Sales & Conversion
Personas
SaaS & Startup
Time to ROI
Short-term (< 3 months)
Most SaaS founders I've worked with are obsessed with one metric: signup conversion rates. More signups equals more revenue, right? That's what every growth hack article will tell you.
But here's what happened when I worked with a B2B SaaS client who was drowning in signups but starving for paying customers. Their metrics told a frustrating story: lots of new users daily, most using the product for exactly one day, then vanishing. Almost no conversions after the free trial.
The marketing team was celebrating their "success" – popups, aggressive CTAs, and paid ads were driving signup numbers up. But I knew we were optimizing for the wrong thing. What good are 1000 signups if only 5 people actually use your product?
After analyzing user behavior data, I discovered something that goes against everything you've been taught about conversion optimization. Sometimes the best activation strategy is making it harder to sign up in the first place. Here's what you'll learn from my real-world experiment:
Why high signup rates can actually hurt your activation metrics
The counterintuitive friction technique that improved user quality by 300%
How to identify which users will actually engage before they even sign up
The psychology behind why demanding more upfront creates better customers
Step-by-step framework to implement "good friction" without killing conversions
This approach worked so well that we finally had engaged users who actually used the product. More users converted to paid after the trial, even though total signups dropped significantly. This connects to broader onboarding principles that most SaaS companies get completely wrong.
Industry Reality
What SaaS activation experts recommend
Walk into any SaaS conference or read any conversion rate optimization blog, and you'll hear the same mantras repeated like gospel. The industry has created a standard playbook for activation that focuses on removing all friction from the signup process.
Here's what every "expert" will tell you to do:
Reduce form fields – Ask for email only, maybe a name if you're feeling bold
Remove credit card requirements – Make it completely free to start
Use social login – Let them sign up with Google or LinkedIn in one click
Aggressive CTAs everywhere – "Start Free Trial" buttons on every page
Exit-intent popups – Capture them before they leave with discount offers
The logic makes perfect sense on paper. More signups means more chances to activate users. Lower the barriers, increase the volume, and some percentage will stick around. It's a numbers game, right?
This approach exists because it's easy to measure and sounds logical to executives. Signup conversion rates are clean metrics that marketing teams can optimize and report on. Plus, most advice comes from B2C companies where this actually works – when you're selling a $5/month app to consumers, casting a wide net makes sense.
But here's where this conventional wisdom falls apart: SaaS isn't a numbers game, it's a quality game. You're not selling impulse purchases. You're asking people to integrate your solution into their daily workflow, trust you with their business processes, and pay you monthly for the privilege.
The problem with the "remove all friction" approach is that it optimizes for quantity over quality. You end up with what I call "drive-by signups" – people who create accounts with zero intention of actually using your product. They inflate your signup metrics while destroying your activation rates.
Consider me as your business complice.
7 years of freelance experience working with SaaS and Ecommerce brands.
When I started working with this B2B SaaS client, the situation looked familiar. On paper, their acquisition strategy seemed solid – multiple channels, decent traffic, trial signups coming in. But something was fundamentally broken in their conversion funnel.
Here's what their metrics looked like when I first dove into the analytics:
1,200+ monthly signups from various sources
Average user session: 12 minutes on day one
Day 1 return rate: 23%
Trial-to-paid conversion: 1.8%
The client was frustrated because they were spending significant money on paid ads and content marketing to drive signups, but almost nobody was actually using the product meaningfully. Most users would sign up, click around for a few minutes, then never return.
My first instinct was to follow the standard playbook. We built an interactive product tour, simplified the UX, reduced friction points. The engagement improved slightly – nothing dramatic. The core problem remained untouched: we were attracting the wrong people.
That's when I realized we were treating symptoms, not the disease. Most users came from cold traffic – paid ads and SEO. They had no context about what they were signing up for. The aggressive conversion tactics meant anyone with a pulse and an email address could create an account.
After analyzing the user journey data more carefully, I noticed a critical pattern. The few users who did convert to paid customers had very different behavior profiles. They spent more time reading the landing page content, visited multiple pages before signing up, and showed much higher engagement from day one.
These high-intent users were getting lost in the noise of low-quality signups. The client's onboarding sequences and follow-up emails were designed for the masses, not the qualified few who actually needed the product.
Here's my playbook
What I ended up doing and the results.
Here's what I proposed to my client – and why they initially hated the idea. Instead of making signup easier, I suggested we make it significantly harder. Add friction that would filter out casual browsers while attracting serious prospects.
The client thought I'd lost my mind. "You want us to reduce signups when we're already struggling with conversions?" But I explained that we weren't reducing signups – we were reducing bad signups while potentially increasing good ones.
Phase 1: The Credit Card Gate
First change: we required a credit card upfront for the free trial. No more "completely free" signups. This immediately cut signups by about 60%, which terrified my client. But here's what happened to the users who did sign up:
Average first session increased from 12 minutes to 34 minutes
Day 1 return rate jumped from 23% to 67%
Users were actually completing the onboarding flow
Phase 2: The Qualification Questions
Next, we added a multi-step signup form with qualifying questions:
Company size and industry
Current tools they're using
Specific use case for our product
Timeline for implementation
This cut signups by another 40%. My client was sweating bullets. But the users who made it through this process were pre-qualified and highly engaged.
Phase 3: The Commitment Escalator
Finally, we restructured the onboarding to require small commitments at each step:
Watch a 3-minute product overview video
Set up at least one integration
Invite one team member
Complete a sample workflow
Each step eliminated more casual users, but the ones who stayed were incredibly engaged. By the end of this process, we had transformed the entire dynamic. Instead of trying to activate uninterested users, we were supporting highly motivated ones.
The psychology here is crucial: people value what they work for. When someone jumps through hoops to sign up for your product, they're mentally committed to making it work. They've invested time and effort, creating a sunk cost that motivates continued engagement.
Qualification Questions
Use progressive profiling to identify serious prospects before they access your product
Intent Signals
Look for behavioral indicators that predict long-term engagement and conversion success
Commitment Mechanics
Design small commitments that create psychological investment in your product's success
Results Tracking
Monitor quality metrics over quantity metrics to measure true activation improvement
The results were dramatic, though it took my client a few weeks to see past the initial signup drop. Here's what happened over the first quarter after implementing the "friction strategy":
The Good News:
Trial-to-paid conversion increased from 1.8% to 12.3%
Average customer lifetime value tripled
Support ticket volume decreased (fewer confused users)
User onboarding completion rate hit 89%
The Reality Check:
Total signups dropped from 1,200/month to 320/month
Cost per acquisition initially increased
Sales team had to adjust their follow-up sequences
But here's the math that convinced my client this was working: Revenue from new customers increased by 186% despite having 73% fewer signups. We were converting 39 paying customers per month instead of the previous 22, and these customers were staying longer and upgrading more frequently.
The most surprising result was how much easier the entire customer success process became. When you start with highly qualified, engaged users, everything downstream gets better. Onboarding calls were more productive, feature adoption was higher, and churn rates dropped significantly.
What I've learned and the mistakes I've made.
Sharing so you don't make them.
This experiment taught me several counterintuitive lessons about SaaS activation that go against conventional wisdom:
1. Quality beats quantity every time in B2B SaaS
It's better to have 100 highly engaged trial users than 1,000 who barely use your product. The engaged users convert at higher rates and become better long-term customers.
2. Friction can be your friend when applied strategically
The key is adding "good friction" that filters intent rather than "bad friction" that creates confusion. Good friction makes people think about whether they really need your solution.
3. Activation starts before signup, not after
Most companies focus on post-signup activation, but the real work happens during the acquisition phase. The wrong signups will never activate, no matter how good your onboarding is.
4. Psychological commitment drives engagement
When people invest effort to access your product, they're more likely to invest effort to make it work. This creates a virtuous cycle of engagement.
5. Your metrics might be lying to you
Signup conversion rates can be vanity metrics if you're not tracking quality. Focus on engagement metrics and trial-to-paid conversion instead.
6. Not all traffic sources are created equal
Cold traffic from paid ads requires more qualification than warm traffic from content marketing or referrals. Adjust your friction accordingly.
7. Sometimes you need to disappoint marketing to help sales
Marketing teams love high signup numbers, but sales teams prefer qualified leads. The friction approach optimizes for sales success over marketing vanity metrics.
How you can adapt this to your Business
My playbook, condensed for your use case.
For your SaaS / Startup
For SaaS startups looking to improve activation rates:
Add qualifying questions during signup to filter serious prospects
Require small commitments (email verification, profile completion)
Track engagement metrics alongside conversion rates
Test credit card requirements for free trials
Analyze successful customer signup patterns for insights
For your Ecommerce store
For ecommerce businesses applying similar principles:
Use account creation requirements for high-value customers
Add product quizzes to qualify purchase intent
Focus on customer lifetime value over one-time purchases
Segment traffic sources by engagement quality
Test wishlist creation as commitment mechanism