Activation is the only onboarding metric that matters: the share of new accounts that reach that result. Everything here is arranged around shortening the path to it.
The path#
| Step | Page | What the reader leaves with |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Your first five minutes | An account set up, and one thing done |
| 2 | Connect your data | The product working on their own material |
| 3 | Core concepts | The words they will meet everywhere else |
| — | Troubleshooting | A fix for whatever stopped them |
Read them in that order the first time. Concepts comes third on purpose: a reader who has already produced a result learns vocabulary far faster than one who has not.
What this template will not do for you#
It cannot know your product, so it does not pretend to. Every page here has marked places where a specific fact belongs — the real name of a setting, the real limit, the real first-run experience. Filling those in is a morning's work, and it is the difference between an onboarding path and the shape of one.
Who you are writing for#
New users are not beginners at their job. They are experts at their work and beginners at your interface. Write as though the reader is competent and in a hurry: no "simply", no "just", and no congratulating anybody for clicking a button.
Replace this callout with one sentence naming the result a new docs customer should reach on day one. If the team cannot agree on that sentence, the disagreement is the real onboarding problem.
Next steps#
- Your first five minutes — start here.
- Connect your data — the step where it becomes real.
- Core concepts — the vocabulary.
- Troubleshooting — when a step refuses to work.