Technical onboarding: conversion points and KPIs

Technical onboarding conversion points are all the moments in your onboarding flow that are measured directly through the app. You can then track the success of this experience with key performance indicators (KPIs).

When planning your technical onboarding, you should start with every step and every issue you have in the app, as well as anything that could go wrong on the server side. For example, a device may connect to the internet successfully but fail to register on your cloud. This is fairly common when devices are returned and resold with previous user associations.

Conversion points

Let's look at some of the key conversion points in the technical onboarding process.

Onboarding started

This is the moment the user begins the setup process. Here are the two most common examples:

1. First registration – the earliest point where you can collect data, since this requires analytics consent
2. Adding a device – when a user clicks "Add a new device" to expand their existing system

Onboarding steps

These are all the individual steps in your flow, including any steps on the server side.

The more you break things down into individual screens, the more insights you'll get on why users are failing.

Failure locations

This covers all the specific failures that you're aware of, including:

• Connectivity issues
• Server-side errors
• Onboarding barriers
• All other error locations in your developers' code

These conversion points are also great locations for onboarding in-apps.

Permissions and requests

These are all the permissions users can choose not to give their consent to, including:

• Bluetooth
• Location
• Microphone 
• Camera

Onboarding completion

The onboarding process doesn't end when a device is connected. The user needs to get some value out of your product first.

For a fitness tracker, this could be the first time users check their step count. For a smart bulb, it could be turning it on with their voice assistant for the first time.

Key performance indicators (KPIs)

Let's look at the main KPIs you should focus on during the technical onboarding process.

Users saved

This is the number of users that failed to onboard but then succeeded after you proactively reached out.

Onboarding success rate

This is the percentage of new users that complete onboarding in a certain timeframe. This is often set at one week, but it's important to look at the segmentation of time to onboard for your specific products.

For initial registration and setup, 12 minutes is a common industry benchmark. But tracking how far users get on day one is also helpful for understanding the ease of your onboarding process.