Activation & onboarding review

MEMO To: Onboarding Squad From: Product Leadership Subject: Fixing the Onboarding Funnel

Team,

Looking at the last 90 days, the story is clear: getting users to their first chart is everything. Week-2 retention jumps from 11% to 62% once a user builds a chart.

Right now, we are losing 59% of signups before they ever connect data, and another 8% before they build that first chart. Why? Because our signups are PMs and marketers, yet we are forcing them through a data-engineer onboarding flow.

Here is where we are losing people and what we need to fix, in priority order:

1. Add a “Send to an Engineer” flow & Sample Data (Screens 5–6) * The Problem: 59% of users drop off before connecting data, and 41% of support tickets are “I don’t have database credentials.” PMs and marketers don't have Postgres passwords or understand SSL modes, and a 14-page guide won't help them. Because there is no skip option, they hit a hard wall. * The Fix: Add two buttons to Screen 5: “Explore with Sample Data” and “Invite an Engineer to connect data.” Let the PM experience the "aha" moment immediately with a sandbox dataset while their engineer handles the credentials in parallel. This also instantly fixes our low 9% teammate-invite rate by giving users a real reason to invite a colleague early.

2. Make data syncing asynchronous (Screen 8) * The Problem: We lose 8% of our total signups (nearly 20% of those who actually manage to connect data) between connecting a source and building a chart. A 20-minute progress bar that cancels if you close the tab is a conversion killer, and it's driving 18% of our support tickets. * The Fix: Move syncing to the background. Let users close the tab (or play with sample data) and email them the moment their data is ready. Also, replace the raw list of every database table (Screen 7) with smart defaults so non-technical users aren't overwhelmed.

3. Eliminate the "Empty Canvas" (Screens 9–10) * The Problem: A user picks a dashboard template on Screen 9, only to be dropped into a blank chart builder on Screen 10. Blank canvases cause analysis paralysis. * The Fix: Make the templates on Screen 9 actually populate pre-built charts on Screen 10 using their data (or the sample data). Give them a working chart immediately that they can tweak, getting them across that 62% retention threshold automatically.

4. Remove pre-value friction (Screens 2–4) * The Problem: We pause the flow for email verification and ask two CRM-style profiling questions before the user has seen the product. Every step here costs us momentum. * The Fix: Let users into the product immediately and require email verification later (e.g., before they can share a chart). Cut the “team size” question entirely, and only keep “role” if we use it to auto-select their dashboard template in Step 9.

Let's scope Item #1 for this sprint.

MEMO

To: Onboarding squad Re: Where we lose people, and what to fix first

Where we lose people

• Signup to connect (100% to 41%): The largest loss. Most of our users are PMs and marketers who don't have database credentials, and the flow gives them no way forward without them.
• Connect to first chart (41% to 33%): About a fifth of people who connect never build a chart. Sync and the empty canvas are the likely causes.
• First chart to invite (33% to 9%): Expected, since invites come after value. Lower priority for now.

Retention is the reason to care about the first chart: 62% of users who reach one are active in week 2, versus 11% of those who don't. This is correlational, since engaged users may be the ones who build charts, but it is the strongest signal we have.

What to fix, in order

1. Add sample data and a skip at step 5. Users without credentials currently hit a dead end. Sample data gets them to a chart in minutes, which is the milestone that predicts retention. This also targets the top support ticket (41%). Reason: highest expected impact on the number that matters.

1. Let people in before email verification, and drop the role and team screens from the critical path. Step 2 blocks all progress, and steps 3–4 ask questions before the user has seen any value. Move role and team to after the first chart, where they can personalize templates. Reason: removes the earliest friction, when drop-off is highest.

1. Rebuild the credentials path. Replace the 14-page guide with short, per-warehouse steps for Postgres, BigQuery and Snowflake, and add a "send these instructions to your data engineer" link that delivers a connect-only invite. The person who has the credentials is often not the person signing up. Reason: addresses the remaining credential tickets and the step 6 drop-off.

1. Fix sync. Let leaving the page not cancel the sync. Show partial results as tables finish. Pre-select likely tables and add search to the step 7 list. Make CSV upload the fastest route to a first chart. Reason: sync failures are the second-largest ticket category (18%), and cancellation on exit loses users mid-setup.

1. Make the first chart appear without effort. Templates (step 9) should render a live chart immediately. Replace the empty canvas at step 10 with a suggested chart the user can edit. Reason: a blank canvas is the last hurdle before the retention milestone.

1. Move team invites after the first chart, and prompt for them there. Keep the skip link. Reason: invites are useful but come after value; test this once the upstream fixes land.

Measurement

Track signup-to-first-chart as the primary metric, with week-2 retention as the outcome. Run fixes 1 and 2 as separate experiments so we can see which one moves the funnel.