Onboarding
Beginner PronunciationEN/ˈɑnbɔrdɪŋ/
Onboarding is the sequence of steps that carries a new user from first entry to the moment they experience the product's core value for the first time.
The path is usually modelled as a stepped funnel: sign-up, account completion, a first meaningful action, then a second visit. Measuring it correctly means measuring arrival at that meaningful action, not completion of a product tour or dismissal of a welcome message; a user who skipped all five tooltips but built their first report has been onboarded. The second frequent error is averaging across users who arrived by different routes, since someone who came from search and someone invited by a colleague differ in intent and pace, and merging them describes neither.
FAQ
Onboarding names the whole path and can include ceremonial steps such as email confirmation; activation names one specific event on that path that proves value was reached. Conflating them lets a team raise the onboarding rate by adding easy steps while no additional user actually reaches value.