🏆 A Winning 'Minimum Viable Onboarding' Framework

Hey there,

Welcome back to another edition of Bootstrapped Growth. 👋

Many onboarding flows make the mistake of trying to teach everything upfront. This can kill activation rates. Often less is more.

Table of Contents

• 🚀 Strategy

• ⭐️ Extra Tips

• 🛠️ Resources

Thanks for reading. Let’s jump in!

🚀 3 Step Framework To Boost Activation

1) Find Your ‘Aha Moment’ & Remove Everything Else

Slack (team messaging) discovered that their ‘aha moment’ was sending 2,000 messages as a team versus simply creating an account. As a result, their onboarding drives getting teams to that magic number. They skip lengthy tutorials about channels, threads, or integrations. Instead new users see a focus on: Inviting teammates → send first message → done.

Takeaway ➡️ Find a single action that predicts long-term success. Design your entire onboarding to drive users to that moment as quickly as possible.

2) Use Progressive Disclosure (Not Information Dumps)

Linear (project management tool) starts new users with a single project and basic task creation. Once users have created over 10 tasks, then more advanced features like team features, automation rules, and integrations begin to appear. This avoids feature paralysis while building confidence.

Takeaway ➡️ Reveal features just-in-time and allow user behavior to trigger the next layer of complexity. This avoids overwhelming users too early on.

3) Build 'Quick Win' Checkpoints

Superhuman (email client) uses a famous 1-hour onboarding call, but breaks it into quick wins or checkpoints. The breakdown is: first shortcut learned → first email sent with speed → first search completed.

Each checkpoint builds confidence before introducing the next layer.

Takeaway ➡️ Design micro-successes that build momentum progressively. Each small win should make users more likely to engage with the next feature.

⭐️ The 30-60-90 Rule

Here's our internal framework for any product onboarding:

1. 30 seconds. Users should complete one meaningful action (sign up doesn't count)

2. 60 seconds. Users should experience core value (your aha moment)

3. 90 seconds. Users should feel confident they can succeed (quick win achieved)

A good example is Canva. It takes users 30 seconds to choose a template, 60 seconds to customize and see their design, 90 seconds to download or share their creation.

Onboarding should provide just enough guidance to let users start playing. Then, advanced moves should unlock naturally as users progress.

🛠 Useful Resources

Try the efficient AI writing assistant, Doco, built into Word. Draft, edit and organize Word documents quickly.

Clean Energy, No Crash

Tired of caffeine crashes? Go stronger and longer than coffee or energy drinks with Korrect Energy™. It uses the best part of the caffeine molecule and ditches the rest. It's not just energy, it's the definition of motivation.

Get 15% off today.