| Source | https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qsq-Sj_rojU |
|---|---|
| Readwise URL | https://read.readwise.io/read/01ktgv44e3x4b64xax16z6br2j |
| Readwise ID | 01ktgv44e3x4b64xax16z6br2j |
| Date | 2026-04-15 |
| Author | Mobbin |
| Category | video |
| Cover image | https://i.ytimg.com/vi/Qsq-Sj_rojU/sddefault.jpg |
I’ve studied over a thousand onboardingflows to find out what makes goodonboarding and do we even need one? Alot of what I’ve read says keep itshort, but based on what I found, theaverage app has 25 onboarding screens.The longest categories are finance,[music] health and fitness, andeducation. Seven out of 10 of theselongest apps are actually finance appsas [music] well. Some of the apps withthe longest onboarding flows are alsoone of the most successful ones. When welook at apps with the shortestonboarding flows, three of them are AIproducts. So, maybe keeping ouronboarding flows short was never thepoint. The best onboarding seem tofollow this pattern.
[music]>> You sign up, set up your account, youhit the aha moment. That’s where youactually feel the product’s value. ForAirbnb, it’s making your first booking.For Netflix, it’s finding and watching aShow. For Mobbin, it’s finding a screenor an animation that you love and savingit to your collection. So, what arethese apps actually doing? The bestonboarding screens I’ve kept seeing hadone thing in common. They’re not listingfeatures, they’re selling the outcome.
Timehop does this really simply.>> [music]>> Their welcome screen is just showing theproduct in action on both their mobileapp and desktop.
Runkeeper does this with animation. Themoment you open the app, you get a feelfor what it does without reading asingle word. And Elma [music] goes onestep further. It lets you try the coreexperience before you sign up. I rarelysee apps with AI features who lets youtry it out before signing up an account.
[music]And sometimes it could just be a copytweak like Superhuman. They turn aboring sign-up screen into a pitch withlogos on the side as social proof. SomeApps skip the pitch entirely and justfeel human. This is an app called OneYear. So, in their onboarding flow, theyincluded a founder’s note, which had[music] a handwritten signature and ahand-drawn flower in it.
It’s pretty cute. And Tinder [music]acknowledge when your birthday is aroundthe corner.
Airbnb, well, this one’s not even in theonboarding flow, but when yousuccessfully list your first space, theyshow you a video from their CEO.It’s a founder’s touch at the ahamoment.
As for Basecamp, they put a personalnote from the CEO after you’ve createdan account. It feels like the productwas made with intention. And one of thebest onboarding flows addpersonalization into the flow, and theymake it worth your time. 23% of appspersonalize during onboarding, with AIapps at only 7%. It seems like AI toolsdon’t ask questions about your users up.
Front. They let the product learn fromus instead.Looking at Tide’s onboarding, it’s shortand sweet. You just download the app,answer two questions, watch it customizeyour recommendations,and it’ll prompt you to sign up. That’sit, very simple.Headspace found out that their userscome to their app with more than onepain point to solve. So, instead ofasking users to pick just one goal thatthey want to achieve [music] withHeadspace, they let them pick more thanone. It’s only like a very simple tweak,but it led to a 10% increase in free trialconversion. There are also other appsthat allow multi-intent queries. [music]
Focus Flight lets you choose your mapstyle during onboarding. It makes theapp [music] feel like yours before youeven started using it. Sometimes,[music] it can be even simpler thanthat. Dollar Shave Club tweaked the quizcopy to be more conversational. ThisAlone led to a 5% increase insubscriptions. Some apps don’t justcollect answers during the quiz. Theyactually show you what those answersunlocked. So, in Endless onboarding, youanswer six questions,and then they show you this. You haven’teven used the product yet, but italready feels like it’s going to work.
[Music]Byte Pal does the same thing. After thequiz, they build your personal plan andthen tell you exactly when you’ll hityour goal.
Brilliant [Music] shows you courses thatare personalized to your responses.As soon as you finish your onboardingflow, your homepage is alreadypopulated with only the content that youwant to see.
Here’s another one by Speak, a languagelearning app. They ask you what languageyou’d like to learn and your goals.Then, in one simple screen, it tellsyou, “In 2 months, you’ll be able toCommunicate while traveling in France.” There’s a simple graph showing thatspeaking helps you reach your goalsfaster than reading. The [music] stepsbefore this screen already had youspeaking instead of typing.
So, out of 900-plusapps and websites, 22% [music] of themthrow a paywall during onboarding. Someapps also pair personalization with apaywall.The site pairs a quiz with a one-timeoffer to drive urgency.
Timely does the same with a full page ofsocial proof before showing the paywall.And Focus Flight makes the paywallitself fun. The one-time offer isshaped like a flight ticket, and yourphone vibrates as it gets printed out.
It’s a paywall that actually feelsdelightful. As for Grammarly, based onyour quiz answers, they recommendtailored pricing plans. This alone ledto almost a 20% increase in planupgrades. Okay, some of these onboardingFlows are really long, yet they don’tfeel like it. The onboarding flows thatI really love tend to make onboardingflows feel short.
Out of 986 apps, Duolingo has one ofthe longest onboarding flows. And if wezoom in, it goes like this. You getstarted, choose the language that youwant to learn, it learns about you, youstart your first lesson, get thesatisfaction of completing it, and thenyou create an account. By that point,you’ve already gone through 60 screensbefore you even sign up. And the crazypart is it doesn’t even feel long. Okay,so Bump’s onboarding flow is creative.Even the loading states are wild.There’s always something going onthroughout the onboarding flow. Smoothanimations on things like verificationthat rarely [music] get specialtreatment. It adds fun. It doesn’t feellike you’re going through a boringonboarding flow.Bipul has 61 screens. The onboarding wasA lot of fun. It has really amazinganimations. The raccoon is quitelovable. And you even get to name yourvirtual pet raccoon.
Throughout the onboarding, theyemphasize the value. Like, your personalplan is ready and you’ll lose weight byan exact date. And then bam, a paywall.
All right. So, another pattern Inoticed, some apps don’t front-load allthe education to you. Cake Equity is agreat example. They’re dealing with dryconcepts like company equity and vestingschedules, and turn it into somethingapproachable with copy that reassuresusers from time to time, and tooltipsthat explain the impact of each step so[music] that users feel like someone’sguiding them along the way. Evensomething as small as a password fieldthat checks off requirements in realtime as you type, removes a reason toget stuck. Maybe it’s a progressindicator, maybe it’s microcopy. None ofthis is flashy, but it makes theExperience feel effortless. To-do appsdo this really well, too. Instead ofgiving users a blank empty state, theyshow you something like this with noguided tours, no pop-ups, just a littlenudge in the right place.
And when Mural replaced pop-ups andbanners with a clear six-step checklist,it drove a 10% relative increase inone-week retention. Checklists stickaround even after the user dismisses theinitial flow.If you go on Mobbin and do an AI searchfor onboarding checklist, you will findmore ideas like this.Another pattern that I kept seeing is alot of apps show a custom screen beforethe notification pop-up. Apparently, itimproves accept rates significantly.Here’s an example by Brilliant. I’llremind you to learn so it becomes along-term habit. Cool.Center takes it one step further. Italso teases you the notification thatyou’ll receive if you allow it. Thismight explain why web onboarding is 21%shorter than iOS. Mobile just has morepermission and paywall screens baked in.
Okay, this one surprised me. House splittheir sign-up form into multiple screens,and they see a 15% increase inconversions. Maybe the friction we addin one place removes friction inanother. Culture plays a role here aswell. Users in Eastern markets tend tobe more comfortable withinformation-heavy interfaces. So, whatfeels like clutter to one audience feelsefficient to another, which is partlywhy we can’t just copy what worked. AndI don’t think there’s one right or wrongway to design an onboarding flow that’sbest in class. The ones that stuck withme didn’t feel like onboarding. What Isaw in common in these apps is that theybrought users to value quickly.Sometimes it’s adding delight to a verylong onboarding flow. Sometimes it’sletting users personalize their appexperience for themselves. And sometimesIt’s getting out of the way. So, do weeven need onboarding?
Mobbin is a place to find designinspiration. The product speaks foritself. Same with AI chat apps. Thefirst prompt is where users find value.For products like these, maybe the bestexperience [music] is just to let usersget in fast and not have an onboardingexperience that gets in their way.Maybe it all boils down to the product.We had so much fun diving into the data,and did you know that onboarding flowsare the second most searched on Mobbin?For the next video, I have a feelingthat we’re going to dive really deepinto dashboards and see what the datatells us. So, stick around. Subscribe ifthis vibes with you.