Short onboarding was never the point
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Mobbin put out a video recently breaking down onboarding patterns across hundreds of apps. I'd been looking at the same stuff on my own, so I turned my notes into this post. Mostly so I don't have to rewatch a 30 minute video next time I need a reference.
Everyone says keep onboarding short. But the data says otherwise. The average app still has 25 onboarding screens. Finance, health, education are the longest categories. Seven of the top ten longest? All finance apps.
Here's what's interesting though. Some of the longest flows belong to the most successful apps. And the shortest ones? Three of them are AI products that basically just dump you into a chat box.
Short was never the goal. Getting people to value was.
All screens below are pulled from Mobbin. They block iframes, so I'm showing the actual screens inline with links to the full flows if you want to click through.
The shape of a good flow
Every good flow I looked at follows roughly the same arc:
- Sign up
- Set up your account
- Hit the aha moment (when you actually feel the product doing something for you)
For Airbnb that's your first booking. Netflix, it's finding a show and pressing play. Mobbin, it's saving a screen you like.
The question is what happens between step 1 and step 3.
Show what the product does, not what it has
The best onboarding screens I kept seeing don't list features. They show outcomes.
Tiimo just shows the product working. Calendar import, plan with AI, the whole setup flow.
Open Tiimo onboarding on Mobbin
Some apps pull this off with motion alone. You open the app and immediately get what it does without reading a word.
Alma goes even further. You can actually try the core experience before creating an account. Almost no AI products do this. Most of them gate everything behind signup.
And sometimes it's just good copy. Superhuman turns what could be a boring signup form into a pitch. Logos on the side as social proof.
Open Superhuman onboarding on Mobbin
Skip the pitch. Just feel human.
One Year puts a founder note right in the onboarding. Handwritten signature, little flower drawing. It's cute. Makes you feel like a person made this thing.
Tinder notices when your birthday is coming up and says something about it. Tiny human detail buried in a long signup flow.
Open Tinder onboarding on Mobbin
Airbnb does something similar outside of onboarding. When you list your first space, you get a video from Brian Chesky. Founder showing up at the aha moment.
Click to enlarge
Basecamp does a personal CEO note right after account creation. Same energy. Feels intentional.
Personalization that actually earns its keep
23% of apps personalize during onboarding. AI apps? Only 7%. I think most AI tools just skip the upfront questions and try to learn from usage instead.
Headspace figured out that people don't show up with just one problem. So they let you pick multiple goals. That one change got them a 10% lift in free trial conversions.
Open Headspace onboarding on Mobbin
FocusFlight lets you pick a map style before you even start using it. The app feels like yours before you've done anything.
Open FocusFlight map style flow on Mobbin
Dollar Shave Club just made their quiz copy more conversational. Nothing else changed. That alone got a 5% bump in subscriptions.
Dollar Shave Club quiz screens on Mobbin
Show what the answers unlocked
The best quiz flows don't just collect data. They immediately show you what your answers did.
Endel asks a few questions and then hits you with "personalization complete." You've barely done anything but it already feels like the app was set up for you.
Open Endel onboarding on Mobbin
BitePal builds a plan based on your answers and tells you the exact date you'll hit your goal. That's a strong hook.
Open BitePal onboarding on Mobbin
Speak asks your language and goals, then shows one screen: "in two months you'll be able to communicate while traveling in France." Simple graph comparing speaking vs reading ability. And by this point you've already been speaking out loud during the flow itself.
Open Speak onboarding on Mobbin
Paywalls in the middle of onboarding
Out of 900+ apps and sites in the dataset, 22% put a paywall somewhere in onboarding.
The ones that work pair it with personalization. You just told the app about yourself, now it shows you a plan. FocusFlight makes their paywall look like a boarding pass. It's weirdly fun for something that's asking you to pay.
Grammarly recommends a pricing tier based on your quiz answers. Got them almost 20% more plan upgrades.
Grammarly plan screens on Mobbin
Long doesn't have to feel long
Duolingo has one of the longest onboarding flows out there. The structure: pick a language, answer a few questions, do your first lesson, feel the win, and only then create an account.
Dozens of screens before you even sign up. Doesn't feel like it.
Open Duolingo onboarding on Mobbin
Bump keeps something happening the whole time. Even the loading screen while it verifies your number gets a fun treatment.
BitePal has 61 screens. You literally name the raccoon mascot. They keep reminding you of the value throughout. Then the paywall hits when you're already invested.
Teach along the way, not all at once
Cake Equity deals with dry equity stuff but makes it digestible. Calm copy, inline tooltips, a password field that checks rules as you type. Small things, but you never feel stuck.
Open Cake Equity onboarding on Mobbin
Todoist skips the empty state entirely. You land in a pre-populated getting-started list. No tour, no popups. Just a nudge to start using the thing.
Open Todoist onboarding on Mobbin
Mural replaced their tooltip popups with a simple six-step checklist. 10% relative bump in one-week retention. The checklist sticks around after the initial flow so you can come back to it.
Open Mural onboarding on Mobbin
How to actually get notification permission
Lots of apps now show a custom screen before the system popup. It works. Accept rates go up because people understand why they're saying yes.
Brilliant frames it as: "I'll remind you to learn so it becomes a long-term habit."
Open Brilliant onboarding on Mobbin
Some apps go further and preview the actual notification you'll receive. Same idea, different apps:
Atoms · Aaptiv · Tempo · Duolingo Math
This also explains why web onboarding is 21% shorter than iOS. Mobile apps have more permission screens and paywall steps baked into the flow.
Friction isn't always bad
House split their signup form across multiple screens instead of one long page. 15% more conversions. Adding friction in one place removed it somewhere else.
Culture matters too. Heavier UIs feel normal in some markets and overwhelming in others. Copying a "winning" flow from a different market without thinking about this doesn't always work.
Do we even need onboarding?
Depends on the product.
The flows that stuck with me didn't feel like onboarding at all. They just got people to value quickly. Sometimes that means making a long flow feel fun. Sometimes it's personalization. Sometimes it's just getting out of the way entirely.
Mobbin is a good example. The product speaks for itself. Same with most AI chat apps, where the first prompt is the aha moment. For those, maybe the best onboarding is almost none at all.