Using an onboarding checklist to show progress towards a goal can help increase activation and reduce churn for SaaS users.
Psychologists have discovered that when people progress towards a goal, they feel much happier and fulfilled. You can apply this truth to your life as a whole, and you can apply it to the microcosm of SaaS. When SaaS users work towards a goal, they develop an eagerness and intensity to have more interaction with the SaaS. Showing progress can be particularly useful when onboarding new users, for example by showing a progress bar or a checklist of actions that need to be done to get set up or to learn how the product works. LinkedIn, for example, indicates a user’s progress towards filling out their profile. If you can delight your customers with simple goal-focused actions, you can increase activation and reduce churn. An onboarding checklist can be a great way to do this. It can help users understand what they need to do to get set up and learn how to use the product, and it can also show them how far they have come and how close they are to achieving their goal. Step-by-Step: