You are a product growth analyst at a digital subscription platform for music creators with 4 million monthly active users and a paid plan priced at $12.99 per month. New user acquisition is healthy at 320,000 sign-ups per month, but only 38% of new users complete onboarding and just 11% start a trial; among those who do activate, 8-week retention is 42%, down from 48% a year ago as lower-cost competitors improve discovery and workflow features. Leadership has budget for one major growth initiative this half: improving onboarding could raise onboarding completion from 38% to 50% and trial starts from 11% to 15%, while improving retention could raise 8-week retention from 42% to 50% for activated users and increase paid subscriber lifetime from 9 to 11 months. Engineering estimates both paths require similar effort and would delay the other by at least two quarters.
Which initiative would you prioritize and why? Walk through how you would size the impact, account for strategic trade-offs, and decide what the company should do first.