This change had downstream impacts and required additional feature development. We looked critically at our flow and realized that a complete reversal would significantly close the ‘time to aha’ gap. This involved step created a natural roadblock to engagement as only the most persistent users pushed through to the aha moment. We had built an onboarding flow, where the first step was the most involved. Our mishap was that to get to this aha moment took too much time and effort. It’s what our early access user called “dope” and is the action we demonstrate to everyone we can. For Smallstep SSH, the aha moment is when the user first performs a single sign-on SSH session. Our biggest mishap was that it took too much effort to get to the aha moment. And there was one in particular that we wanted to fix ASAP. What became clear in our reflection and research is that we made a few mishaps. We also dug into the Heavybit library and a few other sources. My co-worker shared this excellent series of blog posts from Clifford Oravec. We went back and examined the onboarding flow we created in our sprint to general availability. Our onboarding process needed improvement.
How many people were getting to the aha moment? It wasn’t a number we liked. With some history across a large number of signups, we started analyzing the onboarding effectiveness. Time passed, and we collected more information. The reality is probably somewhere in the middle. If not, our signup flow and conversation ratios look great. For example, do you count someone from hacker news who reads a blog then exits as a ‘website visitor’? If you do, our ratios suck because we are killing it in content marketing (more on that in a future post). Open View Partners recently published some benchmarks, and Unbounce has some good statistics, but mapping that to our world isn’t a direct correlation. What we found was, as always, “it depends”.
We searched to find out if our signup conversion numbers were good. We built it, they came, but it wasn’t converting as we had hoped. This translated to an encouraging number of signups and helped to validate our early market conversations. With the help of hacker news, we posted over 50,000 website views in the first 30 days. We timed our announcement with strong content marketing and delivered a healthy return. With Smallstep SSH ready to go, we launched it on the world and opened up registrations. The team worked overtime, pushed hard, and delivered the complete package. Again, our early access users said it best: You will know the reaction when you see it. The aha moment is that point in the process where the user comprehends the value you are delivering. No sales calls or required professional services, just try it and find your aha moment. With our core functionality in place and real-world users pushing us to build the best product, we focused on the final mile, onboarding. Plus they gave us direct and honest feedback: They helped more than they know and quickly became friends. The reactions were SUPER positive and translated into a good number of early access users to help prove out the value. With a prototype in hand, we set out demoing the product to anyone that would listen. To prove we could do it, we spent a day building a throwaway prototype. We quickly formulated an MVP and shared the details with the team. The post created a strong reaction that we parlayed into over 100 good discussions with would-be users. It started with a zinger of a blog post from Mike Malone that set the direction for what was to become our first product. But before we get into that, a quick summary of what you might have missed. First up, ‘making your users wait forever for that aha moment.’ Or to put a positive spin on it, ‘filtering users to only the truly dedicated through an involved onboarding process’. Yes, you read that right, a blog series on where we went sideways and some suggestions on how to avoid them in your world. This is the first in a series of posts highlighting a few of the go-to-market mishaps we are making here at Smallstep. Our product launch looked to emulate these companies but fell short in a few key areas. It worked for Zoom, Slack, Calendly, Expensify, Dropbox, Hubspot, and many others. The core concept is the organic adoption of products, not sales adoption of products. This approach can be amazingly powerful when done correctly and has produced some of the world’s strongest performing companies. Smallstep is building a product-led go-to-market. Lesson one, don’t gatekeep your aha moment. And there was one in particular that we wanted to fix ASAP.” “What became clear in our product-led research is that we made a few mishaps.
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