Redesigning the Onboarding Flow

The problem

New users were activating but not reaching the core value of the product within their first week. Data showed a 60% drop-off before users completed initial setup, and support tickets pointed to confusion at the same three steps every time.

Research

I ran 12 user interviews and analysed session recordings for 80 accounts. The pattern was clear: users were being asked to configure advanced settings before they’d experienced the product’s primary value. The onboarding was designed for the product team’s mental model, not the user’s.

The approach

Rather than optimising the existing flow, I proposed starting over with a “quick win first” structure — getting users to their first successful action within 5 minutes, before asking them to customise anything.

This required negotiating with the engineering team to defer several data-collection steps, and with the product team to accept a temporary reduction in data quality during sign-up. Both were worth it.

The outcome

Time-to-value dropped from 14 days average to 2.8 days. Drop-off at the three problem steps reduced by 74%. Support tickets related to onboarding fell 40% in the first month.

The redesign also informed how we approached onboarding for two subsequent product areas — the pattern became a template.