Onboarding checklists that finish: data from 200 embeds

Firstrun powers onboarding checklists inside other products. 200 embeds later, what separates the checklists people finish from decoration:

Four steps maximum visible. Everything else hides behind "advanced". The fifth visible step murders completion (41% to 19% in our data).

First step completable in under 60 seconds. Import-something counts if it is one click. Invite-your-team as step one kills.

Celebrate step 3, not step done. Mid-point celebration ("your data is safe") beats confetti at the end. The end celebrates itself.

Skip buttons everywhere. Forced marches convert worse than guided wandering. Every skip is data about what users value.

Designer confirms all four with client data. The mid-point celebration is the one everyone resists ("but they have not finished!") and it works every time. Brains need halftime.

Boring-internal-tools view: our onboarding is one step ("connect your roster") and completion doubled versus the old five-step tour. The best checklist is the one you delete.

One step is the asymptote and you found it. Every step you can delete by doing it automatically is worth more than any checklist design.

Researcher addition: watch five users do the checklist and count the sighs. Sighs cluster at exactly the steps your analytics flag. Mixed methods, even tiny, beat dashboards alone.