🐱🐶 You can’t teach a cat and dog the same tricks. It’s almost the end of the year, which means it’s *drum rolls please* reflection time. ‘Tis the season to be merry (or not), sip something warm, and think about all the wins, losses, and cringe moments of this year. While I have learnt my fair share of lessons and slip-ups in 2024, this newsletter isn’t about my mistakes. For this edition, we’ll revisit Ledger’s fiasco.
Picture this: You’re updating the firmware on your device, and you see a brand new feature—“Ledger Recover” It's a seed phrase recovery system that involves third-party custodians. You’re obviously concerned because you don’t play around when it comes to seed phrases. Then, someone from Ledger support tweets this:
Ledger’s web2-native audience—who might have welcomed the convenience—barely noticed because account recovery is something they inherently expect. For the web3-native audience, though, this was the equivalent of saying, “Sure, we could burn down your house whenever we want—but trust us, we won’t.” What happened here was a classic messaging mismatch. Ledger tried to onboard two vastly different audiences with the same message and failed to resonate with either. Let’s dive deeper into this in the next section.
Onboarding Web2-native and Web3-native users requires two completely different playbooks. The web2-native audience is convenience-centric; they look for ease, simplicity, and familiar processes. But the web3-native audience is values-centric; they’re driven by principles like control, transparency, and decentralization. Trying to onboard both groups with the same strategy is like expecting a cat and a dog to learn the same tricks—it’s just not going to work. The first step to mastering the onboarding flow is getting the messaging on your home page right. Your homepage is the front door—it should clearly cater to your core audience and direct other users to dedicated landing pages. That means for a web2-native audience, your homepage should emphasize simplicity, reassurance, and ease of use.
And for a web3-native audience, it should emphasize how your product aligns with their values.
With clear messaging, creating an onboarding funnel for both Web2 and Web3 audiences becomes straightforward. Here’s how we’d structure a funnel for Ledger Recover:
That’s it; That’s all it takes to onboard web2 and web3 users — clear messaging and funnels tailored for both audience segments. Want to clarify messaging for web2 and web3 users and set up a funnel? Reply ‘funnel’ and we’ll send a worksheet that will help you work out your messaging.
Also, since it’s the new year and all; time for new beginnings yada, yada, we’ve got something for projects close to TGE. How excited are you on a scale of 1-10?
