When I led the growth team at Wistia, we spent tons of time on the new user onboarding flow.

We ran dozens of experiments inside the product to improve our activation rate. But we always felt it could be better. After a while, we weren't sure how.

Then, we started a team ritual that changed everything...

FullStory Friday’s.

Every Friday we would order lunch, hop in a conference room, and watch 20 real people use the product for the first time.

It was painful.

* Our users got lost in the product
* They got stuck
* They rage clicked on unclickable elements
* Found painful bugs we hadn't seen
* Some left RIGHT BEFORE they got to the “aha” moment.
* One time we saw someone get THREE POPUPS at the same time.

The practice was a game-changer for our team. These sessions refocused us on solving the right problems for our users.

We left every session with actionable ideas to improve the experience; bug fixes, copy changes, UI updates, blank state improvements, & new experiment ideas.

Not sure how to take your onboarding to the next level? Try watching users interact with your product for the first time. You’ll get some incredible insights.

PS we used FullStory, but there's plenty of other tools to do this. It's about getting closer to the users and seeing how they interact with your product.

That's where the magic happens.