Recipe
Onboarding flow design
A step-by-step pattern for converting trial users into paying customers through progressive disclosure, trust-building, and a frictionless checkout.
Ingredients
- 3-step wizard with persistent progress bar
- Email capture behind a soft wall (step 2)
- Interactive product demo embedded inline
- Single-click license key generation post-payment
- SellAuth modal for checkout — no redirect
- Post-purchase redirect to dashboard with key in hand
Steps
1
Value reveal
Show the product working. An embedded video or live demo component that proves the utility before asking for anything. Zero fields. One CTA: “Get started.”
2
Email capture
Soft wall. Email input + “Continue”. No password. Explain why: “We’ll send your license key here.” This is the lead-gen moment — feed into KeyAuth’s user record.
3
Checkout
SellAuth modal opens on the same page. No redirect, no tab switch. On payment success, KeyAuth provisions the license, the modal closes, and the user lands on their dashboard with the key pre-filled.
Guardrails
- Circuit breaker on checkout: if SellAuth is down, queue the intent and retry with exponential backoff.
- Offline grace: if KeyAuth provisioning fails, store a signed HMAC token locally so the user isn’t locked out.
- Progress is persisted in sessionStorage — refresh doesn’t reset the wizard.
- No required fields beyond email. Friction is the enemy of conversion.