Personalize the experience with custom recipes

Most SaaS products force everyone through the same onboarding flow

But it’s a mistake to think every user needs the same thing. In practice, the reasons new users sign up for your product are totally different. 

So rather than forcing everyone into the same product experience, create different flows (or “recipes”) for different users.

Segmentation helps break through activation plateaus.

There are many variables by which you could segment your onboarding, including by:

But the most impactful way to segment your onboarding? Jobs-to-be-done.

Not familiar with jobs-to-be-done?

The idea is that people try (and buy) software products to get a job done—i.e., to accomplish a goal. This applies to onboarding because the more you understand the unique “jobs” people sign up for your product to complete, the more you can help them be successful. 

If you know users' specific goals for signing up, you can deliver value on their terms.

How to customize your onboarding using jobs to be done

Run a survey to learn why new users sign up

There are many ways to do this. My personal favorite is to run a survey for a few weeks.

You can use any survey tool and present users with a question on the signup page or directly after they are in the product. The key is to leave the question open-ended. 
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Here’s an example:
‍“Hey, thanks for being here! Mind sharing the reason you signed up today?”

Why do you want the question to be open-ended? Because you want to see the words customers use and how they phrase the benefit they are getting. That’s important.