{"id":559503,"date":"2026-02-01T16:03:22","date_gmt":"2026-02-01T16:03:22","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/userpilot.com\/blog\/software-onboarding\/"},"modified":"2026-04-02T10:29:43","modified_gmt":"2026-04-02T10:29:43","slug":"software-onboarding","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/userpilot.com\/blog\/software-onboarding\/","title":{"rendered":"What I\u2019ve Learned About Software Onboarding: Mistakes, Best Practices, and Metrics"},"content":{"rendered":"

What does it take to grow your business and achieve a net retention revenue above 90%<\/a>?<\/p>\n

Since 2018, we went from building an onboarding product for startups to offering a full suite of PLG tools to mid-market companies and enterprise accounts. In my experience, I know that this level of growth and retention doesn\u2019t come from just having an excellent product.<\/p>\n

I have spoken to hundreds of product managers who built incredible tools but watched their churn rates climb month after month. They usually make the same mistake, which is assuming the product will speak for itself.<\/p>\n

They dump users into a dashboard, pop up a generic 15-step tour that everyone skips, and then wonder why nobody reaches the “Aha!” moment.<\/p>\n

Growth comes from guiding users to value, not just showing them features. In this guide, I will address the common challenges and give you the best practices to build better software onboarding experiences!<\/p>\n

Most common mistakes in software onboarding<\/strong><\/h2>\n

As I mentioned, many PMs assume that the product will sell itself. And thus, think that just pumping product tours to new users will be enough to onboard them.<\/p>\n

This assumption leads to 5 mistakes that will make any product bleed users. Let\u2019s explore each:<\/p>\n

Mistake #1: Overwhelming users with too many steps too soon<\/strong><\/h3>\n

I\u2019ve learned that onboarding usually breaks at the moment we try to explain everything at once.<\/p>\n

You see, when onboarding introduces too many steps upfront, friction compounds. This is because (according to Hick\u2019s law<\/a>) the time it takes to make a decision increases logarithmically with the number of choices available, leading to decision fatigue much faster.<\/p>\n

We confirmed this with our SaaS Product Metrics research<\/a>. We noticed that new users drop off more during the first session. And since the average SaaS time-to-value is just over one day, any friction in the first day will quickly consume users\u2019 motivations to activate.<\/p>\n

\"Software<\/picture><\/figure>\n

The strategy here is clear: make the initial onboarding as linear as possible to reduce decisions.<\/p>\n

Mistake #2: Forcing one user onboarding process for every role<\/strong><\/h3>\n

This one frustrates me because most people know that about 50% of customers expect a relevant onboarding process, yet only 26.8% of companies offer high personalization<\/a>.<\/p>\n

If your product serves marketers, developers, and sales teams, why would you show everyone the same five-step checklist? A marketing manager<\/a> doesn’t need API documentation upfront. A developer won’t care about your campaign builder.<\/p>\n

When you force a generic path on everyone, you’re making users do the work of figuring out what’s relevant to them. That creates unnecessary friction right when motivation is highest.<\/p>\n

Mistake #3: Burying the \u201cAha moment\u201d behind setup friction<\/strong><\/h3>\n

One of the most common challenges I encounter is when customer success teams struggle to differentiate “setup” from “onboarding.” They celebrate when a user uploads a profile picture, but that action delivers zero value to the user.<\/p>\n

You need to distinguish between two distinct phases:<\/p>\n