Onboarding Is A Lie

We build these elaborate onboarding tours because they make us feel responsible. Like we're helping. The reality is that most sequential onboarding is just documentation for our bad design decisions.

The Sequential Tour Problem

Open a new SaaS product and you're immediately hit with a modal. "Welcome! Let's show you around!" Then comes step 1 of 12, complete with arrows, highlights, and a cheerful "Next" button. You click Next without reading. Then Next again. Then you close the whole thing and try to figure out the product yourself.

Chameleon analyzed 15 million product tour interactions and the data tells you everything:

Tours with three steps have a 72% completion rate. That's actually decent. Three quick steps feels manageable. But four-step tours? Completion drops to 45%. Seven-step tours? Only 16% of users finish them.

Sequential tours interrupt users before they've even touched the product. You're forcing users through a predetermined path when they just want to click around and figure things out. The tour becomes the obstacle between them and what they came to do.

What Actually Gets Users to Value

Watching other users in action. Someone sends a Loom video or shares their screen on Zoom. Watching someone who actually uses the product navigate it teaches more than any 12-step tour ever will. This is why product demo videos on YouTube often have more views than your official tutorials.

Getting stuck and searching for answers. They Google their specific problem, ask ChatGPT, or search your docs. If they find their exact question answered with a clear example, you've onboarded them. If your docs require reading from the top or watching a 30-minute overview video, they'll bounce and try to figure it out themselves.

Support conversations about real problems. Nothing teaches users faster than a support person helping them accomplish the real task they're trying to do right now. This doesn't scale, which is why we build tours instead. But support teaches. Tours just delay.

Trial and error with immediate feedback. Users click around until they figure things out. This feels chaotic to product builders who want to control the learning path. To users, it's just how they learn software. They want to accomplish a task. If your product gives good feedback when they try something, they learn fast.

Demo data that shows what's possible. An empty dashboard with placeholder text teaches nothing. A dashboard populated with realistic fake data shows users what success looks like before they've done any work. Then let them clear it out and add their own. The example teaches through showing, not explaining.

The Aha Moment Myth

Product people obsess over finding the "aha moment" for their product. That magical instant when everything clicks for the user and they get it. We instrument everything trying to identify this moment so we can optimize the path to it.

You can't force an aha moment through a sequential tour. You can't manufacture it by walking users through features in a specific order. It happens when it happens, and it's different for different users. Some people get it on day one, others need weeks, and some never fully get there.

Linear is a good example here. They don't have those "Welcome! Let's show you around!" tours. You open the app and start creating issues. The command bar and keyboard shortcuts reveal themselves through use. Users figure it out because the interface makes sense and the contextual help appears exactly when needed.

Why Bad Onboarding Persists

Building a sequential tour is easier than fixing confusing UI. You can ship a tour in a week. Redesigning the entire information architecture to be more intuitive takes months. The tour is a band-aid that makes the wound feel treated without actually healing anything.

Onboarding metrics give PMs something to optimize. Tour completion rate, time to first action, and activation percentage are numbers that go up and down. You can run experiments on them. It feels like progress. It feels like you're improving the product. You're just improving the workaround.

We copy what successful products do without understanding why they do it. Slack has onboarding so we add onboarding, Notion has a getting started checklist so we add a checklist, and we're essentially copying the symptoms without understanding what actually helps users. Those products succeed despite their tours, not because of them.

The false belief that more explanation equals more clarity keeps us building. If users don't understand, we add more tour steps, more help text, and more documentation. Users need less product to understand. Simplify the interface instead of explaining the complexity.

Good Onboarding vs Bad Onboarding

Good onboarding is invisible until you need it. A tooltip that appears when you hover over an unfamiliar icon. An inline help text that explains what a field does. A contextual hint that shows up when you're about to make a mistake. Labels that clearly describe what buttons do. Copy that guides without lecturing.

Bad onboarding forces a sequence before you've touched the product. Step 1 of 15, here's the dashboard. Step 2 of 15, here's where you create things. Step 3 of 15, here's the settings. The user hasn't tried to do anything yet, so none of this has meaning.

They click Next repeatedly to make it stop.

The irony is that sequential tours try to prevent confusion by explaining everything upfront. But front-loading information guarantees users won't retain it. People learn by doing, then referring back to help when they get stuck. Tours reverse this natural learning pattern.

GitHub does this well. No tour when you sign up. Just a repository creation flow that walks you through the first critical action. After that, contextual help appears exactly where you need it. Tooltips on hover, inline documentation in forms, and command palette hints when you use keyboard shortcuts. The help is there, but it's not performing for you.

What Actually Works

Here's what gets users to value faster than any sequential tour:

• Forcing functions that require one critical action first. You can't do anything in Notion until you create your first page. GitHub makes you create a repository. Figma makes you start a design file. This isn't a tour, it's mandatory activation. Users hate it in the moment and thank you later because it got them doing the actual thing immediately.
• Smart defaults based on common use cases. Make good guesses based on what most people need. Give them reasonable defaults. Let power users customize later. Figma does this well. You can start designing immediately because the defaults are reasonable for most people.
• Inline contextual help at decision points. GitHub shows you git commands right in the interface when you're about to push code. The help appears in context, at the moment it's useful. Show people help when they're trying to do the thing, not before they care about the thing.
• Progressive complexity that reveals itself over time. Notion starts simple with pages and blocks, then you discover databases, then formulas, and then relations. The complexity reveals itself as users get more sophisticated. Overwhelming users with too much information upfront increases cognitive load and guarantees they won't retain it.
• Example-driven interfaces with real data. Show a populated dashboard with realistic fake data. Let users see the product working. Then let them clear it out and add their own. Real examples teach more than empty states with instructional copy.
• Empty states with clear next actions. When users hit an empty state, show them exactly what to do next. "Create your first project" with a big button is better than "Projects you create will appear here" with no direction.

The Documentation Reality

Users only read documentation when they're stuck. Nobody sits down to read your docs from start to finish before using the product. They try to use it, get stuck, then search for their specific problem. If you can't be found via search or ChatGPT, your docs don't exist to users.

Video tutorials have higher engagement than written guides. Viewers retain 95% of a video's message compared to 10% when reading text. Different users learn differently. Some people want to read step-by-step instructions, others want to watch someone do it, and most want to just try it themselves with help available when stuck.

The best documentation is concrete examples, not conceptual overviews. Show developers the actual code, show designers the actual component, and show users the actual steps with screenshots. Skip the "Understanding our architecture" section and jump straight to "How to do the thing." Users can extrapolate from examples. They can't concretize from abstractions.

Discord and Slack communities often teach more than official onboarding. Users ask questions. Other users answer with their actual workflows. Real problems get real solutions. The community becomes the actual onboarding system. Your official materials become supplementary. This is fine. Embrace it instead of trying to prevent it.

When Onboarding Actually Matters

Complex B2B tools with expensive mistakes need thorough onboarding. AWS, infrastructure tools, and deployment platforms fall into this category. Getting these wrong costs money and causes outages. Users want hand-holding here. They want comprehensive guidance. The risk justifies the time investment.

But, sequential tours aren't the answer even for complex products. Contextual help, good documentation, and progressive disclosure work better.

Look at Cloudflare. The interface is cluttered as hell, but it still lets you dive in and do stuff on your own. You click around, you try things, and when you inevitably need help, it's there. The complexity of the domain requires good contextual help exactly when users need it.

Products with non-obvious value propositions need to show users why they should care. If your product solves a problem users don't know they have, you need to explain it. But then again, that's a PMF issue, not a product problem.

But anyway, explain the problem and the value, not the interface mechanics. Make them care about the solution first. Then the interface becomes obvious because they're motivated to figure it out.

Scientific and specialized software with domain-specific concepts needs real education. Medical imaging software, statistical analysis tools, and scientific instruments require users to understand underlying concepts before they can use the product effectively.

The interface isn't confusing, the domain is inherently complex. Here, educational content matters. But it should be separate from the UI, available when needed, not forced through a tour.

Tools with steep learning curves but high retention once mastered justify the investment. Figma, Blender, and Photoshop take real time to master.

Users expect the learning curve. They want structured learning paths and comprehensive tutorials. But notice that even these products let you start immediately. You can make something on day one. The learning happens around the doing, not before it.

Regulatory and compliance products where mistakes are costly need proper guidance. Financial software, healthcare tools, and legal platforms require users to know what not to do.

The onboarding here is about avoiding disasters and staying compliant. This is legitimate. 

But again, contextual warnings and inline help work better than front-loaded tours.

Building for How Users Actually Learn

Accept that most users will struggle initially. Struggle is learning. Users should struggle with the problem domain, not with your interface. If they're struggling to figure out where to click, that's bad design. If they're struggling to understand their own business problem, your product can't solve that for them.

Design for the search query, not the comprehensive overview. Users will Google their problem or ask ChatGPT when stuck. Make sure your content answers that search. Write documentation titles that match what users actually search for.

"How do I export a PDF" is better than "Export functionality overview."

The first one matches how people search. The second one only makes sense if you already understand the product.

Make your product debuggable by users themselves. When something goes wrong, the error message should tell them what and why.

Error messages like "Your file is too large. Maximum size is 10MB. Try compressing it first." let users solve their own problems. Generic error messages like "Upload failed" create support tickets. Good error messages are invisible onboarding.

Reduce the surface area requiring explanation. Every workflow that needs a tour is a workflow that's probably too convoluted. Before building onboarding for a confusing feature, consider simplifying the feature. The best onboarding is invisible because the interface just makes sense.

The Real Solution

Better UX needs less explanation. If your product requires a 12-step tour to be usable, your UX is broken. The tour is compensating for unclear design. Build interfaces that make sense without needing tours to explain them.

Clear information architecture matters more than any tour. Users should be able to guess what something does before clicking it.

Button labels should be obvious, navigation should be predictable, and hierarchy should be clear. When these things are right, users need contextual help, not sequential tours.

Put your product in front of someone who's never seen it. Then watch what they click.

If they can't figure out the basics in five minutes, your interface is not ready. A tour might help them get through those five minutes, but it won't help them actually understand the core of the product.

Measure time to value, not tour completion. How long until users accomplish their first real task? How long until they get actual value from the product? These metrics matter more than whether they clicked through all 12 steps of your tour. Users who skip the tour but accomplish their task in 10 minutes are more successful than users who complete the tour but take 30 minutes to do anything real.

The Uncomfortable Truth

We build sequential onboarding tours to feel like we're helping users. What we're actually doing is documenting all the ways our interface doesn't make sense.

Every tour step is an admission that something isn't obvious. Every piece of explanatory text is evidence that a label or button isn't clear enough.

The best products need better defaults, clearer labels, and simpler workflows. They need contextual help that appears when you need it, not tours that interrupt before you've even started.

Onboarding should be invisible until the moment you need it. That's good onboarding. Everything else is just interruption.

Users don't want to learn your product. They want to accomplish their task. Your product is the tool, not the goal.

Stop making them sit through tours and make the tool obvious enough that they can just use it. Save the sequential tours for complex domains where education truly matters. For everything else, build interfaces that work without needing explanation.