You have invested time and money, built a neat onboarding flow with checklists, step-by-step demos, amazing animations and sleek UI. You release it and wait for the magic to happen but nothing happens.
You double check the metrics. No reporting error, the data is fine. Now you have to disappoint your team with a vague phrase like
"The effect of the experiment doesn't have an impact on the activation rate"
Which in people language means … we all worked for nothing.
You did all by the book. Nothing was missed. You blame seasonality, signups with low interest from that marketing campaign, but deep down you know that's not the problem.
I spent a lot of time fixing the onboarding experience for technical products with dozens of features: file uploads, image transformations, video optimization, CDN delivery, and more. The problem usually comes down to three things:
- Showing the wrong thing
- Showing too much
- Looking at the wrong data
I'm gonna explain how to fix these problems, make your product easy to understand, and make your team happy by building something that solves an important and complicated task but is easy to use.
Problem #1: Showing the wrong thing
Before we fix activation, let's make sure you're measuring the right thing.
Most teams define activation wrong. They measure setup instead of value.
Bad activation definitions:
- "Completed onboarding checklist"
- "Viewed API docs"
- "Created first project"
Better:
- "Made first successful API call that returned data"
- "Uploaded and transformed an image served on their site"
- "Deployed a function that received live traffic"
See the difference? Bad definitions measure your product's actions. Good ones measure user outcomes.
Here's the test: talk to 5 customers who stuck around 6+ months. Ask: "When did you know this was going to work for you?" That's your activation event.
If your activation rate is 60% but Day 30 retention is 20%, you're measuring the wrong thing. You're counting people who completed steps, not people who got value.
True activation predicts retention. If it doesn't, fix your definition first.
Problem #2: Showing too much
When you've built something you're proud of, your instinct is to show it off. You want users to understand the full power of what you've created. So you surface features. You add options. You create comprehensive documentation that covers every use case.
The result? Users bounce. Not because they're confused by complexity, but because they're overwhelmed by choice. They came to solve one problem, and you handed them a catalog.
How to define activation
Here's an exercise that might be painful: explain what your product does in two steps. Not five. Not three. Two.
If you can't do it, that's the problem.
This forces you to identify the single core value your product delivers. Everything else is a "vitamin," nice to have, but not the medicine that solves the acute pain your user showed up with.
Ask yourself brutal questions. What's the one big, painful, messy problem you solve? What would make a user say "oh, this is why I need this"? That's your AHA moment. Everything in your activation flow should drive toward it. Everything else should be stripped away, even the features you're proud of.
This might mean hiding capabilities. It might mean removing options. It might mean a "Get Started" experience that ignores 80% of what your product can do. That's fine. Once someone experiences the magic, they'll explore. But if they never get there, nothing else matters.
The "Developers will figure it out" myth
Now let's say you've found your one thing. You know exactly what outcome to drive users toward.
Let's assume your target audience is developers or founders with a developer background.
Great! Now here's where it goes wrong.
You think: "Developers are smart, they solve complex problems every day, integrating our product will be a breeze for them."
This assumption is where your focus breaks down.
I often hear: "Oh this is obvious for devs, they do it every day, it won't be a problem."
That assumption is the problem.
They won't figure it out.
Not because they can't, but because they don't want to. They don't have the time, the right mood, the energy, or this task isn't as important as others. Your users are engineers with seventeen browser tabs open, three Slack threads demanding attention, and a deadline breathing down their neck. Their brain is already overloaded. If your product feels like another problem to solve, they'll close the tab.
This isn't about intelligence. It's about cognitive bandwidth. The same developer who can architect distributed systems will bounce from your onboarding if it requires too much thinking. They're not looking to be impressed by your product's depth. They're looking to feel the magic fast.
The fix isn't dumbing down your product. It's focusing it ruthlessly on that single outcome. Strip away every decision, every option, every "but we should also show them…" that doesn't directly serve the AHA moment.
Problem #3: Your data Is lying to you
You've defined your activation. You've focused your onboarding on a single outcome. Now comes the hard part: measuring if it's actually working and iterating until it does.
This is where most teams stop. They ship v1, check the numbers once, declare victory or defeat, and move on.
Don't.
Activation isn't a one-time fix. It's a loop: define → focus → measure → iterate. And the "measure" part is where things get tricky.
Trap #1: Modern web VS tracking systems
In the era of modern web, frontend events and tracking pixels show you maybe 60% of the picture. Maybe less. Ad blockers, privacy extensions, and browser settings block 25–40% of analytics scripts. Add iOS tracking prevention, cookie consent rejections, and users who never trigger your 'success' event because they integrated via CLI instead of your UI, and you're missing half the story.
Here's what you're probably measuring:
- "User clicked 'Get Started'"
- "User viewed API documentation"
- "User copied code snippet"
Here's what you're NOT measuring:
- Did they actually paste that code?
- Did it run without errors?
- Did they get a successful response?
- Did the data they sent come back transformed correctly?
Frontend analytics tell you what users did in your UI. They don't tell you if users got value from your product.
The fix: Instrument your backend.
Track the moments that matter on the server side:
- First successful API call with a 200 response
- First file uploaded AND retrieved
- First transformation that actually processed
- First webhook that fired correctly
These are real activation signals. A button click is not.
If you're building a developer tool and you can't see what's happening in the user's application, you're flying blind. At minimum, track:
- API calls (successful vs failed)
- Integration errors (what broke and where)
- Time to first success (how long from signup to first working integration)
Alternative approach if backend tracking is hard: Use session recordings combined with cohort analysis. Watch real users go through your flow. See where they pause, where they get confused, where they give up. One hour of watching sessions will tell you more than a week of staring at funnel charts.
Trap #2: Confusing correlation with success
You might see "users who view the API keys section have 90% activation" and think you've found gold.
You haven't.
Users who are committed enough to look for API keys were probably going to activate anyway. You've found correlation, not causation. The API keys section isn't magical. Motivated users just happen to go there.
The AHA moment isn't a page or a button. It's a feeling. It's the moment the user understands, viscerally, what your product does for them.
Data can help you find it, but only if you're asking the right questions:
- What's the earliest action that predicts long-term retention?
- Where do activated users and churned users diverge in behavior?
- What's the time gap between signup and first value moment?
Don't optimize for moving a button 10 pixels to the right. Your users aren't stupid; they're busy. Focus on flow and motivation, not pixel-pushing.
How to know if it's actually working
Here's the real test: cohort retention.
Ship your changes. Wait. Then look at:
- Day 1 retention — Did more users come back the next day?
- Day 3 retention — Are they still engaged?
- Day 7 retention — Is the improvement holding?
- Day 30 retention — This is the one that matters. If Day 1 is up but Day 30 is flat, you've made onboarding easier to complete but didn't actually improve activation.
Compare cohorts before and after your changes. Don't trust a single week of data. Look at 3–4 cohorts minimum.
And here's the brutal truth: some signups will never activate.
Maybe they were just curious. Maybe they signed up for a free tier with no real intent to build. Maybe your product solves a problem they don't actually have.
You can't activate everyone, and trying to will dilute your experience for the users who matter. Part of improving activation is qualifying your audience. You need to understand who actually has the potential to succeed with your product, and focus your efforts ruthlessly on them.
This might mean accepting lower top-of-funnel numbers in exchange for higher-quality signups. It might mean making your "who this is for" messaging more explicit, even if it scares some people away.
Better to activate 70% of 100 qualified signups than 20% of 500 random ones.
The loop never stops
Your analytics will show you numbers. They won't tell you why.
So talk to users. Watch session recordings. Look at backend logs. Ask the brutal questions:
- Are these the right people, or are we trying to activate tourists?
- Are they completing steps or getting value?
- What's the gap between our activation metric and real retention?
Then iterate. Change one thing. Measure. Repeat.
Homework: Study the self-service products
Want to see what ruthless focus looks like? Study self-service SaaS products built for developers. Companies like Stripe, Vercel, Clerk, and Supabase.
Why self-service specifically? Because they don't have the luxury of a 60-minute sales call. There's no deck to present to a CEO. No account executive to walk someone through the value proposition. They have one visit and maybe two actions to prove their worth.
That constraint forces clarity. Look at how quickly they get you to a working integration. Notice what they don't show you upfront. Pay attention to how few decisions they ask you to make before you experience the product working.
Then ask yourself: if you had to onboard users under those constraints, what would you cut?