It’s great to have users signing up for your digital product.

But how can you know if those users will eventually become paying customers?

Activation metrics (or activation milestones) are moments in a user journey that can forecast if a user will stick with your product and end up signing up for your paid features.

If you haven’t already, you should start tracking these activation metrics.

And to get inspiration, here’s what we’re measuring at Bonboarding (our product-tour creator software).

Sign-up

This is easy: it shows that the user is interested in trying our product.

First login + email verification

It increases their authenticity and potential lifetime value.

Creating the first product tour

This shows that they’re giving Bonboarding a try. Creating and launching a guided product tour is our key feature, so if a user reaches this activation milestone, they are definitely on the right track.

Downloading our browser extension

One of our friction points is that users need to install our browser extension to edit their product tours.

We measure when it’s done, as it signals that they’re giving it a try.

Pinning our browser extension

Pinning the extension keeps it in front of our users’ eyes all the time, providing easy access. It also shows more dedication and frequent usage.

Integrating the Bonboarding script

The main friction point: our clients need to integrate a script into their web page to deliver the in-app product tours.

Once the script’s detected, it shows true investment from their side: they created a tour, they liked it and now they want it to show up for their end users.

Activating the first product tour

Until now, the product tour was a draft.

Completing this key task can predict if the client will continue using Bonboarding after their trial period.

These metrics help us to engage with users who don’t reach certain milestones so we can encourage and help them set up their product tours and become happy clients.