Hey, it’s Anastasia Kudrow.
If you’ve downloaded one of my paywall collections, onboarding teardowns, PLG guides in the past or were subscribed to Growing Pains… hi again 👋
I’m starting a newsletter. It’s called Ghosted, and it’s for product teams who want to stop losing users after signup.
Each issue breaks down one behavioral pattern behind user drop-off, and shows how to design onboarding, pricing, and retention strategies that work with human behavior, not against it.
So when everyone else is stuck guessing why users leave, you’ll have a clear answer.
If that’s not your thing, no hard feelings, just hit unsubscribe below and I won’t bother you again.
But if it is, stick around and read the first issue right here 👇
Ever wonder why users drop off after doing most of the setup?
I was helping a team with a social media scheduling tool.
Think: content calendar, AI drafts, drag-and-drop posts.
New users signed up, connected accounts, set preferences…
Then… nothing.
We watched session replays.
No bugs. No real confusion.
They hovered. Scrolled. Paused. Left.
Here’s what we missed:
After the setup, the calendar stayed empty.
No sample posts. No suggested layout.
Nothing to show what a full week could look like.
They weren’t stuck.
They just couldn’t picture what they were working toward.
Our checklists didn’t really help because this was at play:
Ambiguity Aversion: bigger than a progress bar
Ambiguity Aversion explains why people avoid action when the outcome is unclear.
We don’t just need steps.
We need a picture of where those steps lead.
In onboarding, if users can’t imagine what success looks like, they stall — even if the flow is smooth.
They don’t think,
“This is hard.”
They think,
“I don’t know what I’m doing this for.”
That’s not friction. That’s ambiguity.
And ambiguity kills motivation.
Why we fall into this trap
Founders want users to learn EVERYTHING about the product.
PMs want to show off flexibility.
Marketing adds checklists to drive “completion.”
But users don’t show up to finish onboarding.
They show up to solve their problem.
If they can’t see what success looks like early —
they assume they’re wasting their time.
So they leave.
How to avoid it: learn from Miro
Miro doesn’t drop you into an empty whiteboard and hope for the best.
Instead, they offer a gallery of ready-to-go templates — brainstorming, sprints, product roadmaps.
Most might not use them as-is.
They customize or delete and start from scratch.
But that’s not the point.
The template shows them what finished looks like.
So even if they ditch the layout, they now have a mental image of what their own board could become.
That glimpse of the goal?
It’s what keeps them going.
3 steps to break this pattern next week
Pick one onboarding flow. Ask: “At what moment does the user know what they’re building?” If the answer is “after setup,” it’s too late.
Before showing steps, show the outcome. Can the user see a filled-in example and imagine it as theirs?
Rewrite your welcome copy. Replace “Let’s get started” with a sentence that says: “In 2 minutes, you’ll have [real outcome] ready to use.”
If you forget everything, remember this:
Onboarding isn’t about the steps, it’s about the value. And progress bar won’t save you if the result is unclear.
