Product Adoption: Help users love your products more

Congratulations! On your new product launch. Things are taking off! You have hundreds - or maybe thousands of active users, tons of engagement and the numbers are rising.

Now that’s plenty of reasons to celebrate.

While some teams might be complacent with this inaugural success, it’s too early to take your foot off the gas yet!

Businesses that are committed to realizing long-term benefits for their users will never stop looking for ways to improve customer retention thereby reducing churn. But there’s no quick once-and-done fixes.

Now! Let’s flip the switch….

When entrepreneurs introduce new products to the market, their passion and conviction in their ideas often lead them to assume that every potential customer will see the immediate need and value and quickly adopt their solution.

That’s great!

But in reality, helping customers get over the learning curve is a challenge.

Additionally, any “big bang” story will tell you that just as quickly as opportunities appear, so does the competition, followed by greater customer expectations. Your potential customers are reasonably comfortable holding on to your alternative in the market, a product they know and use. Thanks to the “Endowment Effect”!

So, how and when do you get your target customers to switch to your product or convince your current customers from dropping off???

Thus! Whether you’re all set to launch your first product or roll out your twenty-third feature, grabbing your prospect’s attention and demonstrating value in your product for your users is all that matters. Undoubtedly so.

What is Product Adoption and Why is it important?

Product adoption is the process of creating and spreading awareness about your product and its value proposition to your potential customers, new users, and existing customers. A successful product adoption process is the one that convinces your users from just trying your product to using it frequently and finally adopting it as “the” solution and realizing maximum value out of it, persistently.

Product adoption is the doorway to reaching nearly every business goal that you've set. Reducing churn, retaining customers, increasing revenue, building brand loyalty. All of these depend on how well you get users to adopt your product, by helping them find immense value in your product.

However, getting customers to adopt and invest in your product is easier said than done.

Most businesses are reactive about this approach and tend to act only when they are at risk of losing a customer. And that is neither scalable nor sustainable. That being said, product adoption is an outcome, not a metric.

While your product is just a medium to help your customers resolve something, it is important to proactively understand how effectively you are doing that.

Here are some critical metrics that’ll help us understand what factors influence the adoption outcomes.

1) Time-to-Value (TTV)

Once a customer has made a purchase or signed up for a free trial, the clock starts ticking. You only have limited time to show value before they churn out. None of us (yea, that's me and you included!) wants to or likes to spend a lot of time and effort in setting up and learning a product. All we care about is how quickly the product can make our lives better. And there’s very limited time to prove that! Although the game changes when the customer starts to realise value out of your product. Only the faster that happens, the lesser the churn.

2) Product activation rate

Activation occurs at the first touchpoint of your product where users achieve the value you had guaranteed to them. Before measuring, it is important to set an event or a specific milestone on your application that indicates activation upon completion. Say, installing your browser extension could be an activation metric for instance.

3) New Feature adoption

This metric is a very good indicator of the segment of those users who are most likely to be fully invested in your product by expanding to newer use cases, utilizing all the new features your team has build with love.

4) Product Qualified Leads (PQL)

Users who take specific actions within your product to reach the activation point indicate readiness for the next stage. This might vary from product to product but the common factor is that they are the users who understand the value you deliver and are ready to level up.

5) Customer lifetime value (CLV)

Increasing your product adoption means less churn, which increases customer lifetime value. The latter refers to the customers’ value (in currency) over their total lifespans. A high CLV means your customers stick around for longer.

Some measures to improve adoption

1) Better Onboarding

The onboarding process involves everything you need to get your customer familiar with your product, like product walkthroughs, checklists, supporting guides, knowledge bases, customer support, etc. Personalizing this experience is a great way to establish an initial connection with your customers.

2) User training programs

Customers who understand how a product works will reach value sooner, and 70% of them say they consider this an important factor in choosing a solution. Introducing customer training academies is an effective, self-serve method to improve learner outcomes and thereby increase adoption and brand awareness.

3) In-app guides and nudges for key features

Customers don’t use what they don’t understand. It is important to send out timely, personalized nudges to customers to educate and show the value of a feature or solution.

4) Shifting in go-to-market strategy to PLG

Product-led growth (or the PLG model) is all about the end-user, who can get into the product right away to experience it's real value, without having to jump through all the bells and whistles. It’s about helping the human behind a user to try a product, love it, share it and come back for more.

There’s no one-size-fits-all when it comes to product adoption. It is an ongoing process that the entire team has to work together on. Understanding your customers and their changing needs at every stage of the product’s lifecycle is the common denominator for all businesses to nail product adoption.

The following series of articles is an attempt to synthesize various established frameworks from reputable strategists and businesses to present a comprehensive, holistic look at Product Adoption and what role Trainn can play in each of those lifecycle stages.

Meanwhile, here’s Trainn to help you with your product adoption, onboarding, and training needs. Check it out!