Time to value

Time to value (TTV) measures how long a new user takes to experience the product's core value. Lower TTV = higher activation = better retention.

Targets

• SaaS consumer: under 5 minutes
• SaaS B2B: under 30 minutes for first aha
• Enterprise: first week if onboarding-assisted

Shortening TTV

• Pre-fill or import data
• Offer templates/defaults
• Hide advanced features
• Reduce required setup

Measurement

Event tracking, timestamp signup, timestamp first-value event, measure the gap.

The friction audit

Walk through onboarding as a new user. Every step that requires thinking or typing is potential removal.

What to do with this

• Measure TTV event-to-event from signup to first-value event, without instrumentation you're optimizing blind
• Target category benchmarks, consumer tools under 5 min, B2B SaaS under 30 min, enterprise under 1 week with help
• Pre-fill data, offer templates, skip non-essential setup, every required input before aha is a drop-off point
• Walk through onboarding as a new user monthly, fresh eyes catch friction that becomes invisible to your team
• When TTV improves, activation usually does too, but test it, sometimes shorter TTV hurts quality of aha (too shallow)