I can’t help you with the search itself, but I can help you prep better for the next time you’ll be looking for a place.

Up first: understanding what an apartment ad says.

Here’s a dictionary of words used by landlords and realtors that you might not find in your typical dictionary or Google Translate that I put together after my first Berlin apartment search. I hope it helps!

Size & location

• 3 Zi. (3 Zimmer) = 3-room apartment
• 80 qm = 80 square meters
• EG (Erdgeschoss) = ground floor (US: first floor)
• HP (Hochparterre) = mezzanine/high ground floor, expect to be half a flight of stairs off the ground
• 1. OG (1. Obergeschoss) = first floor (US: second floor)
• DG (Dachgeschoss) = top floor/attic, so expect slanted ceilings
• ab sof. (ab sofort) = available to move into right now
• HH/HTH (Hinterhaus) = the building has an inner courtyard, and the apartment is in the “back building” through the inner courtyard

More abbreviations for room count & type

• 1ZBB (1 Zimmer mit Bad und Balkon) = studio apartment with a bathroom and balcony.
• 1ZKB (1 Zimmer mit Küche und Bad) = studio apartment with a separate kitchen and bathroom. The main room will be the room you walk through to get to the kitchen & bath.
• 1ZKBB/1ZKBT (1 Zimmer mit Küche, Bad und Balkon/Terrasse) = studio apartment with a separate kitchen and bathroom, and a balcony or terrace
• 1ZKDB (1 Zimmer mit Küche, Diele und Bad) = studio apartment with a separate kitchen, hallway, and bathroom. You won’t be walking through that single room to get to the bathroom.

Price & payments

• €500 Kalt (Kaltmiete) = just rent, without additional costs
• €700 Warm (Warmmiete) = rent plus utilities, or what you will actually be paying your landlord per month. This doesn’t include electricity — you have to find and sign on your own provider.
• NK (Nebenkosten) = heating, water, trash removal (utilities)
• BK (Betriebskosten) = maintenance costs, e.g. building cleaning, handymen, etc
• Kaution = deposit, typically 3x Kaltmiete. Usually has to be paid on day 1 of move-in (along with the first month’s rent), and can be split into 3 installments (with first 3 months’ rent).
• Heizkosten im Nebenkosten enthalten = heating costs included in utility costs (beware when that’s not the case!)
• Energie­effizienz­klasse = energy efficiency; this will help give you an idea of how much electricity you’ll need in the place. Most apartment search websites offer an estimate of “kWh/(m²a)” — kilowatthours used per square meter in that building per year. Multiply it by the apartment size, and you’ll have an estimate to plug into your energy provider comparison sites for your apartment’s power demand.

Amenities & extras

• mit Balkon = with a balcony
• mit Aufzug = with an elevator
• mit AK/AR/Keller (mit Abstellraum/Abstellkammer/Keller) = with a storage room, usually a padlocked cellar space in the basement assigned to your apartment.
• Möbliert = furnished (will be more expensive monthly)
• EBK (Einbauküche) = a built-in kitchen. Expect a couple cabinets, a sink, and a stove (those two must be provided by the landlord unless you explicitly ask them not to), probably a fridge, maybe a dishwasher. No small appliances or home goods will be included, unless the previous tenant leaves them behind.
• EBK inkl. Geschirrspüler = built-in kitchen, including a dishwasher
• EBK inkl. GK (Glaskeramikherd)/Ceranfeld = built-in kitchen with a ceramic stovetop/induction stovetop
• mF/mit F. (mit Fenster) = with a window, e.g. Bad mit. F is a bathroom with a window
• TG (Tiefgarage) = underground parking spot
• Stellplatz/Parkplatz = parking spot (usually in limited-space parking area for residents)
• WB/Wanne (Wannebad) = bathtub
• K/B mit WM-Anschl. (Kuche/Bad mit Waschmaschinenanschluss) = kitchen or bathroom has a washing machine connection (for water going in & out). Expect there to be enough space to put one in, but you’ll have to get one yourself.

Quality & renovations

• Altbau/Altbauwohnung = apartment in an older-style tenement home. Expect high ceilings (even 4m!), hardwood floors, tall but drafty windows, and awkward layouts.
• Neubau/Neubauwohnung = legally referring to anything built after 1948. Expect double-glazed windows, lower ceilings, less Old World charm, and less money spent on heating.
• EFH/MFH (Einfamilienhaus/Mehrfamilienhaus) = a single-family home/a multi-family (apartment block) home
• hochwertig saniert = freshly (and expensively) renovated, will mean a higher rental price and a thorough inspection of anything you might have “ruined” when you move out
• frisch san. (frisch saniert) = freshly renovated/painted (technically, re-painting a place before you move out is the norm here)
• Parkett = hardwood floors (most often found in Altbau apartments, you can expect them to not be uniform and have wide seams).
• Laminat = laminate floors (not hardwood, it’s a hit-and-miss; they might be nicely textured and look good, they might be well-worn and slippery).
• TeBo (Teppichboden) = wall-to-wall carpeting.
• FBH (Fußbodenheizung) = floor heating
• wie dargestellt = as seen, meaning the place might need some renovation, a coat of paint, or a major overhaul. Will definitely bring the rental price down!
• Erstbezug = you’re the first person moving in after the apartment was fully renovated

Contractuals & payments

• Nachmieter = you’re renting from the person renting from the landlord. Usually means they want to keep the contract for later (e.g. doing a year abroad), or renovated/furnished the apartment and are subletting it for extra income.
• mtl. (monatlich) = monthly
• zzgl. Prov./+Prov. = there’ll be additional commission costs
• Prov.frei (Provisionsfrei) = no commission for agents
• Tauschwohnung = someone wants to *swap* apartments (they might need a bigger place while you need a smaller one)
• 2 Jahre Mindestmietdauer = minimum 2 year lease
• Staffelung 2% j (jährlich) = 2% annual rent increase (on Kaltmiete, so before the added costs)

Other important terms

• Anmeldung = your residence registration. If an apartment is “ohne Anmeldung”, that’s a legal problem — you won’t be able to register that you live at your address, and this will make signing other contracts (from work, through banking, to even a local gym) more difficult or impossible. It also means you might be subletting from someone who didn’t get permission from their landlord to sublet the place (and you could get kicked out easily).
• Hausmeister = the janitor, your first point of contact when something provided by the landlord is broken. In older buildings, this is usually a person who is paid by the building owner and might live on premises, will take care of basic repairs and maintenance. In apartment rentals managed by a company, this is often run by a hired company. Either way, the way to contact them will usually be hung up near the building door or in another shared space.
• mit WBS/nur WBS (mit/nur Wohnberechtigungsschein) = with a certificate confirming you are eligible for subsidized housing, which is available to low-income residents. Here’s some info on who qualifies and how to apply in English, and here’s the official info from the city of Berlin in German.
• Besichtigungstermin / Besichtigung = viewing. You might have to apply by emailing a certain person, messaging through the platform directly, or the ad will list a mass viewing when you should just… show up and hope there’s less than 50 others (which is common).

Let me know if this helps you make sense of the ads you’re seeing. Is something missing? Let me know, and I’ll add it to the list! 🙏

Top things to know:

• Your mobile app’s onboarding flow is the series of messages that a new user gets after installing the app.
• The main purpose of the onboarding is to show the user what they can do with your product and what benefits they can get, in order to help them best engage with the app (and lower uninstall rates).
• Doing the research legwork in advance will let you create an onboarding experience that best matches your users’ needs and your team’s goals—and improve retention by double-digit percentages.

I don’t know about you, but when I am looking for an app, it’s a process. I start in the App Store: does the app promise what I am looking for? Are the visuals compelling? Does it have decent reviews?

But the make-or-break comes next: I download three to five of my top picks and give each a go. It isn’t until after I have compared their features, ease of use, the content they offer, and their paid offering that I make my final decision—and delete all but one.

It appears that I am not alone; on both iOS and Android, 20–25% of users abandon apps after just one use, a number that has stayed steady since 2012.

But love at first sight is rare, especially when it comes to apps; a further 50% of users will drop off by the third month. Three months in, you only retain a quarter of the users you acquired; 75% of your advertising budget was spent on people who churn.

Does it have to be this way? Yes and no — you cannot eliminate churn, because your app will never meet everyone’s expectations (and that is okay!). But providing your users with a solid onboarding experience helps ensure that people who can get the most out of your product stick around.

For one lucky product, adding a single onboarding push notification increased retention by 71% over the first two months. These numbers will vary product to product, but from my experience, engagement and retention metrics rise by the double digits (and sometimes even triple digits!) with a solid welcome campaign.

So what is an onboarding journey? It is similar to a video game tutorial; you get a step to complete, and once you complete it (or stray off its path), you get another mini-objective, that helps you familiarize yourself with the interface and explore what you can do.

If you are building your first ever onboarding, or if you would like a quick refresher on best practices, here are my top four tips.

1. Map out your happy path

Going through your competitor’s onboarding experiences can be a great source of inspiration, but it cannot replace knowing the product you are marketing. Open up a document, and answer these questions:

• What are the actions a user should complete in their first session?
• What are the milestones a user should hit before they’re just “part of the crowd”?
• If you have a paid product, when would a user ideally buy it?

All of this will let you map out what is called a happy path: the user’s ideal experience with your product. The purpose of your onboarding experience will be to guide your user through the milestones you have set.

2. Set user goals

In order to determine the success of your onboarding — and to plan out its detailed steps and timing — you need to have a good understanding of what it means for a user to be successful.

• What is your product’s measure of retention?
• What is your product’s measure of churn?

Cross-reference those answers against company targets or KPIs. Is your product’s success measured in hours, days, weeks, or months of use? Is it enough for a user to come back a certain number of times, or do they have to do something—and what—to get meaningful results from using your product?

With that information, you will be able to come up with relevant, measurable targets for your onboarding.

3. Understand blockers

Preventing churn is cheaper than replacing churned users with new ones. But in order to prevent churn, you first have to understand the why and when of users who leave.

• What causes users to drop off the most?
• When do most users drop off?
• Are there major differences between iOS and Android that may confuse users who switch platforms, or whose friends recommended your app?

In your data analytics tool, build a funnel of your happy path to see how many users of those who install hit various milestones.

Consult your support and community teams. Ask about the most frequent questions they get from new users, and most common complaints. You should be able to map top complaints to drop-off points in your funnel.

4. Plan and personalize

Now that you know what your users should do and how often they don’t do it, you can dive in and plan the messages of your onboarding journey.

Keep in mind that your messaging should align with the expected frequency of app use—and therefore, the expected frequency of communication (a news app can message me a few times a day; a food delivery app probably shouldn’t!).

While you are mapping out messages, start thinking about segmentation. Perhaps you are already able to identify shared behaviors of certain groups (e.g. users who place an order in their first session are more likely to place a second order within that same week)? Are you seeing different engagement with your messaging, or different retention levels, on different platforms? If so, try to customize the onboarding journey of those groups. If not, remember to look for these patterns when you analyze your messages later.

Remember: something is better than nothing

If you are able to dedicate a month or two to building and optimizing the perfect onboarding, go for it! Just remember to start with an MVP (the smallest message set that makes sense) and work your way up—and A/B test your message copy, timing, and frequency along the way.

But if all you are able to build right now is a single welcome email, that is also okay; one touch point is better than none. Set a tone of communication, make sure it features key benefits the user can get from your app (and actions needed in order to unlock them!), and briefly highlight your paid features — and make a plan to set up a fuller onboarding when you are able to.

I hope this short guide was helpful in getting you started on mapping out your first—or next—onboarding journey.

Thanks for reading! If you have questions, comments, or suggestions, leave them below or tweet them at me! And if you would like to, you can buy me a coffee. ☕️

Cover photo credit: Mabel Amber. Brainstorm photo credit: Christina Morillo.

Read this before you start designing your app’s onboarding was originally published in UX Collective on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.