stream and making it simple for them not only to continue streaming in the future, but feel rewarded for it.

By focusing on the user’s journey—from initial setup to ongoing use—we created an onboarding experience that not only improved conversion rates but also fostered long-term engagement and satisfaction.