If users sign up and ghost, this is why. Somewhere between your landing page and their first “aha” moment, there’s a trap, a locked box with no preview, a five-field form with no SSO, a forced tutorial with no skip button, a dashboard of eight graphs on day one. You built it without noticing. Your users notice instantly, and then they leave.

This is a 10-point audit checklist, walked in the order a brand-new user actually experiences your product: entry point, signup flow, first-time experience, and feedback and recovery. Each question is a straight yes/no, does the product show value before signup, is there visual feedback after every step, is the aha moment reachable in under two minutes, can users undo a mistake without fear. Every “no” maps to a named trap with a specific fix, not a vague “improve onboarding” note.

Run it yourself in about fifteen minutes: open an incognito window, sign up like a stranger, and score honestly. The scoring guide at the end turns your YES count into a real diagnosis, from “you’re onboarding like a pro” down to “your onboarding is the churn engine, kill it and rebuild.”

Built for founders who suspect their signup flow is bleeding users but have never actually walked it as a first-timer to find out where.