Pre-Designed Templates

Why Templates Work So Well

Starting with a blank canvas is intimidating. It forces users to make many decisions, increasing cognitive load and the likelihood they'll abandon your product before they experience its value. Templates provide a shortcut. They offer a pre-built starting point that immediately demonstrates what your product can do, drastically reducing the time it takes for a user to reach their first 'aha!' moment.

Templates are also a powerful, non-intrusive form of education. They showcase best practices and reveal the full potential of your product's features in a practical context. By seeing what a 'good' outcome looks like, users are inspired and guided on how to achieve it themselves. This builds user confidence and creates a smoother path from novice to expert.

Three real examples

Consider launching a community template gallery like Notion and Airtable have. It outsources creation, builds a powerful content moat, and strengthens your user community.

The step-by-step playbook

1. 1

   1. Identify Common Use Cases

   What are the top 3-5 'jobs' users hire your product to do? Analyze support tickets, user interviews, and product analytics to find the most frequent and valuable outcomes your customers are trying to achieve.

2. 2

   2. Analyze Your Best Users

   Look at what your most successful, long-term customers built within their first 30 days. These first projects are prime candidates for templates because they are proven paths to activation and retention. Use a tool like June.so to spot these patterns.

3. 3

   3. Crowdsource Ideas

   Send a simple one-question survey to your users: 'What's the #1 thing you wish you could build faster with our product?' or 'What kind of template would make your life easiest?' Use Tally.so to build and send the survey for free.

4. 4

   4. Design the First Set

   Based on your research, design 3-5 high-value templates. Focus on simplicity and clarity. The goal is to provide a solid foundation, not a finished, unchangeable product. The user should still need to customize it.

5. 5

   5. Build the Templates

   Develop the templates within your product. Ensure they are well-structured, easy to understand, and follow your product's best practices. This is your chance to show users 'the right way' to use your tool.

6. 6

   6. Create a Template Gallery

   Build a simple, visually appealing gallery inside your app where users can browse and select templates. Make it easily discoverable. Don't bury it in the settings menu.

7. 7

   7. Integrate Templates into Onboarding

   This is critical. When a user signs up, don't just dump them into a blank project. Ask them what they want to achieve and then offer a relevant template to get them started instantly.

8. 8

   8. Promote and Iterate

   Announce your new templates via email, social media, and in-app messages. Track which templates are used most and collect feedback to refine existing ones and decide which to build next.

Copy-Paste: The User Feedback Script

Use this email script to ask new and active users which templates they need most. It helps you validate ideas before you build.

Subject: A quick question about {My Product}

Hi {FirstName},

Thanks for being a customer - I'm the founder and I'm looking for your advice.

We're planning to build some pre-designed templates to help people get started faster.

What's the main goal you're trying to accomplish with {My Product}? What kind of template would be most helpful for you to have?

For example, are you building a {Use Case 1}, a {Use Case 2}, or something else?

Any thoughts would be a huge help.

Thanks,
{Your Name}

Key Questions to Answer First

• What are the top 3-5 jobs-to-be-done for our users?
• Where do users drop off most during onboarding?
• What do our most successful users build first?
• How can we surface templates at the exact moment a user needs them?
• Can we source templates from our community or power users?

The most important questions relate to user behavior. Focus on what your best users already do--then turn their workflows into templates for everyone else.

Recommended tools

Prices are indicative and change - check the vendor before buying.

Do it faster with AI Prompts

Mistakes that kill this play

• ×Building templates for niche edge cases instead of the most common problems.
• ×Making templates too complex, rigid, or difficult to customize.
• ×Hiding the template gallery in a settings menu where users won't find it.
• ×Failing to integrate templates into the new user onboarding flow.
• ×Not getting user feedback before investing time in building the templates.
• ×Creating visually unappealing or poorly designed templates that reflect badly on your product.
• ×Forgetting to add placeholder instructions or tips within the template itself.

Your First 7 Days

• Day 1: Analyze your product analytics (or use June.so) to identify the top 3 most common 'first projects' created by users who remain active for over 30 days.
• Day 2: Create a simple one-question survey with Tally.so: 'If you could start with a pre-built template in {My Product}, what would it do?' Send it to 100 recent signups.
• Day 3: Review the data from Days 1-2. Sketch out the 3 most promising template concepts on paper or in a simple doc. Focus on solving the core problem simply.
• Day 4: Create a visual mockup of the most promising template. A simple Figma or Canva design is enough. The goal is to visualize the *outcome* for the user.
• Day 5: Schedule 15-minute calls with 5 users who recently signed up. Show them the mockup and ask: 'Would this have made it easier for you to get started?'
• Days 6-7: Based on the feedback, refine your template concept and write a simple one-page spec for your first template. You're now ready to build with confidence.

More Level 3 hacks