Time to first transaction

Why it matters

TTFT is one of the earliest signals you get about whether onboarding works. If new users take weeks to complete their first transaction, most of them will have already given up and moved on before that first deal ever happens.

Investors treat TTFT as a leading indicator of retention, since it is available much sooner than a 90-day retention cohort.

How to calculate it

Measure the median, not the average, number of days between signup and the first completed transaction, calculated separately for buyers and sellers since their paths usually differ. Using the median keeps a handful of very slow outliers from distorting the picture.

Worked example

A platform finds that buyers complete their first transaction in a median of 1.8 days after signup, while sellers take 3.2 days to complete their first sale. That gap tells the team to focus onboarding improvements on the seller side first.

Benchmarks

On-demand B2C marketplaces, like food delivery or ride-sharing, often see same-day to two-day TTFT. B2B services marketplaces commonly run two to seven days. More complex, higher-consideration deals can take weeks, and that is normal as long as the number does not keep stretching over time.

Common mistakes

Using the mean instead of the median, which lets a small number of very slow users distort the number. Blending geographies or verticals with very different buying behavior into one figure. Not separating buyer and seller paths, which hides which side actually needs onboarding help.

How to show it in your pitch deck

On your onboarding or activation slide, show TTFT split by buyer and seller, alongside the biggest funnel drop-off point and what you are doing to fix it. Example line: a time to first transaction of 1.8 days for buyers and 3.2 days for sellers, after the new onboarding flow.

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