How to fix onboarding drop off - Blog Post (recipe #1) #14239
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Hi @rafaeelaudibert may I interest you in a side quest, sir? I’m experimenting with a new blog post format – SEO/LLM tutorials as "cooking recipes” (this one’s about debugging onboarding drop-offs). It’s meant to be high-level and tool-agnostic, with PostHog-specific tips layered in. The goal is something that's actually fun to read while still packing in useful information and clear next steps :) Would love your growth brain on this when you have a sec. Hoping to get your POV on the copy, especially if I missed anything important or got something wrong in the steps or suggestions. Totally fine if you only have time for high-level feedback. Obrigadaaaa 🙏 |
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@gewenyu99 FYI since you're an ✨actual cook✨ |
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This is very fun! I don't have a lot of feedback here on whether it reads like a real recipe - will leave that to the content folks, you know that much better than I do - but I feel like this would be waaaay more Posthog-y if we could change the UI to look more like a recipe book. Right now it just feels like a blogpost formatted differently vs. having something that's actually a recipe. To get this to a good place means some custom UI - similar to the one we have for the new docs page, with the step-by-step hog on the right walking you through the steps. It means people can check things off and write notes to it - like they would on an actual recipe book. It means being able to adjust the servings (this is more for fun, of course). I also think the "If using PostHog" bits should be highlighted more? I know we wanna do something generic, but we're selling PostHog at the end of the day, and we should drive people to use it. Maybe include a more prominent callout - "did you know using posthog oven means your recipe will be ready 50% faster when compared to the leading ovens in the market right now? data source: my head". Making it quirky is fun, but get people to sign up! |
Yeah I hear you but this is still very much so a proof of concept (ultimately still needs to validate whether this will perform well with SEO/LLMs or not), so I think it's a tall order to get any UI changes done before we know this is worth investing time/energy into. ATM we're barely at a point where the actual blog and newsletter pages look and behave like we want them to, so this might be a secondary (or tertiary) ask once we get some other ducks in a row That said I do love how this page looks/behaves and think it's the perfect template for something like this https://posthog.com/docs/error-tracking/start-here#quest-item-monitor-and-resolve-issues, I'm just unsure if we can replicate that in the blog as of right now
Yeah because these are upper funnel pieces it's a delicate balance making sure they also very much so serve the "general population", but I also hear you on this being light on call to actions. Will give it some more thought this week! Tyyy @rafaeelaudibert |
gewenyu99
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gewenyu99
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This is super cool. Love how you're leaning into recipes, super unique feel here.
I do feel like we're not leaning into that whole recipe bit hard enough toward the middle of this post. Maybe adding these in consistently with formatting can help:
- Time expected for each step
- How to tell if each step is successful
- The chef's tips bits, but as a consistent recurring theme
- Checklist to review steps start/finish
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| By the end of Step 5, you should be able to say "Users drop off here because *[this thing]* keeps happening." |
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Again I think consistent format for checking how you know you've d1one this step successfully (maybe a quote block box or callout box with consistent format) will be super useful
…/PostHog/posthog.com into onboarding-flow-recipe-blog-post
Testing both in and out of a detail expand
…/PostHog/posthog.com into onboarding-flow-recipe-blog-post
…/PostHog/posthog.com into onboarding-flow-recipe-blog-post
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@ivanagas Heya!! Over the holidays I was thinking about SEO/LLM content – both finding different topics I'm excited to write about (beyond just tools/alternatives, which are a bit saturated), and our more recent conversations about developing consistent content series. I came up with this recipe-style tutorial format; the idea is to frame tutorials like cooking recipes, and it's meant to be fun and weird and a bit tongue-in-cheek while still being genuinely helpful – something that stands out from typical tutorial content. Once we nail the template, I can scale it across different themes and products Here's a draft of the first one for review :) |
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I think this is looking good, it's definitely a fun format. I would just say:
- Let's make sure we're clear about the keyword we want to rank for and it's traffic. I realize there is a lot of good stuff in here for LLMs but search traffic should still be our primary signal until we have better data about LLM usage.
- Be careful about overdoing it with the fun bits, I think you're right on the edge in terms of the metaphor (but it works), while you might be a bit over(cooked 😉) in terms of fun components and this takes away from the actual content.
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What is the keyword we are trying to rank for here? "Onboarding drop off" and "how to fix onboarding" seem to have no traffic but maybe I'm missing something. "Onboarding" seems to be all about employee onboarding, so would be a bit tough to rank for.
| 3. `first_project_created` | ||
| 4. `teammate_invited` (the last step is your activation event) | ||
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| A few tips: |
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Is there a tip to add here that you need to capture an event before it can be included in the funnel? It is sort of implied that you can create a funnel before you capture data.
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| There’s no universal benchmark. | ||
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| For self-serve SaaS, **20–40%** onboarding completion is common. Higher-touch products with sales involvement often see higher rates. |
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Source? hehe, it's ok if not
| - [10 things we've learned about A/B testing](https://newsletter.posthog.com/p/10-things-weve-learned-about-ab-testing) | ||
| - [How to think like a growth engineer](/newsletter/think-like-a-growth-engineer) | ||
| - [What we've learned about talking to users](/blog/product-for-engineers-1) | ||
| - [50 things we've learned about building successful products](https://newsletter.posthog.com/p/50-things-weve-learned-about-building) |
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We can link to the posthog.com versions of these
https://posthog.com/newsletter/what-we've-learned-about-ab-testing
https://posthog.com/newsletter/50-product-learnings
| *It's like attempting a beef wellington, realizing you're in over your head somewhere around the "wrap the beef in mushroom duxelles" step, and bailing to order pizza instead. Ask me how I know.* | ||
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| **Even better news**: onboarding friction is measurable, debuggable, and fixable. | ||
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Although this is fun, I think it might be a bit much early on. We have a lot of fun components up front and this is the one I'd pick to remove. It's just a bit too long before we get to the meat of the article.
The TLDR sort of feels like a repeat of "What you'll need" especially if you don't scroll.
Also, if you removed this, I don't think you'd need --- in every section which would help spacing a bit.
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I would stay keep the checkbox components but use them in the Ingredients section as a bit of fun rather than hiding them.
| | **Difficulty** | Beginner-friendly | | ||
| | **Yields** | One less broken onboarding flow | | ||
| | **Best for** | Product engineers, technical founders, growth teams | | ||
| | **Outcome** | Identify where users drop off during onboarding, why it happens, and what to fix first. | |
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Maybe this is for here or maybe somewhere else, but do you want to touch on, why you should care about fixing this? Maybe as simple as one paragraph:
Better onboarding conversion boosts all downstream metrics from activation to retention to revenue.
Co-authored-by: Ian Vanagas <[email protected]>
Changes
First post in a proposed "recipe" blog series, which will be a set of high-level, SEO- and LLM-friendly tutorials styled as cooking recipes. Each one tackles a universal product problem in a structured but playful format.
Why this format?
The long game (in the spirit of #do-more-weird): If this works, we can eventually build out a "PostHog Cookbook", a collection of recipes organized by goal or product area. Same structure across all posts makes it easy to navigate, internally link, and reuse for SEO/AEO. We can have fun with the visuals and presentation of it!
For reviewers
This is an intentional format experiment. Would love feedback on:
P.S. Haven't had time to do the art request yet! Any images added are placeholders for now!
Checklist
vercel.jsonArticle checklist