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User-onboarding protocols•by Bal Sieber

The onboarding system that actually works.

Trusted by 40+ SaaS teams

Get all the blueprints. Activation. Retention. Expansion.

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Created from two decades of work across teams at

Google Microsoft Intel Couchbase Heatmap Blue Ocean
The stack Best value
The Full Protocol Stack Four blueprints. One payment. Yours to keep. Feed them to your favorite LLM and build the ultimate user-onboarding for your SaaS.
The Activation BlueprintActivation
The Retention BlueprintRetention
The Expansion BlueprintExpansion
Level Design Add-onLevel Design

The Activation Blueprint • Get a new user to a real win on day one

The Retention Blueprint • Turn the first win into a habit, then mastery

Bundle exclusive

The Expansion Blueprint • Turn mastery into more seats and advocates

Add-on

Level Design Patterns • The 17 onboarding patterns as a swipe file

Made for AI

Read-and-do guides, or expert context you feed your AI assistant

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The Activation Blueprint

The Activation Blueprint

Get a new user to a real win on day one.

  • The Level Design model: why activation is Level 1, and how the agent runs it

  • How to define the one first-session win that matters

  • The path, the first quest, and the win moment, built for the agent to walk the user through

  • The Activation Protocol worksheet, plus a guide for running it with your LLM

$39 Get the Protocol
The Retention Blueprint

The Retention Blueprint

Jump from the first win into a daily habit.

  • The Level Design model: why retention is Level 2, and how the loop keeps users coming back

  • The one repeated action a habit is built on, and how the agent rewards and calibrates it

  • Why friction is a feature, and when the agent hands over the controls

  • The Retention Protocol worksheet, plus a guide for running it with your favorite LLM

$39 Get the Protocol
Level Design Add-on

Level Design Add-on

The 17 onboarding patterns, ready to use.

  • 17 named patterns, grouped by activation, retention, and expansion

  • Each with its mechanism, a real example, what works, and what goes sideways

  • The level-design lens that ties them together

  • A swipe file to pull from, or hand to your AI assistant when you're building

$29 Get the Protocol
The source

I built the system I wish I had.

I've spent twenty years across marketing and product, working with teams at companies like Google, Microsoft, and Intel. The same thing happened over and over. A team builds something genuinely good, launches it, and watches people sign up, look around, and leave before they ever get to the part that would have hooked them.

The product was rarely the problem. The onboarding was. So I spent years working out how to get a stranger to a real win and keep them coming back, until it became the one thing I do. This stack is that system.

Bal Sieber, founder of Onboarding Loop
Bal Sieber, founder of Onboarding Loop LinkedIn

Bal has been featured in:

"Bal is an absolute expert at building onboarding experiences."

Cory Leger

Cory Leger

Director of CRO, Heatmap

Questions

Answers.

Everything you need to know.

What exactly do I get?
Four PDF guides: Activation, Retention, Expansion, and the Level Design Patterns. The whole Onboarding Loop, from a stranger's first session to your power users bringing in their teams. After checkout you land on a page with the downloads and a short guide on using them with your AI. Yours to keep, no app, no login.
Does this only work for desktop SaaS?
No. The Onboarding Loop is about how any product turns first-time users into committed ones, so the model holds whether you're mobile, B2B, PLG, or a marketplace. The examples lean SaaS because that's where I've worked most, but the patterns — activation, retention, expansion — are the same wherever people adopt a product over time. Your AI handles translating them to your context.
Do I need an LLM to use these?
No. They're written as real read-and-do guides; you can work straight through them. But the way I actually use material like this, and the way I built this product, is to hand it to my AI and have it apply the thinking to my specific case. Both work. The guides are the expertise; your AI localizes it.
Can I really just feed them to my AI assistant?
Yes, and that's half the point. A workout plan works as written; onboarding advice is specific to each product. So instead of generic steps, these give your AI the expert context to design onboarding for your product. There's no magic prompt to paste. The guides are the brief; you tell it what you're building, it does the rest.
How long until I see results?
That's up to you, your product, and how you implement. These give you the model and the moves; how fast it shows up depends on what you build with them and where your onboarding is weakest. Some of it you could ship this week.

Want the complete system?

Four blueprints. One payment. Activation to expansion, built to read and to build from.

$146 $79 Save $67
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Bal Sieber

Hi, I’m Bal

founder @OnboardingLoop

These blueprints will make your SaaS so sticky, users will onboard and upgrade themselves.

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