If you're building an API company, your onboarding experience is vital. It's what makes users fall in love with your product.

Most developers sign up, set up their workflows, and never return. During this setup moment, you want them to get their job done and realize the value of the product as soon as possible.

In psychology, people call it the Aha moment.

The Aha moment is a moment of sudden insight or discovery. In software, it's the pivotal moment when a new user first realizes the value of your product and why they need it. -- source: growth.design

I had the opportunity to work on the developer experience at Specify. I benchmarked how awesome dev-first companies welcomed their users and ran experiments for conversion rate optimizations.

Below are my key takeaways.

unparalleled first-time developer experiences

When I started benchmarking how awesome dev-first companies welcomed their users, I wanted to understand the reasoning behind every detail, pixels and words, that makes the experiences unparalleled.

Above all, the first-time experience should answer:

What should I know about your product? Anything I shouldn't miss?

• Take Linear. It introduces its keyboard shortcut Cmd+K during the process.

• Stripe helps you "start accepting payments instantly." And so, it only takes three steps to get started.

• Zapier connects your apps and suggests automated workflows during the signup flow.

The first-time experience is a foretaste of your product. It's what makes your users reach the Aha moment and convert them into engaged, lifelong customers. It requires continuous improvements and experiments.

how Specify welcomed new users

Specify is building an API that helps engineering, product, and design teams set up design CI/CD workflows in minutes. Most users sign up, set up their pipeline, and never return. The pipeline is up and running, and "it just works," users said.

During this setup moment, it's key to help users get their job done and reach their Aha moment as soon as possible.

The team experimented with and shipped many improvements:

• added a step-by-step walkthrough;
• created configuration templates to get started in minutes;
• added sample dataset to preview the value.

final thoughts

Optimizing the onboarding experience requires continuous improvements and experiments. And it's vital for your business. It converts users into engaged, lifelong advocates.

It's what makes them fall in love with your product. <3