How to Make Your Onboarding Suck Less (and get out of the acquisition trap)

Learn how to revolutionize your onboarding process by designing it around your customers' jobs to be done, reducing friction, and optimizing for retention and monetization.

Key takeaways

Understand your customers’ jobs to be done, and design your onboarding process to help them achieve those goals quickly.
The typical activation rate for SaaS companies is around 14%, with a median of 1% for less than 1 million ARR and 15% for indie SaaS companies.
Identify your product’s Northstar KPI and map your onboarding and activation experience to it.
Reduce friction for customers by streamlining the onboarding process, providing clear guidance, and minimizing distractions.
Use product analytics platforms like Amplitude or Mixpanel to analyze customer behavior and identify key product events that indicate retention.
Find the balance between two wolves: the wolf that says to force customers through a lengthy onboarding process, and the wolf that says to give them no guidance at all.
Create a Pi (Product Adoption Indicator) to track customer adoption and identify key moments that indicate retention.
Use the Pi to optimize your onboarding and activation process, and to identify areas where customers are getting stuck or losing interest.
Focus on retention and monetization as much as acquisition, as improving activation rates can naturally impact churn and retention.
Use tools like UserFlow to create interactive checklists and to visualize the onboarding process.
Analyze research and data from ProfitWell and other sources to gain insights into customer behavior and to identify best practices for onboarding and activation.
Strive for balance and simplicity in your onboarding process, and avoid creating unnecessary friction or distractions for customers.

How to Make Your Onboarding Suck Less (and get out of the acquisition trap)

More talks