Onboarding is a sequence of steps you want a new user to take, and each step is a link: verify your email, connect the integration, invite a teammate, finish the first project. Those links go into welcome emails, in-app messages, docs and support replies, and then they sit there for months while the product changes underneath them.
Custom short links for SaaS product onboarding solve two problems at once. Each link is tracked, so you can see which step people actually click. Each link's destination is editable, so the welcome email you wrote in March still lands in the right place after the September redesign. This guide covers how to structure them, where to put them, and how to read the result against activation.
Start from the milestones
List the steps a new user has to complete to get value, in order. Most products have four to six:
- Confirm email
- Complete the first setup action
- Connect the integration that makes the product useful
- Invite a teammate
- Reach the first real outcome
Each milestone gets a short link, or several if it is prompted from
more than one place. The milestone token becomes the link's tag and
its utm_campaign value, so the link report and your product
analytics speak the same names.
Name links by milestone and channel
go.yourapp.com/connect-slack-email-d1
go.yourapp.com/connect-slack-inapp
go.yourapp.com/invite-team-email-d3
go.yourapp.com/invite-team-docs
Milestone, then channel, then placement or day. One link per place a step is prompted, so you can tell whether the day-one email or the in-app banner is doing the work. Lowercase, hyphens, the same milestone token everywhere.
Use a subdomain of your product's domain. A link from your welcome
email that reads go.yourapp.com is yours. A generic shortener
domain in the same email is a small trust tax on every send.
Put links where users actually are
Welcome and lifecycle emails. Each email's primary call to action is its own short link. If the email has a button and a text link, two links tell you which one gets clicked.
In-app messages and checklists. The onboarding checklist, empty
states and tooltips can all carry short links to the relevant step.
Tag them inapp so the report separates them from email.
Role or plan variants. An admin's first step differs from an invited member's. Create links per segment where the destination or message differs, and tag the segment.
Docs and help content. Setup guides and the support macro that answers "how do I connect X" should use the same short links as the emails, so help-driven completions show up in the same report.
Return paths. A short link in the "you haven't finished setting up" nudge should land on the exact unfinished step, not the dashboard. Short links make that destination easy to keep accurate.
Keep the destination right as the product changes
This is where short links earn their place. Product pages move, settings get reorganised, the integration flow gets a new route. With a long URL in a sent email, every copy is now wrong. With a short link, edit the destination once in the dashboard and every email, message and doc that carried it points at the new page.
Build two habits around that:
- Edit, never recreate. A new link for a moved page splits the history and leaves the old link broken in old emails.
- Check redirects every release. Run the redirect checker across onboarding links when a release touches navigation. A welcome email that lands on an error is a first impression you cannot take back.
Links created through the LinkPilot API fit a product that generates onboarding links per account or per segment, and the API is on every plan.
Measure clicks beside activation
Click counts tell you where people are willing to go. Activation data tells you whether they finished. Read them together.
| Link report | Product analytics | What a gap means | | --- | --- | --- | | Clicks on connect-slack-email-d1 | Slack connections completed | Click high, completion low: the step itself is the problem | | Clicks on invite-team-* across channels | Invites sent | One channel clicks, the other does not: placement or copy | | Clicks by device | Completions by device | Mobile clicks, desktop completions: the step does not work on mobile |
Match on the milestone token in utm_campaign, filter the link report
by tag, exclude flagged bots (email security scanners click onboarding
links too), and lead with unique clicks. The campaign reports
guide
covers the monthly routine, and practical multi-touch
attribution covers reading
a sequence of steps rather than one.
Protect the user's trust
Onboarding links are the first links a new customer receives from you, and they set expectations.
- HTTPS on the branded domain, provisioned automatically when the domain is verified.
- Limit who can edit destinations to the people who own onboarding. A redirect changed by mistake sends every new user somewhere wrong.
- Check previews. Links unfurl in Slack and iMessage into the destination's Open Graph card. Make sure the connect-integration page has a card that says what it is, using the preview checker.
- No personal data in URLs. Identify the user with your own signed token on the destination, never with an email address in a query string. Why URLs leak sensitive information explains the failure modes.
- Plan for expiry. If a step should only be available for a time, such as a trial extension, use an expiring link with a fallback rather than a link that simply dies.
Onboarding is the one funnel every customer passes through. Short links turn each step of it into something you can measure and something you can fix without resending a single email.