Metric · Hooked
Activation rate
Share of a sign-up cohort (or of new accounts, for team products) that reaches the product's aha threshold within N days. The Start health metric. The threshold should be the product's own, found from retained users.
Plain label: share reaching first valueAlso known as: aha rate, first-value rate, activation
Define the moments. Setup (what must happen first), aha (first core value) and habit (the regular pattern), per account for team products.
Find the threshold. Compare retained and churned users across early actions and scan thresholds for where the retention gain plateaus, weighing coverage and precision. It stays correlational until an onboarding change that pushes users toward it moves retention. HK-T13 (Hooked Ch.3)
Guardrail. Week-2 retention of the treated cohort: activating users who then leave is not a win.
Limits
What we don’t claim
- The Hook Model is a practical design tool, not a validated or complete theory of behavior.Hooked, Introduction
- The evidence is correlational until it is tested in your product.
Sources
Hooked · Nir Eyal
Ch.3 · Ch.8
Define user activation moments · Reforge (Casey Winters and Shaun Clowes)
Benchmark confidence B. A reputable dataset.The 7% retention rule (2025 Product Benchmark Report) · Amplitude, 2025
Benchmark confidence B. A reputable dataset.
Book content is paraphrased, never quoted at length. Last verified October 24, 2026.
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