You spend weeks building features.

Then a user arrives, pokes around for 90 seconds, and leaves forever.

What happened?

Onboarding happened. Or rather, bad onboarding happened.

The first five minutes of a user's experience determine whether they stay or leave. Most products waste those minutes.

The First 5 Minutes

Users decide quickly. Faster than you think.

Confusion → churn. If they don't understand what to do, they leave.

Friction → abandonment. If there are too many steps before value, they leave.

No value → gone. If they don't see why this product matters, they leave.

Your window is tiny. Five minutes. Maybe less.

Where Onboarding Goes Wrong

Feature tours nobody reads. Those tooltip walkthroughs? Users click "skip" immediately. Nobody wants to learn features before seeing value.

"Set up your profile" before value. Why am I entering my company name before I know if this product is useful?

Overwhelming options on first visit. 50 buttons, 20 menu items, endless possibilities. Users freeze.

Assuming users understand what you do. You've lived with this product for months. They've been here 30 seconds. They don't have your context.

The Goal of Onboarding

Onboarding has one job: get users to the "aha moment" as fast as possible.

Not teach features. Not collect information. Not show off capabilities.

Get them to the moment where they think, "Oh, this is useful."

Show value before asking for investment.

What's the Aha Moment?

Every product has one. The moment it clicks.

For XLNavigator, it's seeing your 50 worksheet tabs displayed vertically for the first time. Suddenly you can find things. That's the aha.

For a todo app, it's adding your first task and checking it off.

For an analytics tool, it's seeing your first chart populated with real data.

It's not a feature. It's an outcome. The first moment of genuine value.

Designing for First Success

How do you get users there fast?

What's the simplest path to value? Map it out. How many clicks? How many decisions? Cut every step that isn't essential.

What can you do for them automatically? Pre-fill defaults. Auto-detect settings. Reduce decisions.

What questions can you eliminate? Every form field is friction. Do you really need it now, or can it wait until they're hooked?

Testing Your Onboarding

The best way to fix onboarding: watch new users.

Screen share sessions. Watch real people encounter your product for the first time.

Where do they get stuck? Note every pause, every confusion, every wrong click.

What do they click first? Are they finding the path to value?

When do they leave? At what moment do people give up?

This is uncomfortable. Your assumptions will be wrong. That's the point.

Iterating on Onboarding

Onboarding is never done.

Measure time to first value. How long from signup to aha moment? Track this. Reduce it.

Cut steps relentlessly. Every step you remove increases completion.

Test changes with new users. Existing users don't experience onboarding. Fresh eyes only.

The goal is always: faster to value. Simpler path. Less friction.

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