Sevginur Ak Parlak
Oct 2, 2025
6 min read
Onboarding for SaaS 1: Understanding the Current Journey
Recently, I started redesigning the onboarding journey for one of my clients. The goal? To gather more insights about users by asking a few key questions:
Who are they?
What are they looking for?
How many campaigns do they run per year?
How many people work in their company?
But before adding new elements, it’s essential to analyze the current journey and identify opportunities for improvement. In this article, I’ll walk you through how I evaluated the existing process, found out user pain points, and explored areas for refinement.
Analyzing the Current Journey
To improve the onboarding experience, we first need to fully understand the current process. This means examining every step and identifying where users might face challenges.
Here’s what that process looks like:
Testing across devices (desktop, tablet, mobile).
Using different types of email accounts (Gmail, work email).
Trying various ways to answer forms (filling in all fields vs. skipping some).
Engaging with different support options (email, chatbot, customer service).
Creating a customer journey map can help visualize every touchpoint: screens, notifications, emails, and SMS (if applicable).
If time and budget allow, conducting a mini usability test with 5–8 participants can reveal how users experience the onboarding.
Unfortunately, for this project, we didn’t have the resources for a usability test.
Understanding user behavior can be challenging without data. Relying solely on observations or usability tests might miss hidden pain points or patterns in user drop-offs.
Analytics tools can provide valuable insights by tracking how users interact with each step of the onboarding process. Conversion rates, heat maps, and session recordings reveal which areas users struggle with or abandon. Additionally, some AI-powered tools can highlight key friction points and suggest optimizations.
The Current User Flow
The onboarding flow on my client’s platform was quite simple:
Sign-Up/Sign-In: Users are asked to create an account or sign in.
Payment Page: Right after sign-up, users are directed to the payment page.
Dashboard: After payment, users land on the dashboard with no guidance.
While simplicity can be beneficial, it often leaves users feeling lost and unsure of the product’s value.
Here are the 4 key issues that I identified on this journey:
Clarifying Product Value
Users encounter a payment page immediately after sign-up, without seeing the product or understanding its value. This leads to a high drop-off rate, as users are hesitant to pay for something they haven’t experienced.
If the product’s value isn’t communicated clearly by the time users reach the payment page, they’ll be reluctant to enter their payment information, even with a free trial. People need to feel confident that the product is worth their time and money before committing.
My thoughts on this issue:
The ideal solution is to let users explore the platform or try a few features before asking for payment. Even if a full trial isn’t possible, showing key screens or offering a guided preview can give users a sense of the product’s value.
Challenges with Upfront Payment
Many users cancel free trials on day one to avoid being charged later. But for this platform, cancelling the subscription immediately deletes the user’s account and this was something not clearly communicated upfront.
I experienced this issue myself; when I tried the platform and canceled my subscription as I normally would do to avoid forgetting about it after 7 days, I realized that I could no longer access it. After getting my account back, I tried the same cancellation journey and this time I realized that there is also a disclaimer about deleting my account completely but since I just scammed the screen and not really read every word throughly, didn’t notice those disclaimers. Most of the users don’t read the whole screen.
My output from this experience:
The cancellation journey needs to be considered as part of the onboarding redesign. Clear communication about what happens when a subscription is canceled is essential. Users should understand the implications without needing to read through lengthy disclaimers.
User Confusion and Frustration
Once users complete payment, they’re left to navigate the platform on their own, with no onboarding guidance. This can lead to confusion, especially in a complex SaaS product.
Without a clear starting point or instructions, users may feel overwhelmed and unsure of how to use the product effectively. SaaS products often solve niche problems, so newcomers need guidance to understand their value and functionality.
I’m not mentioning step-by-step coach marks here. There are numerous ways to guide users without causing frustration. I’ll address these solutions in my upcoming articles.
We need to consider how to lead new-comers to our intriguing features. Current platform didn’t have a home page / dashboard where users can land when they first sign in. The product has 3 main features aiming 3 different target groups. They are all equal hierarchically but as the starting point only one of them prioritized. Because of this experience decision, target groups of the other 2 features aiming might not see the value of this platform.
Decisions for this problem:
The onboarding should focus on leading specific user groups to related key features and “AHA” moments. Creating customized dashboards for target groups that highlights the platform’s main features can help users find value based on their needs.
Lack of Personalization
The current onboarding process treats all users the same, despite their varying needs and goals. This one-size-fits-all approach feels impersonal and limits engagement.
The platform’s users range from freelancers to large agencies, each with unique expectations. If onboarding doesn’t adapt to these differences, it risks disengaging users by failing to meet their specific needs.
My suggestion for this issue:
Adding a step to learn more about the user’s persona can help tailor the experience. However, it’s crucial to balance this by only asking necessary questions. If the answers aren’t actively used to improve the experience, asking them could frustrate users and lead to disappointment.
As a side note, every question is getting users far away from the trying the platform. And the clock is ticking. Every second means users attention and caring is decreasing. Only relevant and necessary questions should be asked at the onboarding. If we’re not using the user’s answer actively (I hear that you’re saying data collection is valuable. Guess what? Not at this stage.), it’s not worth to risk setting users expectations high. On each answer, users will think that they will get exactly what they need. If we are giving them a generic experience after a long onboarding, disappointment will be even more.
In this article, I wanted to explain how I start redesign projects and my focus on common issues. Identifying pain points is the crucial first step to creating a better experience.
Stay tuned for the next article in this series, where I’ll break down sub-journeys and share strategies to make onboarding smoother and more impactful.
