Holistic User Onboarding in SaaS: 10+ Real-World Examples to Inspire You

🚨Here’s the bitter truth: Onboarding is the moment when all our potential users start interacting with the product. And at the same time, we lose most of them there.

However, user onboarding should go beyond “just fine” or intuitive. It should be the most memorable and delightful moment in the whole journey.

When does user onboarding start and when does it end?

Hmm… 🤔 Isn’t it just the first session and a simple tutorial? You might be surprised or not, but it starts much earlier and lasts way longer.

User Onboarding ≠ First Session 

It is a holistic user journey that begins when a potential user starts looking for a solution to solve their problem. And, it ends when the user builds a habit around solving the problem with your product.

If you want to nail user onboarding, you need to think of that holistically. For that, I introduced a framework that includes 6 steps.

Here are the 6 steps of holistic onboarding:

1. Google search/ads: Potential users started looking for solutions. This is where your onboarding starts.
2. Website: Potential users (visitors) are exploring the possibilities of a product, looking for value and differentiators to decide to sign up.
3. Sign-up flow: The user performs the necessary actions to set up the core value of the product (creating the profile, providing profiling information, etc.). It’s also often connected to the “setup moment.”
4. First session: The user interacted with the product for the first time.
5. Path to ‘Aha’ moment: The user has experienced the core value of the product for the first time.
6. Habit forming: The user has established the habit around the core value of the product.

Why activation should be your #1 priority?

When I was researching user onboarding last year, one of the most recognizable patterns among 80+ companies was this one: “Most users drop off before getting fully activated for both B2B and B2C companies”.

In addition to that, let’s look at these 3 data points:

1. 40-60% of users who encounter a poor onboarding experience will never return to the product (ref. Hiver).
2. Almost 43% of respondents in my PLG survey highlighted that improving activation and user onboarding is VERY challenging (ref. The Holistic Growth playbook).
3. Activated users have 2x higher long-term retention and 70-80% of them convert to paid (ref. Reforge).

I hope you are more convinced now to start investing in your activation journeys. 

Next, how do we get there?

Start with defining activation as a “path”

First, we start with defining your activation. And most importantly, we look at activation as a “path,” not a single magical action. Here are some useful reminders:

1. Start with defining your habit moment: The user has established the habit around the core value of the product.
2. Then you extract your ‘Aha’ moment: The user has experienced the core value of the product for the first time.
3. Only after that, build a path that creates the setup moment: The user has performed the necessary actions to set up for experiencing the core value of the product.

📌 Tip: When starting to measure your activation steps, always start by defining the last step – habit moment. Check its correlation and causation with long-term retention and conversion to paid, and then go to ‘Aha’ and set up moments.

Start by collecting qualitative insights: these signals can be collected from your user research and interviews:

• Uncover a set of actions correlated with long-term retention.
• Uncover core action + supporting actions + natural frequency (e.g. within 7 days).
• Your core action = your ‘Aha’ moment.

Then you can support your activation metric definition by doing a regression analysis. 

6 Steps of holistic user onboarding explained

Now, let’s take a look at practical examples, best practices, and mistakes to avoid with 6 steps of holistic onboarding. 

Step 1: Google search/ads

It all starts here: your potential user started looking for a solution to solve their problem. This is the moment when we say “Hi” to potential users. And unfortunately, “Goodbye,” as we lose most of them right away.

❌ Mistake → Not communicating product value in a clear, unique, and consistent way

Recently I’ve been searching for a new AI note-taker for my calls and encountered this example:

• Voicenotes repeat the same things like AI and Note, several times.
• It doesn’t add extra value to this valuable real estate.
• Ultimately, there’s no clear differentiator from other tons of competitors.

✅ Best practice → Explaining product value with relevant keywords and “social proof”

Let’s look at another example: Manychat. The product is competing in a busy area of marketing automation tools, and they’re trying to stand out on the search page by:

• Highlighting the main value for the user (save time).
• Specifying product positioning (social media marketing automation).
• Leveraging social proof (trusted/used by).

This is the moment when users build the first impression about your product. Hence, this is an opportunity to start communicating your core value right there and continue doing that consistently across other steps.

Step 2: Website

The website/home page is where your potential users (aka visitors) should see your product value. 

The reality is they don’t because most B2B companies think their product has nothing to show. Why so? Let’s see what we need to avoid and what you can do beyond just showing a generic screenshot of your product.

❌ Mistake → Not allowing users to interact with the actual product before registering

Let’s take the example of the below B2B SaaS home page: do you understand what the product is at a glance? 

It’s quite hard to grasp, as we’re looking at plenty of “copy” and 18 (!) logos. While “social proof” is an amazing behavioral principle that helps increase user confidence and create trust, it’s not the only tactic.

The product should speak for itself, even if it’s a complex B2B platform.

✅ Best practice → Give access to your product with a “loginless experience”

What if we do not just show the product preview, but give users the ability to interact with the real product “sandbox”? This is an extra mile that Rows.com recently introduced.

Rows is a modern alternative to spreadsheets: it’s a horizontal product with a large market size. The core value (aka ‘Aha’ moment) is tightly connected to the first experience, and as sooner you can provide it, the better. 

They introduced a genius solution with a loginless experience. Here’s how it performed:

• Conversion to sign-up rose by 72%, from 11.1% to 19%.
• The activation rate of users who converted from a sandbox is 30% higher than those who signed up via other channels (e.g., from mobile).
• More people using the product >3 days a week in their sandbox accounts. 

It shows how speeding up the time to value can affect the motivation and the quality of the top of the funnel for your product. But for this tactic to work out, you need to have an excellent and intuitive UX for your product.

Step 3: Sign-up flow

We got visitors to the sign-up page – success! 

Most people are not getting to this stage, so this presents an opportunity for us to learn the most about our potential users to personalize their experience further. But instead of that, we increase unnecessary “interaction cost” and forget to ask relevant questions to gather information for profiling.

❌ Mistake → Adding “interaction cost” with unnecessary distractions.

Do you remember those endless registration flows where you can’t wait until it’s over?  Or when you were bombarded with visuals, pop-ups, and even “helpful” tips along the way? If all these things are used intensively, it creates an unnecessary interaction cost for the user.

Interaction cost is the sum of efforts (mental and physical) that the users must deploy in interacting with a site in order to reach their goals. – Nielsen Norman Group.

We should find the right balance of things we show during the sign-up flow. And most importantly, optimize for gathering information that can help you personalize this experience further.

✅ Best practice → Focus user attention on answering key profiling questions

There are not many moments in the entire product experience where we can learn a lot about users. This is the right moment.

Dropbox nailed it. Instead of simply collecting key profiling information, they present questions progressively, reducing cognitive load while maintaining a sense of progress. My team designed a similar UX when I worked on Onboarding at Miro, and it performed very well.

To dive deeper, check out this article by Elena Verna where she expands on the profiling topic and how to leverage this data. Here’s a list of my favorite questions for B2B SaaS:

• Company size
• Industry
• Role
• Current tools
• Experience level
• Goal/use case

Frankly, one of my favorite and quite underestimated questions is “Experience level,” especially for collaboration tools. By adding just this simple question, you can segment your users and introduce the first form of personalized onboarding.

Step 4: First session

This is a key moment for users who have reached this stage. Based on the “Hooked” model (Trigger-Action-Reward-Investment) by Nir Eyal, your users have just invested some effort and cognitive load while completing the sign-up flow. This is why we should give them an easy start and personalize their first experience. Instead, we treat all users as the same and think “They will figure it out.”

❌ Mistake → Landing on a dashboard with NO clear first action

When was the last time you registered for a product, got through the sign-up flow, and ended up on an overwhelming dashboard with tons of buttons and actions? This is not the warmest welcome.

✅ Best practice → Make your CORE action the first user step

Keep the first action simple and noticeable. Make sure it’s connected to your core value (aka ‘Aha’ moment). 

Take the example of Dropbox. It asks users to upload the file, which also activates the Investment loop. If users upload more files and personal data, they get more sticky to the product.

Some actions, like uploading content, can take more time than expected. In that case, we can leverage “Labour Illusion” by clearly indicating the sense of progress.

Step 5: Path to ‘Aha’ moment

Hope you’re still with me, as we’re getting to the most interesting and important moment, the ‘Aha’ moment. 

It’s an opportunity for your product to shine bright. This is where we should speed up the time to value. Instead, users are left alone to figure out what the core value is by themselves.

✅ Best practice → Speed up time to CORE value with pre-made examples and AI automation

While creating something from scratch can feel overwhelming in the first session, what if we guided users and showed them it could be done in just a few minutes?

Of course, they won’t have a fully completed setup right away, but they’ll grasp the core value of the product (aka investment loop + stickiness).

If you have a product that has the power of AI, it’s the right moment to unpack it. The team at Loom knew they needed a solution that wouldn’t burden creators with more tasks. Instead of asking users to manually add titles, chapters, or summaries, they turned to AI.

As a result, their activation metric (video first views) significantly increased, as well as the speed at which creators share their content.

Step 6: Habit forming

This is the stage where your users should love the product and create a habit. But instead of falling in love, they churn and never come back. Heartbreak 💔.

Why is it happening?

❌ Mistake → Bombarding users with annoying notifications from all channels

How many times you’ve been in this situation? You registered for the product, experienced the ‘Aha’ moment, started forming the habit, and then bombarded by notifications from all possible channels (product, email, SMS, etc.).

The intention of the product team is usually good: they want you to uncover more value from the product and help you build a regular system of using it. 

The problem happens when the “frequency” that the product team is driving is different from your “natural” frequency, or when they are over-using all notification channels at once. What we can do instead?

✅ Best practice → Showing value-driven suggestions at the right time and place

Instead of showing valuable suggestions and triggers all at once across all channels, try to identify the right time and place for it.

For example, Grammarly offers valuable “premium suggestions” that users can try out daily. The goal is to help users develop a habit of using these premium features, following the Hooked model like this:

• Trigger (internal): As a user, I want to sound more confident.
• Action: I write an email to my client.
• Variable reward: Grammarly gives premium suggestions.
• Investment: I continue using Grammarly.

👉🏻Extra mile: connect your product value with real user goals. Grammarly is reminding users about the goal they selected in the beginning (“Want to sound more confident?”). Think about a similar approach to create product suggestions – the right value + timing + place.

How to get started 🚀

We’ve just covered 6 major steps of holistic user onboarding with mistakes to avoid and some best practices to follow.

Now, apply it in action on your product 👇

1. Evaluate 6 steps of your holistic onboarding: Map out the end-to-end experience and do a personal teardown.
2. Uncover the biggest drops and user problems towards activation: Select 1-2 areas to focus on first.
3. Apply some of the ideas mentioned in this article: Start from quick wins and plan time next quarter to evaluate one of the big bets taken.