Use Case: Using TWIPLA’s Conversion Funnels to Uncover Onboarding Friction

How We Identified Abandonment Points in TWIPLA's New User Activation Process

Using TWIPLA's conversion funnels to optimize onboarding

For SaaS companies, eCommerce platforms, and other digital services that rely on signups, optimizing onboarding isn't just about convenience. It's vital for business success, driving new client acquisition, user engagement, and customer lifetime value.

Simply put, a smooth onboarding experience is the first step in turning new signups into engaged users. If new customers encounter friction, they may abandon the process before fully engaging with the product.

At TWIPLA, we faced the same challenge.

This use case explores how our team leveraged the platform's conversion funnels module to analyze and optimize our own onboarding process, reducing drop-offs and improving activation rates. It also demonstrates the capabilities of TWIPLA as a product analytics tool, which other businesses can use to similar effect.

The insights gained allowed us to identify abandonment points and take targeted action to improve user activation. Read on to see how conversion funnels can help you create a more intuitive and effective onboarding journey.

A screenshot of TWIPLA's onboarding process — At TWIPLA, we've long worked to make our onboarding process as easy as possible for customers but optimization is an ongoing task.

The Challenge: Pinpointing Drop-Offs

To improve activation rates for our website intelligence platform, we needed to identify exactly where interested signups were dropping off from onboarding after the email confirmation stage and take action to remove this friction from the process.

After email confirmation, this journey includes the following milestones:

The task here was to identify which stage or stages caused users to disengage, which would enable use to then take action to remedy any painpoints, streamline the onboarding experience, and improve user retention.

Our Approach: A Strategic URL Structure

Instead of using vague step numbers for analyzing each stage of the journey (e.g., /step1, /step2), which provide little context, we implemented descriptive URLs to clearly map out each onboarding stage for better data analysis. These descriptive URLs were:

/activate/email-confirmation
/activate/add-website
/activate/data-privacy
/activate/newsletter-preferences
/activate/tracking-code-implementation

Beyond improving data interpretation for clearer analytics, this approach also future-proofed our tracking, allowing new onboarding steps to be seamlessly integrated without adding unnecessary complexity.

A screenshot of TWIPLA's funnel creation interface — TWIPLA's conversion funnel tool is intuitive and efficient, making this stage straightforward - especially since we had already mapped out the onboarding process in the planning phase.

Implementation: Creating a Viable Conversion Funnel

To track new user progression through onboarding, we used TWIPLA’s Conversion Funnels feature. This involved:

Creating a new conversion funnel
Setting up five funnel levels, each corresponding to a specific stage in the onboarding process detailed earlier
Selecting each stage’s webpage from TWIPLA’s auto-populated tracking dropdown
Using descriptive names for each funnel stage to clearly indicate its role in onboarding

The sharp narrowing of the funnel after the second stage visually highlights a key friction point in our onboarding process. This clear drop-off indicates where users are disengaging, helping us pinpoint areas for improvement.

Findings: Where Users Dropped Off

We left the conversion funnel to collect data over a two-week period. Given our large sign-up numbers, we felt that this was long enough to build a useful data set - and particularly since TWIPLA funnels automatically incorporate historical page performance data going back to the date of publication.

Key Statistics from Conversion Funnel

Conversion funnels are a highly visual tool that anyone can use to understand where issues are. A quick glance was enough to identify where users were disengaging during the onboarding process:

2.9% dropout rate in stage one - between email confirmation and website addition.
33.3% dropout rate in stage two - between website addition and data privacy selection.

Losing 2.9% of users in stage one is an acceptable figure for any SaaS company, but the significant 33.3% dropout rate in stage two indicated a major friction point that needs attention.

A screenshot of TWIPLA's updated onboarding process — The support button will be prominently displayed on every page that makes up onboarding.

Taking Action: Reducing Friction

While the funnel analysis clearly showed where users disengaged, it didn’t explain why.

Understanding the reasons behind these drop-offs was crucial to making meaningful improvements. We needed to investigate whether users struggled to understand what to do here, were unsure about inputting their web address, or faced technical roadblocks.

Without understanding the root cause, any intervention would be guesswork.

After considering this problem, we have decided to implement a prominent help button within all pages of the onboarding flow. This button would trigger the support chat feature, allowing users to quickly connect with our customer support team for assistance.

Encouraging users to reach out to support will allow us to gather real-time feedback, identify the specific causes of drop-offs, and make targeted improvements to the onboarding experience.

We're also planning to add tracking to this button to measure it's effectiveness, assess how often users sought support, and optimize its placement if needed.

Key Takeaways

By integrating funnel analysis into our onboarding work, we transformed an ambiguous user journey into actionable data.

The insights revealed significant drop-offs at key onboarding stages, particularly between website addition and data privacy selection, allowing us to pinpoint critical friction points that needed addressing.

Our structured approach to tracking and optimization provided key insights into improving TWIPLA’s onboarding experience.

Although these changes are not yet live, they will be implemented in the coming weeks, and we'll update this article with information about the effectiveness of this change based on activation rates, reduced drop-offs, and user feedback once we have the data.

For businesses looking to optimize their own user journeys, leveraging a structured funnel approach with meaningful tracking can uncover critical improvement areas - just as we did with TWIPLA’s onboarding process.

If you're looking to get started, begin by identifying key stages in your onboarding flow and tracking user progression through each step. Small changes, like refining page structure or adding support options, can make a big impact on engagement and activation rates.