Should products minimize onboarding or signup friction to maximize conversion, or is some friction worth the value it creates?

Harry Stebbings · Aug 3, 2022 · hedged

Reducing time to value is not always right — sometimes you have to go slow to go fast and require customers to connect data sources and accounts up front

Some products genuinely need setup like connecting data sources and accounts before value can be delivered

Scope: holds only sometimes; the faster-value case is also sometimes right

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Matt Lerner · May 31, 2024

It is a false dichotomy that the best user experience produces the best conversion and AOV — deliberately introducing friction can yield the best customers

Noom and Calm run 20-30 question onboarding flows that are more onerous but are heavily A/B tested and are really good at building intent

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Phil Carter · Sep 20, 2024

The old conventional wisdom that shorter onboarding flows are always better is now more nuanced: in considered-purchase categories like health, wellness and finance, a long personalized onboarding quiz can build user intent, excitement and confidence and lead to higher conversion rates.

When part of the value promise is that the product is tailored to your unique needs, going through a long personalization flow builds belief in the product

Scope: only if implemented correctly; applies to considered-purchase categories such as health and wellness or finance; speaker previously held the shorter-is-better view

59:35 20Growth: The 7 Core Levers to Win at Consumer Subscription: Growth Loops, CAC + LTV Benchmarks, Pricing, Packaging, Notifications, Discounts, Paywalls | The Breakdown with Phil Carter

Phil Carter · Sep 20, 2024

Longer onboarding flows can outperform short ones, so long as every additional screen builds rather than hurts user intent and delivers a more personalized experience — time to value is not everything.

He studied Noom and Hims & Hers onboarding and saw client lifts in sign-up, trial start and subscriber conversion from intelligently expanding onboarding length; in considered purchases the extra screens build intent.

Scope: each screen must earn its place and build user intent; especially in health and finance where the purchase decision is more considered and complex

71:58 20Growth: The 7 Core Levers to Win at Consumer Subscription: Growth Loops, CAC + LTV Benchmarks, Pricing, Packaging, Notifications, Discounts, Paywalls | The Breakdown with Phil Carter

Fernando Fanton · Jul 27, 2025 · hedged

Heavy upfront onboarding friction can work because it produces a funnel with far more drop-off but much more engaged surviving users

The friction filters for committed users, and products like Whoop make the wait feel worth it despite taking seven days to produce a baseline

Scope: only works if you do a good job getting the user through the wait

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Fernando Fanton · Jul 27, 2025

In a high-friction onboarding, the questionnaire itself is part of the product — asking 50 deep questions signals investment in the user and self-selects a segment that values that depth

Like a doctor or mentor who takes time to ask deep questions about your life, the effort itself signals care and makes users value the experience more

Scope: applies to segments that will put in the effort

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Harry Stebbings · Aug 29, 2025

Noom's deliberately lengthy onboarding trades short-term friction for a superior long-term product experience and value extraction

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Jason James · Aug 29, 2025

The conventional wisdom that onboarding friction should always be removed is wrong for some products; friction that captures necessary information can be worth the drop-off it causes

At Thumbtack, stripping out project questions degraded the quality of pro matches, and getting users to a successful outcome was worth more than the users lost to drop-off

Scope: based on Thumbtack's marketplace product

32:33 20Product: Why Most CPOs are Bad | Why You Do Not Need PMs in a World of AI | Why the Design Stage is Dead and How to Use Vibe Coding to Replace It | The Three Roles All Founders End Up Firing on Repeat with Jason James @ Tezi

Tony Fadell · May 11, 2022

Teams stay too inward on step-by-step detail and should instead step back and ask where whole steps can be removed, including adding one step to remove ten later

He saw it that morning: two onboarding teams weren't talking, creating redundant up-and-down flows that could be collapsed by merging them

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Fernando Fanton · Jul 27, 2025

Time to value is critically important — you must deliver value very quickly and then build from there

Users are lazy in the sense that they don't obsess about your product the way you do; they come with a purpose, so the window to make an impression is tiny and missing it is very costly

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Shreyas Doshi · Aug 3, 2022

How fast a product must deliver value depends on the strength of the core customer motivation — when motivation is very high you can afford a long time to value, when it's low you must show value sooner

Motivation is a function not only of what the customer hopes to accomplish but of what alternatives they have, including staying with a suboptimal tool they already use; weak motivation means they won't wait

Scope: applies to both B2B and consumer contexts; no single right answer across products

38:10 20 Product: Shreyas Doshi on The Three Different Types of Product Leaders and How To Hire Them, The 6 Different Product Metrics You Need To Know and What Good is For Each of Them & Table Stakes Features vs Wow Features; What To Prioritise

Harry Stebbings · Jul 27, 2025

Time to value is a good litmus test for the strength of customer need — Noom's 50-question signup and appalling time to value still works because the underlying need is so strong

If users tolerate terrible time to value and heavy upfront investment, that reveals conviction in the need

51:05 20Product: Should We Kill the PM Role Entirely | How Does Product Design Change Most in a World of AI | How Do Monzo Build Product Today: What Works, What Does Not | Why Most Product Sucks and What Makes Truly Great Product

Harry Stebbings · May 31, 2024 · hedged

Long onboarding questionnaires work because they produce higher-quality leads whose sunk cost from answering 30 questions drives them forward

They've invested enough time to feel committed

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Harry Stebbings · Sep 20, 2024

Users deep into a long onboarding flow are unlikely to abandon it because they feel they're nearly done.

No one gets fifteen minutes in and decides they don't feel like finishing

61:22 20Growth: The 7 Core Levers to Win at Consumer Subscription: Growth Loops, CAC + LTV Benchmarks, Pricing, Packaging, Notifications, Discounts, Paywalls | The Breakdown with Phil Carter

Matt Lerner · May 31, 2024

Long onboarding question flows work mainly by walking users through the mental purchase journey and building intent, not just by sunk cost or lead qualification

Cheap self-serve products can't afford salespeople to answer objections, so each question both qualifies the user and demonstrates understanding — like a doctor asking targeted questions, which makes you trust the diagnosis

Scope: most relevant for low-price products around $10-30 a month

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Matt Lerner · May 31, 2024

B2B companies should adopt the long, convoluted onboarding flows pioneered by consumer apps like Calm and Noom, because they can run a prospect through an entire sales process and build intent without a salesperson

These flows do a good job of roping people in and walking them through the full information journey, which is exactly what's needed for considered purchases where customers only understand the problem and need many steps to reach the solution

Scope: applies to considered purchases rather than impulse buys

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Raman Malik · Nov 15, 2024

Longer first sessions are a good sign for Perplexity, not a failure of time-to-value, because follow-up questions mean the user is going deep into exploring and learning.

A query leading to a bunch of follow-ups means the user is deep in the Perplexity experience, which is good for the company.

16:49 Longer sessions signal deep engagement not poor time to value