Onboarding for Retention
First-value fast.
Onboarding Is Retention's First Battle
The steepest part of every retention curve is week one. Most churn is decided before a user ever forms a habit, which makes onboarding the highest-leverage stage you control.
The job of onboarding is not to tour features. It is to get the user to their activation event as fast as possible.
Time to Value
Time to Value (TTV) is the elapsed time from signup to first real value. Shortening TTV is the single most reliable lever for early retention.
Measure it ruthlessly. Every step, field, and screen between signup and the aha moment is a candidate for deletion.
TTV = timestamp(activation_event) - timestamp(signup)
Goal: minimize median TTV
Before: median 4 days, D7 retention 22%
After : median 11 min, D7 retention 41%All lessons in this course
- The Lifecycle Framework
- Onboarding for Retention
- Winning Back Churned Users
- Loyalty and Referrals