SaaS onboarding flow templatePlan your onboarding flow, stage by stage.
Six stages from sign-up to habit, each with the questions that decide how it works in your product. The grey text is a worked example for a made-up scheduling product. Write your answers over it, then copy or download the plan.
The template
Stage 1
Sign-up
Create the account with as little as possible asked.
Stage 2
Welcome
Say what the first result will be and point at one first step.
Stage 3
First setup
The steps the product truly needs before it can deliver anything.
Stage 4
First value
The moment the user gets what they came for: your activation event.
Stage 5
Invite the team
Bring in the people who make the product stick, once it has shown value.
Stage 6
Habit
The next most useful thing, and help whenever the user gets stuck.
Your answers are saved in this browser only. Blank answers download as the example, marked as such.
How to use it.
Fill in the first-value stage first. Your activation event decides everything before it: each earlier step either gets a user closer to it or can wait. Then go back to sign-up and work forward.
For each required step, ask whether a default, sample data or a background job could replace it. Count what is left, and put it into the time to value calculator to see what it costs your new users each month.
Once the plan is set, review the build against the user onboarding checklist. For the steps your product can’t drop, Stiro lets new users ask for what they want and does the steps for them, in your product, while they watch.
Onboarding flow questions.
What is a SaaS onboarding flow?
The sequence of screens and steps a new user goes through from sign-up to the first real result, and on to regular use. A good flow asks only for what it needs, gets to value quickly and helps at the steps where people stall.
How do you design an onboarding flow?
Start from the value moment and work back: list every step a user must take to reach it, remove what you can, give the rest defaults or sample data, then decide what the user sees after sign-up and what waits until after first value. This template walks through those decisions stage by stage.
How many steps should onboarding have?
As few as your product needs to deliver its first result. Count them honestly, including screens the user has to find, and try the time to value calculator to see what each step costs across your sign-ups.
Should onboarding be the same for every user?
Often not. If different users come for different results, ask one question at sign-up (what they want to do first) and send each to the shortest path for that goal.
Where does Stiro fit?
Stiro fits the first setup and habit stages: a new user says what they want, such as “set my hours to 10 to 6 and add a 15-minute call”, and an in-app AI agent does the steps in your product while they watch. It reads the live screen, so the flow can change without updating it.
Let your users just ask.
Stiro does the steps in your app for your users. One script tag, 50 runs a month free, no card.