Faster Time to Value: The Onboarding Principle Most Teams Get Backwards

Most teams approach onboarding as a building problem. What should we add? A welcome modal? A product tour? A checklist to guide users through setup? What about a short video that explains how everything works?

The result is usually a feature-complete onboarding experience that delays the moment users actually get value from the product.

That's the wrong direction entirely.

The fastest path to value isn't better onboarding. It's less of it. The aha moment isn't something you engineer by adding more steps — it's something you stop blocking.

The sequence problem nobody talks about

Most onboarding articles diagnose copy problems or visual design problems. "Use clearer button labels." "Add progress indicators." These are fine. But they're treating symptoms of a deeper structural issue.

The real problem is sequencing. Teams ask for things — permissions, profile data, integrations, a tutorial walkthrough — before they've earned the right to ask. They front-load friction in the name of thoroughness, and then wonder why activation rates are low.

A useful mental model: think about what a new user needs to see, do, or feel to decide the product is worth their time. Then put that thing first. Everything else — team invites, notification preferences, the walkthrough of advanced features — comes after that moment, not before.

The user journey through onboarding should be designed around a single question: where is the moment that proves value, and how quickly can we get there?

The "how it works" trap

One of the most common onboarding patterns is what you might call the "how it works" panel. A welcome screen, or a first-run modal, that explains the product before the user has used it.

The problem with this is fundamental: explanation before experience almost never lands. Users aren't ready to absorb information about a product they haven't tried yet. They need context first, and context comes from doing, not reading.

Growth.design's case study on Too Good To Go's onboarding documents exactly this pattern. The original flow front-loaded explanation — here's how the app works, here's what a magic bag is, here's how to pick one up. The recommendation was simple: replace the explainer with a value-first panel that gets users into the product's core action as quickly as possible. Then explain once they have context for what they're being told.

This isn't about removing helpful information. It's about reordering it. The explanation doesn't disappear — it moves to where it will actually be absorbed.

What "value-first" actually means

Value-first doesn't mean skipping setup entirely. Some products genuinely need configuration before they can show anything useful. The point is to minimise the setup to the minimum viable amount, and to be honest about what each step enables.

The best way to audit your own onboarding is to trace the user flow from sign-up to the first moment of genuine product value. Not the first time someone completes a checklist item — the first time they see output that makes them think "this is actually useful."

Walk that flow as a new user and count the decisions they have to make before reaching that moment. Every decision that doesn't directly enable the value moment is a candidate for deferral or removal.

Common things that can wait:

• Team and collaborator invites (let them explore alone first)
• Notification preferences (default to sensible and let them adjust later)
• Integrations with other tools (useful, but not required for the first value moment)
• Profile completion prompts (almost never required to get value)
• Feature discovery tours (users don't have the mental model yet)

The demo question

One pattern that does work: a short demo. Not a walkthrough of every feature, but a 10-15 second demonstration of the core action the product performs.

The key distinction is specificity. A generic "here's what you can do" overview isn't useful. A concrete demonstration of the specific output the product produces — ideally with real or realistic data — gives new users something to anchor their expectations to.

The goal of the demo is to show, not explain. Show someone what a finished task looks like in the product. Then give them the tools to create one. That sequence works because users are now oriented — they have a problem statement they understand, and they've seen what success looks like.

If you can't make a 15-second demo that captures the core value of the product, that's a useful signal. Either the value proposition isn't clear enough, or the product itself isn't ready to be shown that early in the user journey.

Ask for things after you've delivered value

This one sounds obvious when stated plainly, but almost every SaaS product does the opposite.

The permission requests, the "invite your team" prompt, the feedback survey — all of these appear before the user has had a reason to invest. The response rate is predictably low, and teams interpret that as a copy problem. It's not. It's a timing problem.

Once a user has experienced the product's core value — once they've hit that aha moment — everything changes. They have a reason to want notifications. They have context for why inviting their team would help. They're in a position to give useful feedback because they've actually used the thing.

The rule is: ask for things after you've delivered value, not before. The more you ask for upfront, the more you signal that the product is optimised for your needs, not theirs.

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Three questions to audit your onboarding

Before your next onboarding review, answer these honestly:

1. What is the first moment a new user could genuinely feel the product's value? Not the end of the tutorial — the first real moment.

2. How many steps sit between sign-up and that moment? Count every decision, every form field, every screen. Each one is a tax on activation.

3. Which of those steps directly enables the value moment, and which could be deferred? Move anything deferrable to after the first value moment. Default sensible values where you can.

The pattern you're looking for is: get to value fast, then ask for everything else. Not because users are impatient (they are), but because asking before value is asking before trust. And trust is what makes those later asks land.

The aha moment isn't your job to create

One final reframe that's worth internalising: you cannot create an aha moment. What you can do is build a product that delivers genuine value and then get out of the way quickly enough for users to find it.

The teams that obsess over onboarding optimisation — the copy, the animations, the checklist completion rates — are often optimising around a product that hasn't earned attention yet. The aha moment follows value. Value follows product quality. Onboarding is the path, not the destination.

Make the path shorter. Stop blocking the thing that matters.