User Onboarding and Activation

"Home shopping is not a short transaction cycle, so engagement was a very important – getting people activated, re-engagement them with email/push, and helping them take the next step toward buying a home."

"For B2B, there are actually multiple aha moments for different personas. With your free SaaS product, you need to get an individual user to hit the aha moment via product usage quickly. ... You need to help your initial user build confidence and give them a reason to invite their team members to join."

"Ask customer support and sales about one thing that’s blocking users."

"Day 1 is the day your users have the most momentum they will ever have. Catching them at this moment with the right features and mental model will drive higher opt-in rates and engagement than at any other time in the user’s lifecycle."

"We went through the behavioral design process with the goal of boosting the number of users who linked their bank account. By redesigning the choice architecture and creating CTAs with this in mind, linkage jumped by 63%, from 7.1% to 11.6%."

"To do this, it needs access to a user’s bank account—but this bank-linkage step creates friction. It’s a common drop-off moment for users: 92.9% give up during the process. We went through the behavioral design process with the goal of boosting the number of users who linked their bank account."

"Not only did this make it easier to pay, but we didn’t have to ask for the donor’s name and email address, since we get their info directly from PayPal or the mobile wallet. We also think these brands help serve as a trust signal to donors; 20% of our online donations are now made through Apple or Google Pay."

"After we changed the checkbox copy to be up front about how many emails they should expect to get and why they should subscribe, the share of donors who subscribed more than doubled to 55%:"

"A website visitor was 35% more likely to donate (that’s huge!) if they saw the new design with the embedded donation form instead of the old one. Conversion increased from 1.98% to 2.67% (strong for the nonprofit industry, which averages about 1%)."

"ARIA has four key principles: Analyze, Reduce, Introduce, and Assist. This isn’t a one-and-done process, however. The intent is not to choose a feature, go through the four principles once, and then move on to the next feature."

"At Airtable, we look at both user- and workspace/team-level metrics. I’ve also found that it’s better to be precise and see a low activation rate percentage among users with a high likelihood of long-term value than to go broad and see a high hit rate among users with varied long-term retention."

"We ran the correlation analysis between the key events we brainstormed and the four-week retention rate (where we saw the retention curve hit a plateau). We then checked if the frequency of hitting that event (i.e. hitting that milestone multiple times) changes the retention rate. Turned out the answer was no. Then we just tried different thresholds for the number of days by which a user needs to get to that point, and found an interesting threshold."

"We conducted in-depth interviews with our target segment and asked them, ‘What are the signals that this product is solving your problem?’ We brainstormed a list of actions that reflect those signals. We ran a quantitative survey targeting the target segment, showing the list of actions and asking respondents, ‘Which of the following is the first moment that you feel that this product solves your problem?’"

"Run some experiments to see if increasing the percentage of users hitting that moment increases their retention rate, to see if any of those correlative relationships translate into true causality. A good activation metric is causal for your retention, not just correlative."

"Many people didn’t really understand what Slack did, even after visiting our homepage, which was too abstract at the time. People would land in the Slack app and not know what to do because of competing calls to action. People didn’t want to give permission to their mobile address book, because it had their friends’ contact info and not their colleagues’."

"As a bonus, the Compass report in Amplitude also shows the impact of the frequency of activity on retention. For example, it helped us determine if logging food once in 7 days (versus, say, five times) is sufficient to detect improvement (it is)."

"“The standard advice of listening to long-term customers who are already retained, and adding features for them— that doesn’t work. But that’s where most product teams spend their time. In my experience, the real levers to improve retention dramatically are in the experience for new users.”"

"In my experience, the real levers to improve retention dramatically are in the experience for new users. Why? Because, again, it’s very hard to invent (sustainable) new customer value — you’re lucky if you found one thing that people like. It’s much easier to get more people to experience the value you’ve already created."

"Hunt for unnecessary friction points—especially during signup and onboarding—and implement best-practice fixes. There’s always something lurking here that people have overlooked."

"Adding onboarding friction can be good. The prevailing sentiment is that friction in onboarding is bad. Not true. Friction can be critical to driving short-term adoption and long-term retention."

"Increasing conversion (a.k.a fix the “leaks” in your funnel, get it?) is one of the highest ROI investments a growth team can make, particularly once you’ve got your top-of-funnel growth engines (e.g. paid, SEO, referrals) up and running. Not only do conversion improvements make your existing growth channels more efficient, the wins last forever (…or at least until you decide to redesign everything)."

"When you click on an Airbnb listing (in search, from the home page, etc.), it always opens up in a new tab. Why? We found that helping a user avoid losing track of all of their options helps them continue exploring, especially if that first listing didn’t work out."

"Giving users a reason to act now, by conveying a sense of scarcity (e.g. this property is usually booked), is a powerful motivator and a big conversion opportunity."

"When you can’t remove steps from a flow, the next best thing is to set smart default answers. For example, as a new host, listing your home involves dozens of questions — your availability, your price, your listing title."

"GitLab defined their 'aha' moment as 'two users using two features within 14 days'. This indicates that the initial user found value in the product and was confident enough to invite a coworker, demonstrating the platform's collaborative nature."

"You also need to think about how to provide value to your users quickly. Give users a warm start and helping them get started with your product as soon as possible. This could mean offering sample content or tutorials to help users get started."

"Landing conversion: % visitors click CTA. Activation: % visitors who “activate”, whatever that means for your product. % visitors complete your sign-up flow. % visitors signup."

"Activation rate: The percentage of free/trial users who hit a valuable milestone in the first X days after signing up (e.g. meditate, watch a show, listen to a song, find a match, sync a folder, etc.)"

"Your activation milestone (often referred to as your “aha moment”) is the earliest point in your onboarding flow that, by showing your product’s value, is predictive of long-term retention."

"Based on our survey results, broadly, the average activation rate is 34%, and the median activation rate is 25%."

"Increasing activation rate is one of the highest-leverage growth levers across most products, and it’s often the single best way to increase your retention."

"Users who hit your activation milestone should retain at a rate at least 2x better than those who do not complete the activation step."

"For example, for a multi-user SaaS products (e.g. Figma), teams often set their activation metrics on workspace- or account-level actions (e.g. “workspace with 10 items created and 2+ active editors by W4”) vs. a user taking action."

"On average, 3%-5% is a GOOD conversion rate for a freemium self-serve product, and 6%-8% is GREAT. For a freemium product with a sales-assist motion, 5%-7% is a GOOD conversion and 10%-15% is GREAT. Products that offer a free trial (i.e. you can use all of the features for a set amount of time, like Shopify, Google Workspace, and Intercom) have higher conversion rates on average—GOOD is 8%-12% conversion, and 15%-25% is GREAT."

"The first-day experience is the most critical part of the user journey and represents your best shot at moving the needle on activation. I’ll typically find that 40%-60% of new users never return to the product after the first day."

"For converting to a free sign-up, conversion rates range widely, from 25% to 85%, averaging around 50% if you get people off the waitlist in under a month and below 20% if you wait over three months. For converting to a paid account, conversion rates range from 5% to 25%, averaging around 20% if you get people off the waitlist in under a month and falling below 10% if you wait over three months."

"Conversion is innately tied to intent, so if you can increase the quality of the people on the waitlist, conversion will go up. One founder shared that conversion rates coming from one podcast were an order of magnitude larger than from any other podcast."

"The older the cohorts, the more of a full-funnel approach you have to take. Start top-of-funnel—awareness, education, reeducating them on what the product is. People who sign up more recently have such high purchase intent, you can skip the middle-of-funnel and get straight to sign-up."

"Instead of spending months or years micro-optimizing individual parts of the funnel, we stepped back and explored what the ideal booking experience would look like. In this case, it was unquestionably a guest being able to instantly book any home without having to wait."