are teardowns lazy content—or, at the very least, mostly inaccurate?
I have been conducting onboarding teardowns for 2+ years now. there was a time when I was doing 40+ each month for various b2b/b2c companies.
but recently I read a post by Fio @ Float that said that such teardowns, whether it’s for pricing pages, website copy or design, are too removed from the internal workings of a company to provide any real value. the claim is that without intimate knowledge of the behind-the-scenes decisions, any critique is fundamentally flawed.
so are teardowns are fundamentally flawed then?
if the teardown is based solely on surface-level observations ofc it’s gonna be lazy, inaccurate. whenever I do an onboarding audit I make sure I dig deep into the real data and ask data points like:
this data reveals what's actually working or falling flat. If you don’t have access to the inside info you can't just judge based on appearances.
the recommendations should stem from factual insights about what's hindering signups, engagement, revenue, etc. for example, a teardown that factors in activation metrics and nps surveys can optimize your onboarding for faster time-to-value and higher customer satisfaction in ways you'd never consider without that objective evidence.
this is true for mostly everything; when you're too close to something like a signup flow or onboarding process, it's easy to miss obvious friction points. an outsider provides a fresh set of eyes to identify issues your proximity bias causes you to overlook.
now, not every teardown is created equal. some are indeed lazy.
there are some well-known best practices like remove friction from the signup flow, don’t ask for credit card for the free trial, and ask questions about the user and use that to onboard them contextually.
if someone just keeps offering these generic best practice suggestions without considering your company's user segments and their usage patterns etc - run!