Onboarding
Onboarding covers the first screens and actions a user sees right after opening a PWA — a short walkthrough, a push permission prompt, or straight into a game element like a spin-the-wheel or quiz. It's the moment before the user has any trust in the product yet, and it decides whether they keep moving through the funnel at all.
What PWA onboarding is made of
Good onboarding gets a user to their first meaningful action in the fewest steps possible, without front-loading text or permission requests in the first second. A push opt-in prompt placed before the user has seen any value at all usually gets noticeably more declines than the same prompt placed after a short warm-up.
Onboarding in PWA arbitrage
This is the step that decides whether a user opts into push and makes it to registration on the offer — weak onboarding can undercut even a strong creative that did its job bringing the traffic in. APEX prelanders, like a spin-the-wheel or quiz, can be built into PWA onboarding to warm the user up before the opt-in ask, instead of requesting permission on an empty first screen.
FAQ
- Why shouldn't the push permission request come first in onboarding?
- Because the user hasn't seen any value yet and is likely to just decline, and most browsers won't let you ask again after that. The request works better placed after a short warm-up, not in the first second of the visit.
- How do you know onboarding is underperforming?
- The main signal is a low share of users making it from install to push opt-in or to a first target action on the offer. If that number is noticeably lower than on other setups, the fix usually starts with the PWA's first screens, not the traffic source.
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