Onboarding CRO: Activation and the First-Run Experience

Overview

Onboarding work fails in two ways: redesigning screens without knowing which early action predicts that a user stays, and adding guidance (tours, tooltips, checklists) on top of steps that should not exist. This skill does the measurement first, then the subtraction, then the design.

The agent produces an audit with numbers per step, a decision for every step between signup and first value, the specification for what replaces it, and an experiment sized for the product's signup volume. It covers the product after the account exists; the signup form itself and long-running email programmes are separate jobs.

Instructions

1. Read the flow from the code and ask what the code cannot tell

Find the post-signup path in the repository: the redirect after registration, routes or components named onboarding, welcome, setup, wizard, checklist; the calls that record events (track(, capture(, gtag('event', logEvent(); the jobs that send welcome and reminder messages; on mobile, every permission request and when it fires. List each screen in order with what it asks for.

Ask the user only for: what a successful customer gets out of the product in one sentence, how often a healthy user returns (daily, weekly, monthly), trial length or free limits, and where event data lives.

2. Find the activation event in the data

Activation is the earliest action a user controls that separates those who stay from those who leave. Derive it; do not assume it. With a users(user_id, signed_up_at) table and an events(user_id, event_name, occurred_at) table: