onboarding-cro

Overview

What is onboarding-cro?

The onboarding-cro skill is an expert system focused on post-signup onboarding and user activation. It is designed to help you improve first-run product experiences, shorten time-to-value, and get more new users to their "aha moment" and core habit.

Instead of generic UX advice, onboarding-cro guides you through:

• Understanding your product context and activation definition
• Auditing what happens after signup
• Identifying friction in onboarding flows and empty states
• Designing checklists and flows that drive users to value quickly
• Planning experiments and metrics to continuously improve activation

This skill sits at the intersection of landing-page optimization, onboarding wikis, and UX audits. It is especially useful when you already get signups, but too few new users complete setup or become active.

Who is onboarding-cro for?

Use onboarding-cro if you are:

• A growth or product marketer responsible for free trial or freemium activation
• A product manager or UX designer improving first-session experience
• A founder or solo builder trying to turn signups into retained users
• A developer integrating a reusable CRO playbook into an AI agent or internal tooling

It is a good fit for SaaS, product-led growth, B2B, and B2C products where activation is clearly tied to a small set of key actions (e.g., create first project, invite team member, upload file).

Problems this skill helps solve

Install and use onboarding-cro when you face issues like:

• Users sign up but never complete onboarding
• Low activation rate (few users reach the aha moment)
• Slow time-to-value (core value hidden behind too many steps)
• Confusing first-run experience and empty states
• No clear onboarding checklist or success path
• Lack of structured experiments and metrics for onboarding CRO

If you need to optimize the signup/registration form itself, you should instead look at the signup-flow-cro skill. For lifecycle and nurture campaigns after onboarding, see the email-sequence skill.

When onboarding-cro is not a good fit

This skill is not intended for:

• Top-of-funnel traffic acquisition or ad campaign optimization
• Pricing page experiments unrelated to onboarding
• Long-term engagement campaigns beyond the first sessions
• Deep technical analytics implementation (tracking tools setup, schema design)

You can still use its experiment and metrics structure as input to a separate analytics or email tooling workflow.

How to Use

Installation

To add onboarding-cro to your agent environment, install it from the marketingskills repo:

npx skills add https://github.com/coreyhaines31/marketingskills --skill onboarding-cro

After installation:

1. Open skills/onboarding-cro/SKILL.md to understand the skill’s behavior and assumptions.
2. Review the supporting materials in:
   • evals/evals.json – example prompts, expected reasoning, and assertions
   • references/experiments.md – detailed onboarding experiment ideas and metrics

Integrate it into your agent or workflow according to how your platform loads skills from SKILL.md and associated folders.

Core workflow: from context to experiments

The onboarding-cro skill follows a structured workflow before recommending changes:

1. Load product marketing context

If your repo includes a product marketing context document, onboarding-cro is designed to use it first:

• Looks for .agents/product-marketing-context.md (or .claude/product-marketing-context.md in older setups)
• Reads this file to avoid re-asking questions already covered

If you do not have this file, consider adding it. Include:

• Product type (B2B/B2C, SaaS, mobile, etc.)
• Target audience and core value proposition
• Pricing model and main use cases

2. Define activation and the aha moment

The skill then guides you to define what successful activation means for your product, such as:

• Project tools: create first project
• Design tools: upload a design, invite a teammate, leave a comment
• Collaboration tools: create workspace, invite team, send first message

Clear activation definition lets the skill:

• Focus the onboarding flow on a small set of key actions
• Evaluate whether time-to-value is acceptable
• Suggest a checklist with 3–7 concrete steps that align with activation

3. Audit the current post-signup flow

Onboarding-cro helps you map what happens immediately after signup:

• What page or screen users land on
• Whether they see a product-first UI, a guided setup, or a value-first tour
• Where drop-offs occur before the activation actions

Common audit outputs include:

• A simplified step-by-step funnel from signup to activation
• Identification of high-friction steps and confusing moments
• Review of empty states (e.g., blank project dashboards, empty inboxes) as opportunities for guidance

4. Choose an onboarding flow pattern

Using your context, the skill recommends an approach such as:

• Product-first: show the main UI immediately with strong in-product cues
• Guided setup: a structured wizard or checklist to configure essentials
• Value-first: start from a pre-populated example or demo data so users see value before doing work

This selection is informed by the evaluation patterns in evals/evals.json, which emphasize:

• Time-to-value evaluation
• Checklist patterns (3–7 items)
• Treatment of empty states as guidance surfaces

5. Design a focused onboarding checklist

Based on the repository guidance, the skill encourages a concise checklist to drive activation. For example, a design collaboration tool might use:

1. Upload your first design
2. Invite at least one teammate
3. Leave or receive a comment

The checklist pattern ensures:

• No more than 3–7 steps
• Every step is clearly tied to activation or critical setup
• Optional tasks are not blocking aha moment actions

6. Use experiments from references/experiments.md

The references/experiments.md file contains a comprehensive library of onboarding experiment ideas, including:

• Flow simplification experiments – required step count, optional vs. required fields, skip options
• Guided experience experiments – product tours, CTA clarity, in-UI guidance
• Personalization experiments – tailoring onboarding by segment or job-to-be-done
• Quick wins & engagement experiments – faster time-to-value, motivation mechanics, support prompts
• Email & multi-channel experiments – onboarding drips and feedback loops tied to product behavior
• Re-engagement experiments – getting stalled users to return and complete setup
• Technical & UX experiments – performance, mobile onboarding, accessibility

Onboarding-cro draws on these ideas to recommend:

• Specific A/B tests
• Hypotheses tied to friction points
• Prioritization focused on time-to-value and activation

7. Define metrics and measurement

The eval specification in evals/evals.json expects the skill to output metrics for each recommendation, typically including:

• Activation rate (percentage of new signups that complete the defined activation actions)
• Time-to-value (time from signup to activation)
• Step-level completion and drop-off rates
• Checklist completion rate

You can plug these into your analytics or BI tools; onboarding-cro helps you specify what to track and why.

Practical setup tips

• Keep product context file updated: Whenever your ICP, value proposition, or pricing changes, update .agents/product-marketing-context.md so onboarding recommendations stay aligned.
• Start with one primary activation definition: Avoid multiple competing definitions in a single experiment cycle.
• Limit scope by segment: If you serve multiple user types, run onboarding-cro on one primary segment at a time.
• Pair with signup-flow-cro: First fix major friction in signup; then use onboarding-cro to optimize what happens immediately after.

FAQ

What does onboarding-cro actually do once installed?

Onboarding-cro acts as a structured onboarding strategist inside your agent ecosystem. It:

• Reads your product marketing context where available
• Asks targeted questions about your onboarding flow and activation definition
• Audits your current post-signup path and empty states
• Proposes an onboarding approach (product-first, guided setup, or value-first)
• Builds a concise, activation-focused checklist
• Suggests experiments and metrics based on the included references/experiments.md and evals/evals.json

How is onboarding-cro different from signup-flow-cro?

• signup-flow-cro focuses on the registration funnel: form fields, step count, conversion from visitor to account created.
• onboarding-cro starts after signup and centers on activation: first-run experience, checklists, empty states, time-to-value, and early retention.

Use both together if you need end-to-end optimization from landing page to activated user.

Do I need a product marketing context file for onboarding-cro to work?

No, but it works better with one. The skill is designed to check for:

• .agents/product-marketing-context.md
• Or .claude/product-marketing-context.md in older setups

If the file exists, onboarding-cro will rely on it and only ask for missing, task-specific details. Without it, you will answer more context questions manually.

Can onboarding-cro handle different product types (B2B vs. B2C, SaaS vs. mobile)?

Yes. The core patterns in SKILL.md, evals/evals.json, and references/experiments.md are product-agnostic. The skill explicitly asks about:

• Product type (B2B/B2C)
• Core value proposition
• Key activation actions

This allows it to adapt its audit and experiment suggestions to your specific onboarding and activation challenges.

What kind of experiments can I expect from onboarding-cro?

Drawing from references/experiments.md, you can expect recommendations like:

• Changing empty states to show templates or example data
• Adjusting step order to surface high-value actions earlier
• Reducing required fields or steps in early setup
• Adding or refining onboarding checklists with progress indicators
• Testing product tours vs. lightweight in-UI guidance
• Triggering re-engagement nudges for users who stall before activation

Each experiment is paired with a clear hypothesis and measurable outcomes.

How do I know if onboarding-cro is working?

Track the metrics the skill suggests, typically:

• Increase in activation rate over a defined period
• Reduced median time-to-value
• Higher completion rates for onboarding checklists
• Improved engagement in the first few sessions

Run experiments one at a time where possible, attribute changes to specific iterations, and use onboarding-cro to refine your next round of tests.

Can developers extend or adapt onboarding-cro?

Yes. Since onboarding-cro is defined in SKILL.md with supporting files like evals/evals.json and references/experiments.md, developers can:

• Fork the coreyhaines31/marketingskills repository
• Adjust evaluation prompts and assertions to match their internal frameworks
• Add product-specific experiment lists or metrics
• Integrate the skill into broader workflows (e.g., analytics dashboards, internal onboarding wikis)

This makes onboarding-cro a reusable playbook that can evolve with your product and team.