Three Reasons Your Onboarding Sucks— and why onboarding should be your biggest marketing tool.

I still remember the first time I tried to set up a customer support system for an app. I was in Paris, working with a team of engineers, and getting them to move from individual inboxes to a shared inbox was much harder than I thought. Fast forward 15 years, and I had to do it again, it was a very similar story. And it hit me: nothing has really changed. So, whether you're selling  accounting software to SMEs or selling home decor to local resellers - let’s talk about the three big traps I've seen in SaaS onboarding

First: building your onboarding setup last.

We treat onboarding like an afterthought. We launch the product, and then think, “Oh, yea, we need a few fields and a click-through flow to start.”

Then we dump people into a maze of settings, and by the time they feel comfortable, they’re overwhelmed. And they bail.

But the real problem is deeper than that.  By giving them a simple, rushed onboarding flow, you set the expectation that your product itself will be simple. You signal safety. You signal ease. And then, moments later, you contradict that promise by exposing them to complexity you didn’t prepare them for. It feels like a bait-and-switch.

That’s the first alienation: you made them feel confident, and then pulled the rug from under them.

Once users feel misled (even unintentionally) they start questioning everything else you say. Every “easy to use” claim. Every promise of a great new service or feature. And at that point, you’re no longer just teaching them how to use your product: you’re trying to win back credibility.

Most won’t give you that chance. They’ll leave before they ever experience the value you spent so long building.

Second: assuming the user knows what you know. 

Once you’re deep in your product, you forget that your internal terms like “web channel” or "user permission" are not second nature. For a first-timer, these buzzwords slam the door in their face. They decide on the spot: this is out of reach, and they leave before they even touch the features you spent so long on building. Even terms like "workspace" or "user name". Who knows what they are in the context of your app? Why are you asking me for my company name? What are you going to use it for? When I write my name in a field, suddenly it appears on top of a large web screen - your users aren't always prepared for that and it leads to a sense of 'being on the back foot; Avoid it by explaining - explaining everything.

Third: assuming your sales team will carry the weight. 

Yes, B2B sales are huge, and procurement and senior leadership might sign the contract. But the buying decision is often shaped long before that, by junior employees testing the waters.

In most companies, a manager doesn’t wake up and randomly choose a tool. Someone on the ground has already been asked to “look into options.” That person is under pressure to find something that works, quickly. If they land on your site and the only next step  is “Talk to sales” or “Book a demo,” that feels like friction. It feels like commitment that they often don't have time or inclination for.

Now imagine a competitor sitting next to you in a browser tab saying, “Try now. No credit card. No obligation.” Within minutes, that junior employee has created an account, invited a teammate, maybe even connected your tool to their slack and sent a random notification. They’re not evaluating slides or PDF files. They’re experiencing your product.

By the time your sales team shows up with a polished deck and enterprise pricing, the emotional decision has already been made. The employee is comfortable. They’ve built small habits inside that other tool. They can say to their boss, “I’ve tested this. It works.”

You cannot outsource that first experience to sales. If access to your product feels intimidating, you lose the very people who influence the deal. And once they’ve bonded with another tool, you’re not just competing on features or price. You’re competing against personal familiarity.

And finally......

I know it's easy to onboarding to the end. Why build something to onboard users to nothing? But try shifting how you see it. Start seeing onboarding as your most important early marketing tool,  and that opens the door for you to you invest in real differentiation.

We're pretty pleased with our gruvi.ai onboarding, we think our 5 minute set up is the middle ground between simplicity and feature set - but we're not finished yet. We're working on hard on the next generation of gruvi's onboarding too:  imagine setting up software by having a conversation with AI—not endless drop-downs or rigid forms.

Picture it: a friendly AI agent walks you through setting up customer support software step-by-step, asking simple questions, guiding you as you link channels like WhatsApp, or setting up complicated SLAs (that's a service level agreement  - or target in human language!)  simply by having a conversation.

Before I go, check out these other stellar examples of SaaS onboarding: first, take a look at how Asana guides you from day one; second, see how Notion uses an interactive walkthrough to get you creating instantly; and third, check out how Slack welcomes you with a personalized, fun tour of its channels. Once you see what’s possible, you’ll realize: onboarding isn’t just a step, it’s the first impression.