Signups looked healthy, but activation was almost zero

Signups looked healthy, but activation was almost zero

I recently worked through a growth diagnostic for a no-code trading automation tool, and the main lesson was a bit uncomfortable.

The product had traffic.

It had signups.

People were clearly interested in the idea.

But almost nobody was reaching the first real value moment.

At first, this looked like an onboarding problem.

And honestly, onboarding was part of it. The flow had too many steps, introduced too many concepts too early, and used the same path for every type of user.

But the support tickets told a better story.

A lot of users wanted automation outcomes. They were not necessarily trying to learn how to build trading strategies from scratch.

The product path, however, pushed them into a visual strategy builder before they could get value.

That created a mismatch:

• Beginners needed education, examples, and confidence before they could use the builder
• Automation-focused users wanted a faster path to setup and execution

So the question changed from:

How do we make onboarding easier?

to:

Which user segment can reach value fastest with the current product?

That led to an ICP narrowing experiment.

Not a full pivot.

Just a focused test around the segment most likely to activate quickly.

The biggest takeaway for me:

Signups can make a product look healthier than it is.
Activation tells the harder truth.

Curious how other founders think about this.

When signups look decent but activation is weak, would you fix onboarding first, narrow the ICP, or revisit the core product promise?