Something I realised while looking at SaaS onboarding and digital products
I’ve been looking closely at SaaS onboarding and digital products recently and something started to feel a bit strange.
The internet has gotten very good at distributing software and information.
You can launch a course, template, guide, or SaaS product easier than ever.
But when you talk to founders behind these products, a pattern shows up pretty quickly.
A lot of users sign up…
…and never actually reach the outcome the product promises.
Not because the product is bad.
Usually it’s just friction, distraction, or not knowing what the next step is.
Which made me realise something.
Most products think they’re competing on features or pricing.
But it feels like the real competition might actually be who gets users to the finish line.
I'm curious how other founders here think about this.
Do you track how many users actually reach the outcome your product promises?
The onboarding comparison between SaaS and digital products is interesting - digital products have a higher immediate-value bar because there's no trial period. The buyer has to feel the value from page one of the template or it goes in the 'never opened' folder.
The best digital products solve this by making the first interaction transformative, not just instructional. Don't show them how to use the CRM database; show them what it looks like with their first 3 clients already in it. Filled examples > empty templates every time.
Building a Solopreneur Notion OS with this philosophy - each of the 6 linked databases ships with realistic sample data so the user sees the system working immediately. The 'aha' moment has to be in the first 5 minutes. Would love to know what onboarding pattern you found most effective across the SaaS and digital product examples you looked at.
Ive noticed this often happens when the people signing up arent actually the ones closest to the problem. the product might work, but only a specific segment reaches the outcome quickly, while everyone else drops off. when you narrow toward users already dealing with that exact situation, onboarding friction usually drops because the value is obvious from the start.
@Formely oh yes. It's the same pattern I noticed too. Too many products. too many tools. little essence to them. I actually gave up on trying products, only because most of them offered too much friction during signup or onboarding.
By the time I normally fnish obnaording, I get lost haha
I believe it stems down to few things:
There are obviously others...but what do u feel?
This is such a good way of framing it.
Activation gets tracked because it’s easy…
but completion is what actually delivers the outcome.
Feels like most products optimise for:
→ getting users to start
but not necessarily to finish
And that gap compounds over time.
I’ve been looking at this through Formely — turning PDFs into hosted, fillable workbooks and tracking where people drop off — and what’s interesting is how often the break isn’t at onboarding, but somewhere in the middle of the journey.
Almost like:
start → partial progress → drop-off
instead of:
start → completion → result
Curious what you’d consider the “completion event” in your product — is it clearly defined?
One thing that made me start thinking about this was looking at onboarding analytics for a few products.
A lot of founders track signups and activation… but very few seem to track whether users actually finish the workflow that delivers the outcome.
For example:
finishing the setup
completing the first project
reaching the first “aha” moment
It made me wonder if the real growth metric for a lot of products isn’t just activation, but how many users actually complete the journey they started.
Curious if anyone here tracks something like that or has tried measuring it.