User Onboarding · 7 min read
Ways to Improve a User Onboarding - 14 best practices
The user onboarding best practices that hold up are the ones you can check: one activation goal per flow, a signup of about three steps, a checklist of five or six tasks, and short tours users can skip. Most real flows in our inspirations library, from Netflix to Calendly, sit inside those numbers.
By Hilal Yıldırım
In short
Fourteen practices, each with a rule you can check against your own flow: one activation goal, about three signup steps, five or six checklist tasks, tooltip copy under 240 characters and one metric at a time. The step counts come from real flows (Netflix, Pinterest, Calendly, Evernote, TimeSolv, Vieworks), and a closing table shows which practice to fix first, depending on where your users drop.
Most lists of user onboarding best practices say "keep it short" and "personalise it" without saying how short, or how. The real flows in our library of onboarding screens give numbers: signups of three steps, checklists of five or six tasks, first tours of three to eight steps. Below are the 14 practices I'd apply, each with a rule you can check against your own user onboarding flow (users of a product, not new hires).
How long should a user onboarding flow be?
A user onboarding flow should be as long as its goal needs, and real products keep each piece short. The table counts the steps in flows from our inspirations library and the screenshots below, each captured when it was written up, so live versions may differ.
| Product | Pattern | Length | What keeps it short |
|---|---|---|---|
| Netflix | Signup | 3 steps: account, plan and payment, three shows | The last step fills the first screen |
| Signup | 3 steps: email, gender, interests | Interests shape the first feed | |
| Upwork | Quick tour | 3 steps | Opt-in |
| Figma | Welcome modal | 4 steps | One modal, one progress bar |
| Genially | Tooltip tour | 5 steps | An illustration in each tooltip |
| Calendly | Checklist | 5 tasks | A button on each task |
| Evernote | Checklist | 6 tasks | Ticks off in the sidebar |
| TimeSolv | Contextual tour | 8 steps | One page area at a time |
| Vieworks | Product tour | 14 steps | Short copy; half the steps ask for an action |
The outlier proves the rule: Vieworks' 14-step tour works because each tooltip is short and interactive, not because 14 is a good number.
1. Define your goal
Every onboarding flow needs one goal, written as something the user does. Your first-time users aren't ready to pay you; they're testing whether you meet their expectations, and onboarding without a clear user journey map will only confuse them. Answer three questions first:
- What is your product's aha moment, the point where users see its value?
- Which key features lead there, and how will you highlight them?
- What proof of value can a new user get in the first session?
Rule: write the goal as one event you can count ("connected a calendar", "published a first page"), not as a list of features to show.
2. Define your target audience
Your audience decides what a good onboarding looks like. Aiming at a bigger crowd than you can serve lowers adoption: you spend the flow on people who won't benefit and miss the ones who would.
Unless you are Facebook.
Facebook's sign-up page pitched to everyone in the world. Unless you're aiming for the whole world too, design your onboarding steps for your target audience.
Rule: if your product has more than one main use case, ask which one at signup, with three options at most. Evernote asked "What brings you to Evernote?" with Work, School and Personal, and added "You can always change your mind later".
3. Good UX will pay back
User experience decides whether you lead or come second, and a handful of UX patterns carry most software onboarding:
- Checklists track onboarding progress, give usage tips and show how long getting on board will take, like Evernote's six-task list:
- Progress bars let users feel each step of progress, on a checklist or in the signup flow.
- Tooltips are among the most misused UX elements, though they matter, especially on mobile, where a tooltip behind a hotspot saves space. Grammarly ran its tour in a demo document, so each tooltip pointed at a real suggestion.
- In-app messages are short announcement modules or bars that reach the user in real time without starting a conversation.
- Live chat is the fastest way to reach active users. According to HubSpot, 42% of people prefer live chat for getting help or answers, and almost 64% expect a reply within 10 minutes.
Rule: a checklist for multi-step setup, a tooltip for one control, an in-app message for news, chat for everything else.
4. Visuals will improve in-app experiences
Showing people what to do beats describing features; even release notes now come with visuals.
Genially's editor tour, at the time of the screenshot, put an illustration in each tooltip instead of plain text.
Rule: if a step points at something users must find on screen, show it in an image or GIF; if it only confirms an action, text is enough.
5. Keep texts short and simple
Visuals need text to back them up, or users miss things, let alone advanced features. How long each kind of text should be:
- Tooltip content: no longer than 240 characters, depending on the size of the tooltip.
- Email content: up to about 400 words, as long as the email has visuals.
- Release notes: these inform, so they can run longer; white space makes them feel shorter.
Grove HR's modal (above) kept its copy to two short lines and put the rest in a video.
6. Adopt user onboarding tools
No-code onboarding tools build tooltips, checklists and surveys on top of your product without a developer for every tour. Start with our roundup of user onboarding software and the dated price table: as of October 2026, the entry plans priced by active users cover 1,000 to 2,000 of them a month, so count yours first.
Rule: a tool pays off only if someone will keep the flows up to date. Learning curve and builder friction are common complaints in G2 reviews of these tools (user onboarding mistakes has the counts), so have that person build one flow during the trial.
7. Prioritise interactive elements
People want to get things done quickly; they'd rather follow a guide than book a demo or wait for an email reply.
TimeSolv, a time-tracking tool with a dense dashboard, ran an eight-step contextual tour that highlighted one area at a time. Isn't it easier to follow tooltips than a person talking?
Rule: if a tour passes about eight steps, split it into a short first tour plus contextual guides that start when the user reaches each feature.
8. Guide them to the "Aha!" moment
An onboarding flow turns an unsure trier into a loyal customer, and that happens at your "Aha!" moment: the point where users understand your value and decide to stay. Twitter's onboarding had new users connect with other accounts first, so the app was never empty on day one.
Rule: count the steps between signup and the aha moment, and remove every one that isn't needed to get there.
9. Analyse every step
Users don't file tickets to say they're unsatisfied. They churn. Track adoption, retention, activation and churn rates to catch it first.
The dashboard above (sample data) splits activation into four steps, so you see exactly where riders drop. Three things to keep in mind:
- Focus on one metric, two at most, at a time. Most share causes but need different fixes, and pushing all of them at once becomes a burden you can't manage.
- Get help interpreting the numbers. Without the budget for that, an analytics tool helps; proven methods beat declaring yourself a growth hacker.
- Read real user feedback too. A customer who takes time to give feedback wants to adopt your product and needs a few issues solved first. Start there.
10. Gather feedback
Knowing what users want before it becomes a serious problem saves you revenue. Ask your users:
- What brought them to your product?
- What problem do they want to solve?
- How do they expect your product to help them?
- What have their experiences with such problems been like in the past?
- What do they like and dislike most?
- What do they think needs improvement?
Don't make them fill out ten-page surveys, because they won't. Ask one question every three log-ins, or put it in an email rather than the interface. You can even make feedback a game:
11. Create a cycle
Onboarding doesn't end after the first session. Keep a cycle of reasons to come back (updates, new releases, a newsletter, a webinar, design changes) and onboard users to each one, ideally before it goes live.
Slack kept a resource centre one click away: at the time of the screenshot, a search box, a quick start guide and help topics, so users could return for side features and guides they needed more than once.
12. Gamify the process
UX gamification adds another layer of stickiness. The simplest moves: make the walkthrough interactive, send an in-app message now and then, ask for three-option satisfaction feedback, and keep your design alive.
13. Personalise the experience
Personalisation can mean segments with their own onboarding flows, a design for each language, or better accessibility than your competitors.
Pinterest's last signup step kept its button at "Pick 2 more" until users had chosen enough topics, so the first feed matched their interests. Support counts too: your customer support reputation weighs on users' choice of tool, so give every person a personal answer.
14. Keep an eye on your competitors
Market leaders in your field have probably tested many of your ideas already, so knowing how they onboard saves money, time and effort. The user onboarding experiences we've collected, good and bad, are a place to start.
Which best practice should you fix first?
Fix the practice that matches where your users drop, not the easiest one:
| Where users drop | What it usually means | Practices to start with |
|---|---|---|
| Before finishing signup | Too many questions, or questions with no visible reason | 2 and 13: fewer questions, each one changing what the user sees |
| After signup, before the first key action | No clear goal, or the path to value is too long | 1, 8 and a checklist (3) |
| Partway through a tour | The tour is too long or too passive | 5 and 7 |
| After the first week | Nothing brings users back | 10, 11 and 12 |
These practices shift with the business model. For a product sold on a free trial, see SaaS onboarding best practices; for accounts with a buyer, an admin and many end users, see B2B user onboarding.
About the author
Hilal YıldırımHilal is a creative content writer highly focused on growth, occasionally product, and always onboarding.
