I’ve been reviewing SaaS products recently, and one pattern keeps showing up:
Users sign up … then disappear.
Most of the time, it’s not the product --- it’s onboarding.
Common issues I see:
▫ Too many steps before value
▫ No clear “first win” for the user
▫ Confusing UI right after signup
▫ No guidance or direction
If users don’t experience value in the first few minutes, they leave.
If you’re building a SaaS, I’m curious:
Where do most of your users drop off?
Top comments (1)
This is the highest-leverage, most-ignored part of SaaS - you spend everything getting someone to sign up and then lose them in the first 5 minutes because they hit setup friction before they hit value. The rule I hold to: every step between signup and first "aha" is a leak, and the only step worth keeping is one that moves the user closer to value, not closer to your data-collection wishlist. Time-to-value is the metric; everything else is vanity.
This is something I'm actively living - on Moonshift (a multi-agent pipeline: prompt to a shipped SaaS on your own GitHub + Vercel) the single biggest conversion lever was making the first run completely free with no card and no setup gauntlet, so people hit the "oh, it actually shipped a real app" moment before any friction. ~$3 flat per build after. First run's free, no card. Strong post - what's the most common onboarding mistake you see? Mine is asking for a credit card or a long form before the user has felt a single moment of value.