I finally figured out why my startup kept losing customers

For six months I watched our user numbers drop every week. Turns out we were optimizing for signups instead of making the product actually useful. How do you balance growth tactics with real retention?

3 comments

Log in to join the discussion

Log In

3 Comments

gavins434mo ago

Hang on, I gotta push back a bit on that! You say you were optimizing for signups, but I'd argue that a good signup flow is actually part of making a product useful (if you make it easy to get started). If people can't figure out your product in the first 5 minutes because the onboarding is a mess, that's not a signup problem, it's a retention problem hiding behind a happy metric. Like, we added a simple checklist for new users and cut our first-week drop-off by 40% without changing the core features at all. Maybe try seeing your signup process as the first real test of your product's usefulness, not just a growth lever.

8

emerycarr4mo ago

Right there with you on this one. That distinction between signup vs retention is something a lot of teams miss until it's too late. It's easy to get tricked by signup numbers looking good while people quietly bounce after day two. Your checklist idea is smart because it actually teaches someone how to use the thing instead of just dumping them in the deep end. What made you guys land on a checklist specifically versus something like a guided tour?

1

lily974mo ago

We had the same problem at my old place. Turns out our "onboarding wizard" was just a 12 step form asking for their dog's name.

5