Michal Rahamim is Co-Founder & COO of Liberty Pixel, leading AI innovation, operations and technology strategy across its gaming portfolio.
Let’s talk about first impressions—not dating first impressions, but business ones. I’m talking specifically about how your product is perceived during the first 60 seconds someone experiences it.
Actually, now that I think about it, maybe it is a little like dating.
On Tinder, you don’t even get 60 seconds. In real life, you get slightly more information: someone’s appearance, charisma, sense of humor, energy, voice and, yes, even how they smell. Somehow, your brain combines all of this and starts quietly deciding: Yay or nay?
Of course, first impressions can be completely wrong. Someone can be incredibly impressive and later turn out to be a disaster. Someone else can seem quiet or distant and, once you know them, turn out to be wonderful.
But that initial judgment still happens. I believe the same thing happens in B2C environments like websites, apps and games, which is the world I come from. AppsFlyer’s 2025 uninstall benchmark report found that more than half of installed apps are removed within 30 days, with the majority of uninstalls happening on the first day. The analysis covered approximately 1.3 billion installs and 402 million uninstalls.
In my own experience, I think the real audition starts much earlier: during the first 60 seconds. You can spend a year building 50 brilliant features. But if you neglected onboarding, there is a good chance many users will never discover them. At that point, they are not judging your feature list. They are judging your loading screen. So, what should those first 60 seconds accomplish?
Make the value obvious.
The user should understand almost immediately: What am I getting from this?
Maybe your app entertains me, saves me time, saves me money or makes me smarter, healthier, more productive, more organized or more beautiful. Whatever the promise is, don’t hide it three screens deep. The install already happened. Now you need to explain why it was worth it.
Remove friction.
Registration forms, permissions and unnecessary questions all create friction. There are two schools of thought here. One says, “Identify the user immediately so you can communicate with them and improve retention.” The other says, “Let them experience value first and ask them to register later.”
Both can make sense. Personally, when the product allows it, I prefer giving people a reason to care before asking for commitment. If we met eight seconds ago and you already want my email, phone number, birthday, notification permissions and access to my contacts, we are moving very fast.
Show, don’t explain.
People read less today. We live in a world of doomscrolling, short videos and instant feedback. Whether we like it or not, consumer products are competing with that behavior.
So, show me. If you built a fitness app, let me do something. If you built an AI product, show me what it can produce. If you built a travel app, let me see what my trip could look like. Don’t spend the first minute explaining the experience. Give me the experience.
Create a fast first win.
The user should succeed at something quickly. It doesn’t need to be dramatic. In a stretching app, maybe I complete my first 30-second exercise. In a language app, I correctly answer my first question. In a taxi app, I immediately see that a car is three minutes away.
That small feeling of success tells the brain: “I understand this. This works. Keep going.” This is something games are particularly good at. Early tutorials rarely begin by explaining everything. They let you act, succeed, receive feedback and gradually discover more.
Make it feel like it’s for me.
A product can be useful and still feel generic. Any first experience should give users some indication that the product understands why they came. Ask a relevant question. Adapt what they see. Let them choose a goal. Personalize something small. There is a big psychological difference between “this app does X” and “this app does X for someone like me.”
In games, we often start with a visual tutorial that throws the player directly into the experience, with very little text, lots of feedback and plenty of encouragement. The player usually succeeds before we start asking them for things like a username.
That thinking applies far beyond games. Some users will uninstall your product because it genuinely is not for them. That is fine. The users I worry about are the ones who might have loved it three days later once they discovered everything it could do—but left after 45 seconds because the beginning gave them the wrong impression.
You don’t want to lose the right customer for the wrong reason. Your 50 features still matter. Just make sure people survive the first 60 seconds long enough to find them.
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