Draft onboarding test: 12% completion rate

Ran 50 users through Draft’s onboarding flow. 12% made it to their first generated message.

That number is brutal. Out of every 100 people who open the app, 88 leave before they ever experience what it actually does.

Where they’re dropping

The mic permission prompt is the cliff. 38% of users bail right there — before they’ve typed a word, before they’ve seen the interface, before they have any reason to trust the app.

Here’s the problem: we’re asking for microphone access before we’ve given people a reason to care. The permission dialog appears, iOS shows the scary “Draft would like to access your microphone” prompt, and most people tap “Don’t Allow” on instinct.

This isn’t a trust problem. It’s a sequencing problem.

The remaining dropoff is scattered across the rest of onboarding — a few people at the empty state, a few more at the first prompt screen. But nothing like that 38% cliff.

What this means

The core product works. The 12% who make it to their first generated message — they get it immediately. The feedback from that cohort is strong. So this isn’t a product problem, it’s a funnel problem.

The fix isn’t to remove the mic permission (we need it). The fix is to earn it first.

Show the voice-to-text working on a sample clip. Let people see the output before they’re asked to give anything up. Then ask for the mic.

This is a two-way door. Easy to test, easy to reverse. Next build adds a value-first onboarding flow before any permission prompt.

Red bar. But a useful one — now we know exactly where to look.