The instinct to show new users everything the product can do is almost always wrong. The data on activation says something much narrower.
Product teams tend to design onboarding as a tour of everything the product does, because every feature has a champion in the building who wants new users to see it. Activation data across the SaaS products we have built consistently points the other way: users who reach one specific, well-chosen first outcome fast are dramatically more likely to become long-term customers than users who saw a comprehensive tour of ten features and completed none of them.
Every product has a specific action that, once a user experiences it, correlates strongly with retention — for a data tool it might be viewing their first real chart with their own data in it; for a communication tool it might be sending and receiving one real message. Onboarding's entire job is getting a new user to that one moment as fast as honestly possible, cutting everything that does not serve it.
The recurring mistake is front-loading configuration — inviting your team, connecting integrations, setting preferences — before a user has experienced any value at all. Every one of those steps is a legitimate reason to abandon a product they have not yet decided is worth the effort.
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