# Rebuilt onboarding tooltips plus test series: +10% lesson opens

- Outcome: Won
- Page type: Onboarding (SaaS)
- Elements: Tooltip, Product tour
- Test run by: [LingQ](https://liftarchive.com/practitioners/lingq/)
- Commentary by: LiftArchive (our analysis, not theirs)
- Original source: https://www.appcues.com/customer-stories/how-lingq-replaced-their-homemade-tooltips-and-increased-lesson-open-rate-by-10
- Page: https://liftarchive.com/test/gap-lingq-onboarding-tooltips-rebuild/

LingQ rebuilt its home-made onboarding tooltips in Appcues and then ran a series of messaging and tour tests, raising its lesson open rate by 10% overall. LingQ's learner success team ran the work, and it was published as an Appcues customer story. The 10% is the combined effect of the rebuild and many tests, and the team says most of the individual tests did not win.

## Result

**+10% lesson opens**

- Lesson open rate: up 10% overall, as reported by Appcues.
- The rebuild alone raised the onboarding funnel, but no figure was given for that step.
- The team says most individual tests in the series lost; the gain came from keeping the few winners.
- No sample sizes, durations or per-test results were shared.

## Control

New users of the LingQ language-learning web app saw onboarding tooltips that the team had built in-house.

## Variant

The team first recreated the same tooltips in Appcues, which alone lifted the onboarding funnel. They then tested different tooltip messages, experience types and product tour variations with split groups of new users.

## Why it likely won (our reading)

- A tool the team could change without developers made it practical to run many small tests.
- Testing each point of the funnel let small wins add up.
- Keeping only the winners means a mostly losing test series can still produce a net gain.

## Caveats

Bundled: the 10% combines the rebuild and a series of tests, so no single change earns the credit. Vendor-published, with no sample sizes or per-test detail.

## How to run this test

- Hypothesis: If we test tooltip messages and tour variants at each step of onboarding and keep only the winners, then more new users will reach the first core action because each step gets clearer.
- Primary metric: Share of new users who open their first lesson (or your first core action)
- Guardrail: Onboarding completion rate
- Guardrail: Week-one retention
- Guardrail: Tooltip dismissal rate
- Who should test it: Consumer or prosumer apps with enough new sign-ups to run tests back to back. With low sign-up volume, each test will take too long to read.

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Credit: LingQ ran this test and owns the result. Summary and commentary by LiftArchive (https://liftarchive.com/test/gap-lingq-onboarding-tooltips-rebuild/).
Usage: Free to use, quote and build on, with credit and a link: name the practitioner or organization that ran the test and link to its LiftArchive page. The results belong to the practitioners who ran and shared them; the summaries and commentary are LiftArchive's.