Onboarding and empty state examples worth copying
Onboarding patterns that work in SaaS: one question first, a quick first win, empty states that teach, and emails that follow what people did.
TLDR
- Good onboarding gets someone to their first win fast. Everything else (tours, checklists, videos) is secondary.
- The patterns that keep showing up: ask one question, skip the blank page, make the empty state do the teaching, and send emails based on what people did.
- Onboarding only makes sense in order. Save the whole flow, screen by screen and email by email, or you’re saving half of it.
Why “examples” are hard to find
Landing pages are public. Onboarding isn’t. It’s behind a signup, it changes every few months, and the good bits (the second screen, the day-three email) are exactly the ones nobody screenshots.
So the best onboarding library is one you build yourself: sign up for things, and save every screen and email as you go.
Pattern 1: one question before the product
A single screen that asks “what are you here to do?” and shapes what comes next. Three to five options, big buttons, a skip link.
It works because the next screen can be specific. “You picked plan a launch, here’s a launch template” beats a generic dashboard.
What to steal: one question. Every extra field before the product costs you people.
Pattern 2: never start with a blank page
The worst first screen in SaaS is an empty dashboard with a “Create your first project” button. You’ve asked someone who doesn’t know your product yet to design something in it.
Better: start them inside something. A sample project they can poke at, a template that’s already filled in, or the result of the one question above.
Pattern 3: the empty state does the teaching
Every empty screen is onboarding, whether you designed it that way or not. A good one:
- Says what goes here, in one line.
- Shows the fastest way to add it. One button, or “paste a link”, or a keyboard shortcut.
- Doesn’t apologise. “No projects yet” is fine. “Oops, looks like you don’t have anything!” isn’t.
Pattern 4: checklists that end
A short checklist (“3 things to try”) in a corner, which disappears once it’s done. Three items, max. Six-step checklists with a progress bar at 17% make people feel behind on day one.
Pattern 5: emails that follow what you did
The welcome email is table stakes. The good ones come after:
- Did the thing: “You added your first project. Here’s the next step.”
- Didn’t do the thing: “Still getting set up? This takes two minutes.”
- Stalled: a plain-text note from a real person, a few days in.
If every new user gets the same five emails on the same five days, it’s a newsletter, not onboarding. The welcome email examples post has more on the first one.
How to build your own onboarding library
- Sign up with a real inbox. Use a
+onboardingaddress so it’s easy to find. - Screenshot every screen, including the boring ones. The boring ones are where people drop off.
- Keep the emails, in the order they arrived, for two weeks.
- Save it as one thing, in order. Screens and emails together, so you can replay the whole thing.
That last step is what sequences in Savepad are for: one save that holds a whole flow in order, laid out on a timeline, with the emails forwarded straight in from your own address. Next to the landing page that started it, in your swipe file.