Improving Discord onboarding (DaoLens)

How do you invite people to your Discord server AND give them the best experience EVER as a new member to your community?

It’s really easy to for new members to feel overwhelmed when they join a new Discord server.

Many experience being hit with a million different channels, unable to find where to start and just want to “leave server immediately”

There IS a better way to onboard new people to your Discord server, and that’s by using a tool called Daolens.

Daolens lets you give new members a “choose your own adventure” type journey, where you ask them a few important questions to get started and then the tool completely customises the Discord server JUST FOR THEM.

It will only show channels they need to see, it will assign roles that are relevant to them and provide MORE ways for your members to feel like they are personally being guided through the process of joining your community.

It’s like providing your community members with 5 star service where you get to choose your ideal pillow from a pillow menu…

How DaoLens works

First you send an invite to your Discord server, just like normal.

But when you have DaoLens installed, now instead of seeing a million channels, your new members actually can’t do anything until they click on the link to claim their role and experience.

Once you click on the link, it asks a few fun questions to understand WHY they are joining the community.

Now it’s more like a “choose your own adventure” experience where you can select the answers most relevant to what you’re looking to get out of joining the community

And once those questions are answered it will then completely tailor the Discord server depending on what you want.

This is great intel for community managers too! As a community manager you will be able to see the roles that community members pick. For example, you may see that 50% of new members are selecting they joined the community for investment opportunities. Well now you know the segmentation of your community and you can make decisions according to this data.

I’ve seen similar experiences being used in web3 communities like BuildSpace.

You should definitely check out their discord server if you’re looking for a good example of community onboarding, especially for those creating web3 learning cohort type communities. I cover their community in further detail in my video below:

Real world example of a DAO using DaoLens: Genshin DAO

Here’s an example of how Genshin DAO used the tool to onboard their members.

Firstly I like how right at the beginning they showcase what makes their DAO unique, which I believe is important for all communities to showcase this to their members. It helps people understand whether they should join the community, gives them a sense of belonging.

Then they ask new members what brings them to the community, and as this is a working DAO they need to know the skills that the new members have and can bring to the table, and then based on those answers they are granted access to specific channels.

It is important to note that right at the end screen members can always choose to go through the onboarding process again to identify more reasons why they joined the community and ensure they get access to all the appropriate channels.

I do think this process could be improved by being able to select multiple options right at the start, but it’s still a step in the right direction.

Some other really interesting features includes the ability to assign onboarding buddies – where members can actually arrange a chat with either members of the team or other people within the community who are assigned the task of welcoming new members.

For DAOs there is a need to create working teams who can collaborate on real tasks that need to get done. You can do this using the DaoLens tool as new members can select which “team” they should be joining.

They also have the ability to manage ambassadors in the community and here you’ll see the admin dashboard, where they have access to tasks that require approval, progress made across ambassadors and individual ambassador applications.

Pricing

In terms of pricing, the DaoLens team said they work with each client to offer customised experiences as every community requirements have been different.

I did get a rough estimate in terms of pricing and you’re looking at minimum of $200/month and they have clients that pay all the way up to $3k per month for very customised solutions.

Daolens offers a 21-day free trial for anyone interested in seeing how this stool works. You can test it first internally with your team members/ colleagues to see how it works before launching publicly.

Final thoughts

If you have the budget, then Daolens is a dream for anyone with a Discord server who wants to level up the community onboarding experience and is looking for a tool to help them make this happen.

If you use DaoLens and want to share your feedback, or have any further questions on the tool, feel free to comment below.