Opera Browser Onboarding UX Analysis

Inspired by the Product Psychology Masterclass, I did an analysis of the Opera browser onboarding to find the peaks and valleys in the journey.

Each step will increase or decrease the psych level marked with 🟢 for up or 🔻 for down.

The Opera website has a nice claim about browser features. Faster, safer and smarter than standard browsers. I was excited to try something new, so my psych level was high 🟢:

When I tap to download it, they didn’t ask me what kind of chip my Mac comes with, like some other website do, without knowing if I’m using Intel Mac or Silicon Mac. So the experience is nice here, and the installer downloaded quickly 🟢.

When I opened it, things started to be tricky, hidden options used gray color, like inactive buttons:

And important options were set to ON without asking my opinion. Can I trust this browser from now on, I wonder? Oh, well, let’s continue, but my psych level goes down a little 🔻:

As a next step, they asked for notification approval, which I don’t think is a good time to ask, and they refreshed my Dock app to put an Opera here, without my permission at all 🔻🔻:

During the next steps I was able to customize the browser to my own taste, which was nice, but later I’ll show how many opportunities they missed during this step. My psych goes up during customization, because I had the feeling that I have control and make the browser to fit my needs 🟢🟢:

The step where they asked me to enable ad blocking was a bit confusing. Why can’t they turn it on automatically? What if I miss that I need to tap it, will the browser be less secure? 🤨

But with social apps, the pre-selected apps that I don’t use. Why have they decided that I need them, so they pre-enable them, but not an ad-free experience? That’s confusing. 🤨

I like that I can import my data, but got confused why Safari and Firefox looks disabled? 🤨

I like it! Can’t wait to try it! 🟢

Next step was a very confusing to me. They show it probably because I already had the browser installed before. During that step they missed opportunity to show a progress on work they done with importing bookmarks and passwords from other browsers 🔻:

When I closed the previous tab, I ended up here. On a speed dial (a home page) where tons of spam was introduced in a big top two rows. The funny thing is that I can’t even close it quickly 🔻🔻.

They also ask to set up my city for a weather report (top left corner), but they could automate that step. For example, some websites allows you to see a nearby city without even asking for permissions from a browser. The user can tweak it later if needed.

During this step, I started to think that “Your personal browser… Smarter than default browsers…” claim wasn’t a true 🔻🔻.

So as a next step, I spend a couple of minutes manually removing these spam bookmarks one by one. Not to say that they didn’t show me bookmarks that I see every day in Firefox home page, so I was very upset.

After that I wasn’t even able to close the browser because they decided to play on me and changed the default Cmd+Q shortcut. So my end point with the browser was ended on almost angry point 🔻🔻🔻. I lost a sense of control and trust:

If I were an overage user, I might think that my first meeting with Opera browser is over. If that’s true for most people, then Opera is missing a great opportunity to sell me the most interesting features, and they have a lot of them!

Opera’s Onboarding Customer Journey

The overall onboarding score is: D. They tried to cheat me by hiding some options at the beginning, they tweaked my Dock without permission, they asked to act on ad-blocker but still used power of defaults to enable messengers, at the end I was left steering on 2 rows of promoted links that takes almost 60% of the screen, without ability to close the app quickly by tweaking default shortcut.

Not only that, but when I looked in the settings, I found that Block Trackers was turned OFF by default:

And they didn’t ask me which search engine I wanted to use. Because Google might collect some personal information.

👋 How Opera Missed Opportunities to Improve Onboarding

But let’s see what was actually hidden from me during the onboarding. It’s a list of amazing features that Opera has. These features are what make this browser a great one, but for some reason they weren’t shown to me during the onboarding.

Simplified Tabs Usage

As we all struggle with having tons of tabs, but Opera has a solution for that with:

• Tab Islands (collapsible groups)
• Ability to highlight duplicate tabs on hover so you can close one. How cool is that! No other browser has this feature.

Browser Personalization

Animated backgrounds and UI sounds that I personally like. It makes the UI come alive and it’s another step towards personalization that goes far beyond what was shown during onboarding.

AI Integrated in the Browser

They have their own AI called ARIA and it’s part of the browser.

FREE VPN!

Free VPN and it’s actually very well made.

Mobile Version for iOS and Android

It was actually shown during the last step of the onboarding process, but they didn’t give me a QR code or a link to install it. It was just an image:

A Music Player

Floating music player that can be moved around.

Split Screen

Very useful browser-level feature that allows you to view two websites side by side.

Snapshot Tools

Take screenshots with Annotation’s built-in annotation tools.

Google Chrome Extensions Support

And the fact that you can install millions of existing extensions made for Google Chrome directly to Opera was hidden from you! Note the “Add to Opera” button:

And More

• Easy file attachment
• Opera Cashback: Automatically get money back when shopping in Opera Browser
• Battery saver: An easy way to noticeably extend your laptop’s battery life
• Units converter

Conclusion

Opera has a powerful browser with a lot of unique features. However, the onboarding experience fails to showcase these strengths and instead leaves the user feeling frustrated and deceived. By prioritizing user control, transparency, and highlighting key features, Opera could significantly improve its onboarding and leave a positive first impression.