Ledgerline
Trial users signed up and vanished before sending a first invoice. We rebuilt onboarding around that one action; activation went from 22 % to 41 % in six weeks.
+86%trial users who send a first invoice
- Client
- Ledgerline, invoicing for freelancers
- Year
- 2026
- What we did
- Product design, Engineering, Usability testing
The problem
Ledgerline had plenty of sign-ups and a churn problem nobody could explain. The numbers did: 78 % of trial users never sent an invoice, and the ones who did almost always stayed.
Onboarding asked for a company logo, tax settings, bank details and a color theme before anyone could do the thing they came for.
What we did
We cut onboarding to one screen: who are you billing and for how much. Everything else moved to the moment it matters, so tax settings appear the first time you add tax, not before.
- A teardown with five freelancers on video, watching them create their first invoice.
- A rough cut in the browser on day four, tested with the same five people.
- A new invoice editor in Astro and React islands, with drafts saved as you type.
The result
Six weeks after launch, 41 % of trial users sent an invoice in their first session (up from 22 %). Support tickets about “where do I start” dropped to almost none.
“We stopped arguing about onboarding and started looking at one number.”