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onboarding-cro

Design and optimize post-signup onboarding flows to drive user activation and retention.

  • Area: Marketing
  • Category: marketing funnel
  • Level: intermediate
  • Input: conversation
  • Output: document
  • Setup: config
  • Roles: Head of Marketing, Product Manager

Deep-dive into post-signup onboarding — designs activation flows, creates checklists, analyzes drop-off points, and recommends engagement triggers.

How you ask

  • “Design an onboarding flow for our SaaS product”
  • “Create an activation checklist for new users”
  • “Analyze drop-off points in our first-run experience”
  • “Reduce time-to-value in our user onboarding”

Inputs

  • request — The product and onboarding flow to audit, plus where the user believes activation is being lost.
  • scope — company, or a client-id under {company.clients}/ — a string with one reserved value, not a closed set
  • activation-event — The activation event already in use, if one is defined. Absent, the audit defines a candidate and labels it as proposed rather than measured.
  • funnel-data — Step-by-step funnel export from the product analytics tool. Absent, every drop-off in the audit is marked as assumed rather than measured.
  • request — The product, its first-run context, and the target user the redesigned flow is for.
  • activation-event — The event the flow is designed to reach. Required here — a flow with no activation target cannot be judged good or bad.
  • onboarding-audit — Audit from the audit route, read back so the redesign starts from the measured biggest drop instead of a blank page.
  • request — Which screens, checklist items, or messages need rewriting, and the tone or product voice to hold to.
  • onboarding-flow — Flow design from the flow-design route, read back so the copy is written against the real step order rather than a guessed one.
  • request — The stall problem — how long users go inactive, at which step, and which channels are available to reach them.
  • activation-event — The activation event, used to separate a stalled user from one who already got value and simply left.
  • funnel-data — Inactivity and incomplete-setup cohorts exported from product analytics, used to size each stall pattern.

Outputs

  • Activation goal, first-run approach with its trade-off, step-by-step flow, checklist items, empty states, email sequence, and the metrics plan.
  • Stall patterns with their detection rule, the email and in-app re-entry point for each, and the escalation path for high-value accounts.
  • Step map with drop-off per step, the activation event used, and each finding as impact plus recommendation plus priority.
  • Welcome screen, checklist items, empty states, tooltips, email sequence, and milestone celebration copy, ready to paste into the product.
  • {scope.marketing.experiments}/onboarding-audit-{product}.md
  • {scope.marketing.experiments}/onboarding-copy-{product}.md
  • {scope.marketing.experiments}/onboarding-cro-{YYYY-MM-DD}.md
  • {scope.marketing.experiments}/onboarding-flow-{product}.md