Stop losing users before they reach first value

An onboarding and activation audit for self-serve and freemium products that get sign-ups but lose people before the product proves itself. We find where users lose momentum, run usability tests to learn why, and define the activation moment in measurable terms so you have something concrete to fix.

The problem this solves

You can see the drop in the data. A day-7 cliff, a funnel step where new users vanish, a sign-up number that never turns into active ones. What you can’t see is why they leave, or exactly where in the flow it breaks.

So the team argues about the cause from opinion. Fixes get guessed at rather than targeted, because there is no shared map of the friction per step. And there is usually no agreed definition of what “activated” even means for a new user, so nobody can tell a real fix from cosmetic UI work.

In our experience the real blocker often has nothing to do with the UI detail everyone suspects. The product never made clear what it was for, early enough, at the moment the user decides whether it is worth their time.

What we actually do

Three pieces of work, run alongside your team:

1. Map the drop-off per step. We go through your analytics and walk the live flow as a new user to pin down where momentum is actually lost, step by step.
2. Run usability tests and user interviews. We watch real users move through onboarding to learn why they hesitate, what they misread, and where they give up. This is the part that turns “where” into “why”.
3. Define the activation moment. We state, in measurable terms, the moment a new user has to reach to count as activated, so the team finally has a target to design and prioritize against.

What you leave with

• The friction mapped per step, ranked so you know what to fix first.
• A defined activation metric the team agrees on, in plain numbers.
• A prototype of a better onboarding flow you can test or build straight from.

Proof

Skippo’s app becomes genuinely useful only with premium, but new users decided whether to pay before they saw why it was worth it. We rebuilt the first steps so the value of premium shows up at the moment the decision is made. The share of users buying premium went from 16 percent to 47 percent after the reworked onboarding (Sweden, season so far), and navigation revenue rose 57 percent year over year. Read the full story in the Skippo case.

Preglife is a second example. They had the retention data, a 49 percent day-7 drop, but no map of where in the flow it happened. The audit delivered the friction per step, synthesized user interviews, and a defined activation moment the team could finally prioritize against.

Who it’s for, format, and duration

This is for a self-serve or freemium product past launch, with real sign-up volume but weak activation, instrumented enough to see a drop but not why it happens. The buyer is usually a CPO, Head of Product, or growth lead who wants the leak diagnosed and a prioritized fix rather than another round of guessing.

The format is a focused audit combining data analysis, a UX teardown, and usability tests, run with your team rather than in a vacuum. Typical duration is a few weeks, roughly two to six depending on how much user testing the flow needs.

One honest note on scope: the audit diagnoses the problem and hands over the prioritized fix plus a prototype. Your team ships the live retention lift afterward, with the map in hand.

Book a call

If users are dropping off before they reach first value and you can’t see why, email hello@scilla.studio and we’ll book 20 minutes to see whether your needs and our skills are a match.