Can I move somebody to another stage by hand?

Not on the lifecycle, and that is deliberate: a stage somebody has to remember to move is a stage that is wrong, and every funnel and churn figure downstream would inherit the mistake. Every other pipeline in Kicklace — deals, or a board of your own — is dragged by hand or moved by an automation as you like.

What if my product has no trial?

Then your workspace has no Trial stage. Trial and Churned are not in a new workspace at all; each is one press under Settings → Pipelines, at the place it belongs, and Remove takes it away again. A trial_started event arriving at a workspace with no Trial stage is recorded on the timeline and moves nobody, with no error.

What happens when a customer cancels?

A cancellation moves somebody from Purchaser or Repeat to Churned, which is the only event in Kicklace that moves anybody backwards. From Trial it moves them to Account instead, because a trial that ended is not a customer who left. And a purchase from Churned takes them back up to Purchaser.

Can I rename the stages?

Yes — rename, recolour, reorder, or add stages of your own, under Settings → Pipelines. A stage's key never changes when it is renamed, so the events, saved views, automations and charts that named it go on meaning the same stage.

Does a funnel count somebody who has already moved past a stage?

Yes. Two chart filters read the ladder rather than where somebody is standing, so reached counts everybody at or past a stage and a purchaser appears in the Subscriber row too. That is what makes a funnel a funnel rather than a snapshot of who happens to be sitting in each column today.

Kicklace, an AI-powered CRM for micro SaaS

SaaS customer lifecycle

Visitor to Subscriber to Account to Activated to Purchaser to Repeat, worked out from what people did rather than typed in by somebody — and the one event that ever moves anyone back down.

A stage is something you did

The customer lifecycle is the one pipeline in Kicklace that nobody moves by hand. A person's stage comes from what they did — a page read, a signup, a paid invoice — so the board is a description of your business rather than a list of what somebody remembered to update.

That is worth being strict about, because everything downstream leans on it. A funnel is only a funnel if the stages mean what they say; a churn figure is only a churn figure if nobody has been dragged into the wrong column. So there is no drag-and-drop on the lifecycle, and there is exactly one event that ever moves anybody backwards.

Two orders, because software is bought two ways

A workspace picks one when it is made, and it is an ordinary pipeline from then on.

A web app or service

They sign up first and do the first real thing after. This is what a new workspace gets unless you say otherwise.

1
Visitor
Seen on the website
2
Subscriber
Gave an email address
3
Account
Created an account
4
Activated
Did the first real thing in the product
5
Purchaser
First purchase
6
Repeat
Bought again

A downloadable app

They try it before there is an account, so Downloader and Activated come before Account.

1
Visitor
Seen on the website
2
Subscriber
Gave an email address
3
Downloader
Downloaded or tried the product
4
Activated
Did the first real thing in the product
5
Account
Created an account
6
Purchaser
First purchase
7
Repeat
Bought again

From then on it is a pipeline like any other: rename a stage, recolour it, move it, or add one of your own under Settings → Pipelines. A stage's key never changes when it is renamed, because that is what events, saved views, automations and charts refer to it by — so the words on your board are yours to choose and nothing breaks when you choose them.

Two stages you switch on

Neither is in a new workspace, because a product with no trial and no subscription should not carry two empty columns.

Trial: For a product people try before they pay. A trial_started event — from Stripe, or posted by your own server — moves them here.
Churned: For a subscription. A cancellation moves a paying customer here, and it is the one thing that moves anybody down the lifecycle; buying again moves them back up.

Each is one press, at the place it belongs, and Remove takes it away again like any other stage. If the people in your workspace already sit in a stage of your own with that key, yours stays and the screen says so: Kicklace never replaces a stage somebody set up.

What counts as activated

The one stage only your product can define.

Activated means “did the first real thing in the product”, and what that is differs in every product, so the product says what it is. The built-in activated event always counts. Beyond it, Settings → Pipelines names any other events that count as well — the ones your own servers post, like project_created or first_invoice_sent — and each one moves the person to Activated the first time it arrives.

A page read is never offered as activation, because everybody who arrives reads one.

The one move down

Everything else in Kicklace depends on stages meaning what they say.

A cancellation is the one exception to forward-only. From Purchaser or Repeat it moves somebody to Churned: they were paying and they stopped, and a board that still showed them as a customer would not be describing anything.

From Trial the same event moves them to Account instead. A trial that ended is not a customer who left — they never paid — and putting them beside the customers who did would make every churn figure wrong.

From anywhere else it moves nobody: somebody who has only ever read a page cannot churn. And it is not the end of the road — a purchase from Churned takes them back up to Purchaser, because somebody who left and came back is a customer again.

What a chart makes of it

Five questions the ladder itself can answer.

A funnel: Two filters read the ladder itself rather than where somebody is standing right now: reached counts everybody at or past a stage, so a purchaser is counted in the Subscriber row as well, which is what makes a funnel a funnel.
A cohort: People grouped by the week or month they were first seen, and the share of each group who reached a stage within 7, 14, 30 and 60 days. A cell whose window has not finished for everybody in its row is drawn faded, so a fortnight that is not over yet does not read as a bad fortnight.
Conversion over time: The share of each period's arrivals who got to a stage, with the median number of days it took beside it.
Which sources end well: The same arithmetic grouped by where people came from, so the question is not which campaign brought the most visitors but which one brought the most customers.
Coming back: How many of each month's customers are still active in the months after it.

The whole of it, event by event: the lifecycle. The chart language: charts. And what fills the stages in: SaaS customer data.

Questions

Can I move somebody to another stage by hand?: Not on the lifecycle, and that is deliberate: a stage somebody has to remember to move is a stage that is wrong, and every funnel and churn figure downstream would inherit the mistake. Every other pipeline in Kicklace — deals, or a board of your own — is dragged by hand or moved by an automation as you like.
What if my product has no trial?: Then your workspace has no Trial stage. Trial and Churned are not in a new workspace at all; each is one press under Settings → Pipelines, at the place it belongs, and Remove takes it away again. A trial_started event arriving at a workspace with no Trial stage is recorded on the timeline and moves nobody, with no error.
How does Kicklace know somebody activated?: Your product tells it. The built-in activated event always counts, and under Settings → Pipelines you can name any other events that count as well — the ones your own servers post, like project_created — each of which moves the person to Activated the first time it arrives. A page read is never offered, because everybody who arrives reads one.
What happens when a customer cancels?: A cancellation moves somebody from Purchaser or Repeat to Churned, which is the only event in Kicklace that moves anybody backwards. From Trial it moves them to Account instead, because a trial that ended is not a customer who left. And a purchase from Churned takes them back up to Purchaser.
Can I rename the stages?: Yes — rename, recolour, reorder, or add stages of your own, under Settings → Pipelines. A stage's key never changes when it is renamed, so the events, saved views, automations and charts that named it go on meaning the same stage.
Does a funnel count somebody who has already moved past a stage?: Yes. Two chart filters read the ladder rather than where somebody is standing, so reached counts everybody at or past a stage and a purchaser appears in the Subscriber row too. That is what makes a funnel a funnel rather than a snapshot of who happens to be sitting in each column today.

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