Adding Start Points to Smart Walk-Thrus

Objective

After completing this lesson, you will be able to add Start Points to Smart Walk-Thrus.

The Start Points Advantage

Start Points are crucial to every Smart Walk-Thru and are what makes sure users can start on the right step - on the right page - at the right time.

Watch the video to understand the advantages of Start Points.

Key Takeaways
Any step within our Smart Walk-Thru can be configured with a Start Point. Each Start Point will only be activated if the condition is true. Start Points are evaluated from the bottom up, meaning that WalkMe checks the conditions of the bottom steps first.

Thinking like a GPS

The user may already be several steps into the process before engaging with our Smart Walk-Thru. Think of it as a GPS.

Let's say you decide to go to the beach for the weekend. So you get in your car, turn on the GPS, and get on the freeway. If the GPS starts giving you directions as if you were still in your driveway, that's not very helpful! You are unlikely to turn around and drive all the way home just in order to follow the GPS directions.

Start Points work the same way. It will determine the user's location in the process and play step five instead of step one, as an example.

The figure shows a Start Point on a step from a Smart Walk-Thru.

The icon shows a start point on a step indicating that entering a name is required.

Why are Start Points Important?

Without Start Points, WalkMe will always try to play from the first step.

If a user is already scrolling through a process and plays our Smart Walk-Thru, it should determine where they are in the process and play the relevant step.

In some cases, like in the image example, if the element for the first step is not visible it and we have no Start Points in place, it will give the user an error instead of playing. This can make for a frustrating user experience.

The figure shows the error message when a Step is not found due to lack of Start Point.

The image shows a screenshot showing a browser with an error message on the Eddie's Pet Supplies website, indicating that the element for a subscription step cannot be found due to lack of start point.

Start Points are great for picking up guidance exactly where the users are in a process. In all use cases, Start Points are integral to the success of Smart Walk-Thrus.

Ask yourself these questions when considering a Start Point:

Should users be able to begin Smart Walk-Thru guidance when needed or always only start from the beginning?
Where is the user likely to pick up guidance from?

Usually, this means adding a Start Point for the first step on each new page (but not the first step in a Smart Walk-Thru, as it is not needed).

Exercise: Create Start Points for Smart Walk-Thru

Below is a software simulation that will guide you through how to create Start Points for your Smart Walk-Thru. The simulation will replicate what you will experience when you build in your own Editor.

ExerciseStart Exercise

Best Practices for Start Points

The figure shows the best practices for Start Points.

The image shows a condition setup interface for a website showing criteria where the current URL contains /product-page/mixed-bird-seeds and a selected element is visible.

The first rule of our Start Point will look at the Current URL to determine whether the Smart Walk-Thru should start playing from this step. Complete the condition by adding text from the URL that will uniquely identify the page on which the Smart Walk-Thru should start from this step. Generally, this means to remove the domain.

For example, the entire domain of www.google.com/test-page is not need for our Current URL rule. We will take /test-page from the domain and remove www.google.com . This will make our Start Point functional in all environments.

The second rule of our Start Point will look at whether the element selected for this step is currently visible. Selected Element refers to the element that was selected during the initial balloon configuration for this step. When both rules are true, the Start Point will activate and the Smart Walk-Thru will start playing from this step.

When using an element on a page for a rule, it is best practice to use a URL in combination with On Screen Element in order to optimize performance.

Note

Start Points within a Smart Walk-Thru are evaluated from the bottom up, meaning the last Start Point is checked first. Use this knowledge to your advantage when adding multiple Start Points on the same web page!

Great job! We've added Start Points to our Smart Walk-Thru. Now, we'll want to add a Goal to quantify our success and understand user behavior.

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