Guides · Activation

How to find where users drop off in your SaaS onboarding

Where new sign-ups stop before they get any value: how to write your onboarding as steps, measure each one, tell a drop-off from a slow start, and what to fix first.

2026-10-14 · 4 min read

Most people who sign up for a SaaS never get to the moment it's useful to them. That part is normal. What you can change is where they stop, and you can only change it once you know which step it is.

This guide is the method we use: write the onboarding down as steps, count people at each one, tell the people who are lost from the ones who are just slow, and look at where they went instead. It works with a spreadsheet and your database; at the end there's how UserJourney does it for you.

Write your onboarding down as steps

Pick the three to five things someone has to do between signing up and getting value. For an analytics product it might be:

1. Create a project
2. Install the snippet
3. See the first event

The last one is activation: the moment they got what they came for. Be strict about it. "Logged in twice" isn't activation; "saw their first report" is.

Each step has to be something you can observe: a page they reach (/onboarding/install) or an action you record in your code. If you can't see it, you can't count it.

Count people per step, for one group at a time

Take everyone who signed up in the same period, say the last 30 days, and count how many of them did each step. The same group, start to finish: if you count this week's step 3 against last month's sign-ups, the numbers mean nothing.

An example, not real data. Here the biggest drop is between creating a project and installing the snippet: almost half the people stop there. That's the step to look at first, before any email.

Ignore the drop from visit to sign-up when you look for the onboarding problem. It's always huge and it's a different question: whether your site convinces people, not whether your product works for them.

Tell a drop-off from a slow start

Someone who created a project an hour ago and hasn't installed the snippet yet isn't lost. They're busy. If you count them as dropped, you'll chase people who were about to finish.

Use time without progress instead: someone is stuck when they haven't done a new step for a while. To pick the while, look at how long people who did finish took between steps. If most go from step 1 to step 2 within a few hours, 24 hours without progress is a good line. If your setup needs a developer and a deploy, it may be days.

Look at where they went instead

The step tells you where people stop. What they did next often tells you why:

• They opened the docs and left: the step needs something they couldn't find.
• They went to settings or billing: they were looking for something the step assumes they've done.
• They came back three times to the same page: it doesn't work the way they expect.
• They never came back: the step asked for more than they had time for.

You can see this in your server logs, or by reading what a handful of stuck people did, one by one. With a few dozen sign-ups a week, reading ten people's paths teaches you more than any chart.

Fix the step, then write to the people

In this order:

1. Make the step shorter. Cut fields, pick defaults, offer sample data, or do it for them. A clearer screen moves more people than any email.
2. Write to the people who are stuck now. A short, plain note from you that names the step they stopped at, with a link straight to it. Ask if something got in the way: their replies are your best research.
3. Measure again with the next group of sign-ups, not the same one.

Doing it with UserJourney

UserJourney counts the steps for you. Pages under /onboarding/<step> count on their own; otherwise it's one line per step:

uj.step("install_snippet")

Funnel shows each step for the people who signed up in the period, the biggest drop in a sentence, how long people typically take and who is stuck right now. Paths, from the sign-up, shows where they went instead. Today lists the people who need a word from you, with a note already written for the step they stopped at, and the playbooks can send it for you once you've read them.

Start for free or read the quickstart.

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