Your users are leaving before they've even started
I’ve helped hundreds of SaaS products turn first-time users into people who get it, stick with it, and pay more for it.
Do you have a leaky onboarding?
Is this your product?
Users are confused
New users land in your product and don't know where to start
They don’t upgrade
Users don’t know how to find value, so they don’t pay
Then, they quiet quit
People signup, but most don't come back after the third session
A sticky onboarding is a loop
01. Activation Loop
Users reach a meaningful outcome within their first session. Not a checklist, not a tour. An actual result that makes them think this is worth coming back to.
02. Retention Loop
Users who got value once know how to get it again. The product becomes a sticky part of their workflow. They build a habit they didn't plan to build.
03. Expansion Loop
Users who genuinely find value upgrade and share it. Not because you asked them to, because they want to. That is the clearest signal the loop is working.
"An absolute expert at building onboarding experiences."
With over 20 years of experience, I help product teams build onboarding experiences that turn new users into paying customers.
The Onboarding Loop Sprint
The Audit
Finding what's broken, and what to build instead.
Most audits stop at the signup flow. This one doesn't. I review your entire user experience from the moment someone signs up, through the core product, through the moments that should be driving retention, and all the way to the upgrade path. I'm looking at what's working, what's broken, and what's missing entirely.
The output isn't a list of problems. It's a clear direction for what needs to change and why, grounded in your actual product and your actual data.
Deliverables:
The Plan
Designing the ideal experience in pixels.
With the audit findings as the foundation, I design the new user journey. Not a vague framework, an actual flow from signup to first value, through the moments that build habit, up to the natural upgrade point. Real copy throughout. Every decision documented and justified.
This is medium-fidelity by design. The goal isn't finished pixels; it's a journey map your team can read, understand, and start acting on before Phase 3 is complete.
Deliverables:
The Build
Production-ready. Nothing left to interpret.
I take the journey map and build it out to full fidelity inside your design system. Every screen. Every state. Every edge case your engineers will encounter. The files are built to be handed off directly, not explained or decoded.
We close with a live session with your engineering lead so build can start the same day.
Deliverables:
Onboarding Loop Deliverables
An annotated Figma file marked up on your real screens, paired with a strategy document in Notion. Every friction point identified, every recommendation sequenced, covering your full user journey from signup to upgrade.
A Figma journey map of the ideal user experience, from signup to first value to upgrade, with real copy at every step. Medium-fidelity and fully documented so your team can start planning implementation immediately.
Production-ready Figma files built inside your design system, covering every screen, every state, and every edge case. Paired with a production-ready build guide and a live handoff session with your engineering lead.
If your users aren’t activating, let’s find out why.
Career highlights
Trusted by global brands
They said it best
"Bal Sieber was the mastermind behind the whole experience. I remember those days fondly and the excitement of building a 1.0 product."
Rahul Pradhan, Vice President, Couchbase
- Designed the Couchbase onboarding and user-experience
- $200M Public Offering
- $763M Valuation
"Bal Sieber, forward thinking and current; no matter the technology, brings to the table great concepts, theory, and leadership."
Bryan Saftler, Director of Product, Microsoft
- Collaborated on global product launches reaching 200M+ active users across enterprise and consumer markets.
- Helped teams streamline release cycles, reducing average launch time by 35%
Three options to get started
Commit to all three phases upfront as the full Sprint, or buy them one at a time.
The Audit
5 Days
You know something's off. You need someone to tell you exactly what.
$4,000 *
$4,000 paid here rolls into Phase 2 if you continue.
* Scope and pricing are confirmed on the discovery call. Complex products with multiple user journeys or enterprise onboarding paths may vary.
A complete diagnostic of your entire user experience, from signup to the upgrade path. You leave with a clear direction for what needs to change, not just a list of what's broken.
The Plan
10 Days
You have a team ready to build. You just need the plan handed to them.
$8,000 *
$4,000 after the Audit, or $8,000 for the Audit and Plan as a pair
* Scope and pricing are confirmed on the discovery call. Complex products with multiple user journeys or enterprise onboarding paths may vary.
The ideal user journey, designed on paper with real copy at every step. Concrete enough for your team to start planning implementation before Phase 3 is even complete.
The Build
15 Days
You need it diagnosed, designed and built, from the ground up.
$12,000 *
$4,000 after Phases 1 and 2, or $12,000 for the full Sprint
* Scope and pricing are confirmed on the discovery call. Complex products with multiple user journeys or enterprise onboarding paths may vary.
Production-ready Figma files built inside your design system, with everything your engineers need to build without guessing. We close with a live handoff session so build can start the same day.
The 90-Day Guarantee
Full refund if your metrics don’t improve
If you implement the prioritized changes from the Sprint and your activation, upgrade, and churn rates don't improve within 90 days, I'll refund the engagement in full.
The only conditions: you implement the high-leverage changes from the Delivery, you track your three baseline metrics before and after, and we do a check-in call at the 45-day mark so I can make sure nothing is blocking your team. That call is as much for you as it is for me.
Before the Sprint begins, we establish a baseline together for each of the three metrics we'll be measuring against:
- Activation Rate: how quickly new users reach their first meaningful outcome in your product
- Upgrade Rate: the percentage of users who convert from free or trial to paid
- Churn Rate: the percentage of users who unsubscribe from your service after converting to paid.
Most clients won't need to claim this. That's the point.
What happens after the sprint?
Your onboarding isn't a one-time fix. It's a living part of your product that needs monitoring, testing, and iteration as your product evolves and your users change.
Once the Sprint is done, you can keep me in your corner on a monthly retainer at $1,500 per month.
Each month includes:
Who’s behind this?
I'm Bal Sieber. I spent the first half of my career as a creative director in digital marketing, the second half as a product designer working with teams like Microsoft, Google, and Couchbase. That combination is exactly why I ended up here.
Across 20+ years and dozens of SaaS products, I kept seeing the same pattern: great product, bad first impression, users who never made it to the part that would have made them stay.
The Onboarding Loop is the framework I built to fix it. Not by adding more tools on top of a broken experience, but by redesigning the experience itself, from signup to first value, so users activate faster, retain longer, and upgrade on their own.
My work has been featured in:
Working with Bal is easy
1. Book a Call
We look at your current onboarding together and confirm whether it's the right problem to solve and whether we're the right fit.
2. Run the Sprint
Three phases of focused design work delivered in stages under your direction. Your team can start building before we're even done.
3. Watch MRR Compound
Users find their way to value faster, stay longer, and upgrade more. Some will start telling others without being asked.
Frequently asked questions
My churn is high but I'm not sure it's an onboarding problem. How do I know?
We already use Intercom and Appcues for onboarding. Why would this be different?
Our issue is trial-to-paid conversion, not churn. Is this still relevant?
Ready to talk?
If your users aren't activating the way you expected, let's find out why. I'll look at your onboarding with you and tell you honestly whether this is the right problem to solve and whether we're the right fit.