Use case - activation
See the exact point where users drop off in onboarding, and fix it
Every fix to onboarding is a guess, so the team either redesigns the whole flow every quarter or gives up and blames the market, and activation stays flat either way.
In short
We instrument every onboarding step as a discrete event and lay them out as a funnel, so the step where users quit is a number you can point to, not a theory. Fixing that one step is almost always a better use of a sprint than redesigning the whole flow.
The situation
New users sign up, and somewhere in the first few minutes most of them vanish - but nobody can say which screen loses them.
What we implement
We instrument each onboarding step as its own event and build a funnel report that shows conversion between every consecutive step - what's called funnel analysis.
What you get
- One specific step identified as the leak, instead of a redesign guess
- A measurable activation-rate target for the next sprint, not a vague goal
- Design and engineering time spent on the step that's actually losing people
Illustrative
A team whose onboarding had six screens might find that four of them convert fine and the fifth - the one asking for a credit card before any value has been shown - loses most of the funnel; moving that step later typically recovers a meaningful share of that drop-off. (Illustrative scenario - not a measured result.)
Related: Funnel analysis, defined · Amplitude implementation sprint · The 30-item implementation checklist
Frequently asked questions
What counts as an onboarding 'step' for this to work?+
Anything a new user has to do or see before they reach your product's first real value moment - a form field, a permission prompt, an empty-state screen. Each one needs its own event; a funnel with three steps that are really twelve compressed together will hide the actual leak.
Can this find problems that aren't onboarding, like a broken payment step later on?+
Yes - the same funnel technique applies to any sequence with a defined start and end, including checkout or upgrade flows. Onboarding is just the sequence with the highest cost per lost user, which is why it's usually first.
Other use cases
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