Time to Value (TTV) is one of the most crucial early metrics in the customer journey. It measures the time between acquiring a customer and their first taste of actual value from the product or service. If it takes too long for any tangible value to appear, they might churn.

TTV is fundamentally a design problem. A poorly designed onboarding experience is one of the most common TTV misses. Thoughtful UX can show new users the value of a product early on, encouraging them to stick around.

Up to 75% of users abandon a product if they do not see value quickly enough. Acceptable wait times vary by product type and industry. The median across all SaaS products regardless of type or complexity is 1 day, 1 hour, and 54 minutes. B2B products, however, have a much longer timeline, generally taking 1-3 months to generate value. B2C products should aim to generate value within 1 week at most.

TTV has a direct impact on revenue because of its link to churn. If the TTV is so long that it causes users to cancel their subscriptions and abandon the product, you will have lost out on that revenue. Additionally, customers who feel that the product provides quick value will be more likely to refer others.

Hi-Books, an accounting software platform, shortened its onboarding flow from 27 steps to just 6. New users had to complete that entire 27-step flow before getting any kind of value from the product. Although Hi-Books’ product offering was strong, the long onboarding sequence was turning users off by significantly delaying value realization.

Some issues with the onboarding experience:

Hi-Books partnered with a marketing agency, Arise GTM, to reduce onboarding friction using a product-led growth (PLG) framework. In PLG methodology, products sell themselves through intense focus on delivering value upfront. This often comes in the form of a free trial or freemium model. The idea is to reduce TTV as much as possible so users can immediately see the product’s true value.

Arise GTM started the transformation by auditing the onboarding flow through a PLG lens and sorting each steps into these categories:

After that, they reimagined the onboarding flow to prioritize only what generated early value, such as account creation. Anything that did not immediately contribute to the experience was removed from the onboarding flow. These non-critical items were moved into choice-based flows indicated by interactive cues as users explored the product.

Under the PLG framework, Arise GTM was able to help Hi-Books separate value-critical steps from configuration-heavy steps. They found that all but 6 steps could be deferred.

Reduced early friction. The new onboarding experience more closely aligned with user intent. Instead of being distracted by information that may not be useful yet, users discovered the non-critical onboarding steps naturally as they progressed through the platform. Rearranging the flow like this prevented users from becoming frustrated, which also reduced the risk of churn.

Hi-Books cut onboarding from 27 steps to 6 and reduced time-to-value by 77%. That sounds like a UX win, but the real story is the revenue impact.

Let’s assume your company has:

That means:

If simplifying onboarding boosts activation from 18% to 28% (which is realistic based on the case study):

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