Activation Rate
The percentage of new signups who complete a defined 'activation' milestone that correlates strongly with long-term retention (e.g., first key action within 7 days).
“Are new users reaching the moment where they experience our core value?”
Whether onboarding is successfully getting new users to first value.
Whether the chosen milestone is actually causally linked to retention — this must be validated with a retention correlation analysis, not assumed.
Numerator
Users Reaching Activation Milestone within the defined window
Denominator
Total New Signups in the period
Example
Of 5,000 signups in a week, 1,750 complete the 'first project created' milestone within 7 days. Activation Rate = 1,750 / 5,000 = 35%.
Recommended visualization: Funnel chart from signup → activation milestone → retained
The activation milestone should be selected via retention-curve analysis (which early action best predicts week-8 retention), then locked and versioned — redefining it breaks trend continuity.
- Re-validate the activation milestone's predictive power against retention on a quarterly basis
- Confirm the signup cohort denominator excludes bot/spam signups
- Picking an activation milestone that's easy to hit but weakly correlated with real retention
- Changing the activation definition without re-baselining historical trend data
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