What 200 onboarding flows taught us about the first 60 seconds
We went through every onboarding flow added to Reinspro this year. The best ones share four decisions — and skip one step almost everyone else keeps.
Onboarding is the one flow every product has and almost no product measures honestly. Over the past year we catalogued 200 onboarding flows across fintech, health, productivity and social apps. Below are the patterns that kept showing up in the flows designers save the most.
1. Ask for one thing before you ask for an account
The highest-saved flows delay account creation until the user has done a single meaningful action: picked a goal, imported a file, chosen a plan. The signup screen then reads as a way to keep what you just made, not as a gate.
2. Progress is shown, never counted
Numbered steps ("2 of 7") appeared in only 12% of saved flows. Segmented bars and "almost there" copy dominated. Users tolerate length they can feel, not length they can compute.
3. Permissions arrive with a reason
Every top flow puts a plain-language screen in front of the system permission dialog. Notification prompts framed around a specific benefit ("Get a nudge when your order ships") were the norm; generic "Allow notifications?" screens were rare.
4. The skipped step: the welcome carousel
Three-slide feature carousels are still common in the wider catalogue, but almost absent from the most-saved flows. When they do appear, they are a single screen with a short headline and a primary action.
The best onboarding is a good first task with a little help around it.
Browse the full set under Mobile apps → Flows → Onboarding. Every flow is captured screen by screen, so you can see where each product places its account step.