Onboarding

Good onboarding is measured by how many new users reach the moment your product becomes useful to them, not by how much of the product they've seen.

Start from the activation goal

List the two to five actions that make a new user successful, such as creating a first project or inviting a teammate, and the pages where they happen. Everything in the workflow should lead to one of those actions. Features users can discover later don't belong in onboarding.

A proven structure

1. Automatic start for new users only. Add a condition on the signup date, for example createdAt greater than the day you launch the workflow, so existing users aren't onboarded. See Target only new users.
2. A short welcome. A Modal with one sentence about what the user will achieve and a primary button that starts it. Make it dismissible.
3. A checklist of the key actions. A Floating Checklist with one item per action. Each item's primary button either takes the user to the right page or starts a short tour.
4. A way to finish and a way to leave. Set the checklist's completed title and button, add a skip button, and connect its complete and close exit nodes to an End block.
5. An expiry. Connect the Start block also to a Delay block of 7 to 14 days followed by an End block. Users who never finish stop seeing the onboarding instead of being reminded forever.

Mark checklist items done when the task is done

By default, an item is marked as completed when the user clicks its primary button. When the button starts a tour, set Mark as completed when to the Tour block instead, so the item is only checked once the user actually went through it. See State memory.

Write items as actions

• Invite a teammate, not Teammates.
• One short sentence of description that says why it matters.
• Three to six items. A long checklist looks like work.

Give it priority

Put onboarding in a Launchpad group with your announcements and surveys, first in the order, with a concurrency of 1. New users then get their onboarding without an upsell or a survey on top of it.

Measure it

Workflow analytics show how many users start and complete the onboarding and where they stop. A step many users see but don't finish is the one to shorten or explain better.