I got 10 signups in a week. None of them used the product.
I launched my SaaS 2 weeks ago and got 10+ signups in the
first few days.
I was excited. Finally, real people trying my product.
Then I opened my admin panel and saw this: every single one
of them signed up and never completed their first task. Not
one.
That hit hard.
My first reaction was to build more features. Maybe the
product wasn't good enough. Maybe I needed a better dashboard
or more subreddits or a fancier UI.
But then I did something that actually helped. I just sat and
went through my own onboarding like a first time user.
And I found the real problem in 5 minutes.
The onboarding was confusing. Users had no idea what to do
after signing up. There was no clear first step. No context.
Nothing telling them what value they were about to get.
It had nothing to do with features.
So I stopped building and spent 2 days fixing only the
onboarding and the first dashboard experience. Cleaner steps.
Clearer copy. An obvious first action the moment they land.
Result? 2 users completed their first task within 24 hours of
the fix going live.
Still a small number. But these are real users actually using
the product, not just signups.
The lesson I keep learning over and over: your conversion
problem is almost never your product. It is almost always
your onboarding.
If you have signups that go silent, do not build. Go through
your own onboarding with fresh eyes first.
By the way, the product I am building is MentionFast
(mentionfast.com). It helps founders market on Reddit without
getting banned. If you have ever tried Reddit marketing and
got your account suspended, this was built for you.
Happy to answer any questions or hear if anyone else has been
through the same activation nightmare.
The gap between signup and first value is brutal. I found that removing any setup friction — no credit card, instant access, working example in the docs — cut my time-to-first-call from days to minutes. Still not perfect but the activation rate jumped noticeably.
Going through your own onboarding as a first time user is underrated. I did the same on my own product and found people had no idea what the first action should be. One thing that helped: pick a single first win and strip everything else from the first screen, even useful features, so there is only one obvious next step. Did the drop-off happen before or after they hit your core action? That usually tells you whether it is a clarity problem or a value problem.
I like the lesson about becoming your own first-time user.
One thing I'm still wrestling with though is knowing when it's actually an onboarding problem versus a positioning or ICP problem.
I'm in a similar stage with Ashive right now, and that's been surprisingly hard to separate with such a small sample size.
Looking back, what convinced you it was definitely the onboarding and not the people you were attracting in the first place?
One thing I'd separate is "clear first step" from "first scary step." If the first action asks them to trust the product with Reddit behavior, I'd make the first win something reversible: paste a subreddit/keyword, show 3 relevant threads, then explain why each one looks safe to reply to. That proves the value before asking them to change accounts/workflow.
Also worth tracking the first 5 minutes as events, not just activated/not activated. You'll see exactly where the hesitation starts.
The trust point in your reply feels important.
If people already had the pain, signed up, then still stopped before setup, that is different from “they did not understand onboarding”.
For Reddit marketing especially, setup probably feels risky. People may like the promise but hesitate when the product asks them to connect accounts, change behavior, or trust it not to get them banned again.
So the first task may need to prove safety before it proves power.
Good catch, but I'd push back a little on 'it's never the product, always onboarding.' Sometimes silent signups mean you pulled in the wrong user, and no onboarding saves someone who never felt the pain. Since you acquire on Reddit, I'd tag activation by source: a tire-kicker from a broad subreddit and a founder who actually got banned will behave nothing alike, and the fix for each is different.
That's a good point actually, you're right I oversimplified it. Source matters a lot, a tire kicker from a broad sub and someone who actually got banned are basically different users with different intent. The onboarding fix probably helped people with real pain get further, but wouldn't do much for browsers no matter how clean it is.
This is making me think I should tag signups by source instead of one blanket activation number.
If you've dealt with Reddit bans yourself, would love your honest take on mentionfast.com.
This is exactly the kind of post I enjoy reading because it's honest.
What's your current theory?
Wrong audience, wrong onboarding, or people simply not feeling the problem strongly enough?
honestly my gut says onboarding was the biggest one.
the audience felt right , these were founders who
actively wanted Reddit growth. but landing on the
dashboard with no clear first step killed the momentum.
fixing that one thing moved the needle faster than
anything else i tried.
Sure, that’s great.
appreciate it, hope it's useful for whatever you're
building too.
The onboarding fix is the right call, but what you described is actually two separate problems worth keeping apart.
The first is clarity — users didn't know what to do next. That's fixable with better UX, which you did.
The second is intent — were those 10 signups people who genuinely needed the product, or people who clicked because the landing page promise sounded interesting in the moment? Those behave very differently even with perfect onboarding.
The 2 users who completed the first task after your fix are more useful data than the original 10. What do those 2 have in common? That's probably your actual user.
this is the most useful comment i've gotten on this.
you're right, i conflated two different problems.
the 2 who completed tasks both found me through reddit
marketing content, so they already understood the pain.
the other 8 were more scattered in where they came from.
that's probably the real signal , channel quality over
signup volume.
This is the gap I keep hitting too. I went the other way and dropped signup entirely for my tool, figuring the friction was killing first use — but it just moves the drop-off later, to "opened it once, never came back." Did any of the 10 tell you why they signed up? Trying to figure out if it's real intent or a low-cost "looks interesting, I'll check later" click.
none of them told me directly but i emailed them all
this week asking exactly that. two replied so far.
both said they signed up because they'd already been
banned on Reddit before , so the pain was real. they
just didn't trust the product enough yet to go through
the full setup.
which tells me it was a trust problem more than a
friction problem.
I would love your any of feedback on mentionfast.com as it helps me understand user more and i better shape my product.
Honestly the trust angle others raised is the big one — I'd just move that proof onto the landing page, before signup. Good luck with it.
The part that caught my attention wasn't the onboarding fix.
It was that 10 people were willing to sign up before they were willing to do the first task.
That feels like a very specific kind of gap.
The promise got them moving.
The reality didn't get them acting.
I'd be curious which side of that gap ended up changing more after the redesign.
yeah that's exactly it. they liked the idea enough to sign up
but the first task felt like too much effort.
what changed was making it stupid obvious - one thing to do,
right there when you land. no thinking required.
btw i built mentionfast.com specifically for Reddit marketing,
would love if you gave it a shot and told me what you think.
Interesting.
The reason I asked is that I'm not sure I'd draw the same conclusion from that onboarding change that most founders would.
Happy to explain what I mean if it's useful.
What's the best email to reach you on?