How not to be the best app no one uses: Effective Onboarding for fun & profit
summary
Claim: most users quit before meaningful value — about 65% of SaaS trials never return after the first session. Practical fixes: ask only an email first, score it with Clearbit, then autofill company name; send a plain-text activation code (not a link) and accept pasted whitespace; use a honeypot hidden field to catch bots; give one single prominent CTA and two lightweight secondary options; provision in Azure while showing a progress walkthrough; use Intercom for follow-up emails and live help to raise completion and conversion.
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chapters (35)
- 0:00Intro
- 1:54What is onboarding
- 3:28Why onboarding is hard
- 4:39I develop for an enterprise
- 6:17Onboarding new teams
- 7:06Red Dead Redemption
- 8:56User Maturity Model
- 10:22How does it apply to onboarding
- 12:02Applications
- 12:40DevOps
- 14:02Wiffle
- 15:54Whats the minimum
- 17:10Trust
- 18:15Bots
- 20:03Facebook
- 21:39whiffle
- 27:19limits
- 30:19key tips
- 34:39SAS onboarding walkthrough
- 35:49Call to action
- 36:12UI design
- 41:15Email address
- 44:30Activation code
- 46:27Verification
- 50:06Test Service
- 51:06Signature Compliance
- 52:54Progress Bar
- 53:27Diagnostics Platform
- 55:27Tracking new users
- 55:55One more thing
- 56:35The app
- 56:51Emails
- 57:33Users are gone
- 58:19LinkedIn example
- 59:25What is success
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