First Impressions, Perfected

You sign up for a new app, and then… nothing. A blank screen. Maybe a tooltip that tells you what’s already obvious.

You click around, hoping to stumble into value.

The Problem

Most onboarding is either too much or too little.

The five-step wizard you’ll never remember. The “getting started” video you’ll never watch. Or worse: figure it out yourself, good luck.

These approaches fail because they treat onboarding as a hurdle to clear rather than a journey to guide. They dump information when you don’t need it and disappear when you do. They assume everyone learns the same way, at the same pace, with the same goals.

The result? Users bounce before they ever experience what makes your product valuable. They form opinions in the first thirty seconds, and those opinions rarely change.

Arivu now has a proper onboarding system. Not a tutorial you’ll skip—a set of contextual guides that show up exactly when you need them and disappear when you don’t.

What We Built

When you first sign in, a welcome modal sets the stage. Here’s what Arivu does. Here’s why it’s different from the bookmark graveyard you abandoned last year.

This isn’t a generic splash screen. The modal explains the three things that make Arivu fundamentally different: AI-powered understanding of what you save, automatic organization that learns from your behavior, and intelligent resurfacing that brings the right content back at the right time. In thirty seconds, you understand the promise—and you’re ready to test it.

Then a progress checklist appears in your sidebar. It tracks your first steps—save a bookmark, explore the knowledge graph, try semantic search—and each milestone lights up as you complete it.

The checklist is smart about sequencing. We don’t ask you to explore the knowledge graph before you have bookmarks worth exploring. We don’t suggest semantic search until you’ve seen how Arivu processes content. Each step builds on the last, creating a natural learning curve rather than an information dump.

This isn’t gamification for gamification’s sake. It’s a map that shows you where you are and where you could go next. Complete the checklist and you’ve used every major feature. Skip it entirely and the app works just fine—we’re not holding features hostage.

The real magic happens in context. Save your first bookmark? A quick guide explains what Arivu just did with it: extracted keywords, generated a summary, connected it to your existing knowledge.

These contextual guides appear exactly when the information is relevant. Just added your first bookmark? Now you’ll understand what AI processing means in practice—not as an abstract feature list, but as something you can see happening to content you chose to save. Just created a collection? Here’s how smart organization works with your new grouping.

The guides are visually distinct from the main interface—subtle enough not to interrupt your flow, prominent enough that you won’t miss them. Each includes a “Got it” button that dismisses it forever. We respect that learning happens at different speeds.

Hit an empty state—no bookmarks yet, no collections created? Instead of a sad illustration and “Nothing here yet,” you get actionable starting points. Every empty screen becomes an invitation rather than a dead end.

Empty states now include specific suggestions based on where you are in the app. The empty bookmark list suggests the browser extension or quick-add. The empty collection screen explains how collections differ from traditional folders. The empty knowledge graph shows what a populated graph looks like and invites you to start building.

Designed to Disappear

We’ve been careful about intrusiveness.

Nothing blocks you from using the app. Nothing demands your attention. The checklist is collapsible. The guides are dismissible.

This philosophy extends to every interaction. If you ignore an onboarding element, it gets quieter over time—never louder. The welcome modal appears once. Contextual guides show once per feature. The checklist stays in your sidebar until you complete it or collapse it, but it never nags.

We track what you’ve learned, not to build a profile, but to ensure we never show you the same guide twice. Used semantic search? You’ll never see the “try semantic search” prompt again. Explored the knowledge graph? That suggestion disappears from your checklist even if you don’t click the checkbox.

Once you’ve seen them, they stay out of your way forever. The goal is to get you to power-user status as fast as possible, then step aside.

Power-user status isn’t a metaphor. After completing onboarding, you’ll have hands-on experience with every feature that makes Arivu different. You’ll understand AI processing, knowledge connections, semantic search, and intelligent resurfacing—not because we told you about them, but because you used them.

First impressions matter. Now Arivu makes one worth remembering.

Other Changes

• Skeleton loading states — Bookmark cards now show animated skeletons while content loads, so the interface never feels frozen. Error states include retry buttons instead of leaving you stuck.

• Marketing site animations — The homepage now features orchestrated CSS animations—hero sections that fade in with intent, feature blocks that stagger into view. Polish that signals care.

• UI hardening — Text overflow issues fixed, edge cases handled, error messages improved. The kind of invisible work that makes the whole experience feel more solid.