Are you looking for tips on how to drive user adoption in your business? If so, read on! In this article, we’ll discuss five essential steps that will help you get your users on board with your product or service.

How to Drive User Adoption: Proven Strategies to Drive Product Adoption

Onboarding, also known as user adoption, refers to the process by which new users adopt a product or service and then commit to using it. They have abandoned their old product and are now actively looking for a better system to help them achieve their goals.

Companies that know how to drive user adoption usually have high user adoption rates and are more likely to have users adopt the product than leave it. A company with low user adoption rates indicates that users are adopting the product for a short term, and then abandoning it.

How can you ensure that more users stick with your product instead of abandoning it after signing up?

Below are the best customer engagement strategies to drive product adoption from the moment a user registers for your product. ).

• Make onboarding a continuous effort.

• Go beyond UI design patterns.

• Identify your activation criteria.

• Organise your efforts around areas that add business value.
• Retention can be used as a tool for proactivity.
• Ring-fence the onboarding period.
• As you grow, don’t work in silos for onboarding.

#1 – Make onboarding a continuous process

Don’t assume that just because users signed up for your product, means they will stay forever. This is not true. They’re most likely testing several of your largest competitors to find the one they like best.

It is crucial to scale your SaaS business and onboarding should not end with sign-up. User adoption should be considered a continuous process.

What does it mean to be continuous?

Your onboarding process should not stagnate. This is not the right place to try to make it all work. As your company grows, so must your initial onboarding process.

User onboarding is a continuous process that never ends. It is something you will never stop working towards. This is because your company and everything associated with it are constantly changing. Continuous onboarding is also essential. This is also true for existing users.

 

Take a look at this diagram…

Do you see that user onboarding must be continuous? It’s like a continuous cycle that must be maintained!

#2: Go beyond UI design patterns

Understanding that product onboarding is more than just UI design patterns is one of the best ways to encourage user adoption.

Any SaaS user who is successful in onboarding customers must have three core competencies:

Contextual

Each of these core competencies must be considered in the context of user adoption. You must provide the best content possible. You must provide the highest quality content possible.

All of this content is great. What happens if a user needs help while using your product? Is it realistic to expect them to search through your help center? Most likely not.

What’s the solution?

It is important to provide context-sensitive support for users. This means that you must provide contextual content at a particular time and place.

Contextual Communication

There is only one rule for contextual communication.

It must be the right message at just the right time and place.

Let’s say a new user has just signed up for your product. They want to get started but don’t know how to navigate the app.

This stage of onboarding can be best served by a short orientation video, which appears in-app at just the right moment. To quickly learn about the app, the video can be viewed by users. It is the right message at just the right time, at the right location. This is a great example context communication done well.

 

UI Design patterns

What does a good UI design look like?

Here’s an example.

This is an example of the initial onboarding process for Anchor, the podcast app. Signing up is simple and takes little time. This is exactly what your company needs. People are busy and don’t want to wait for too long to sign up. Allow them to access your product quickly and easily.

 

Anchor provides users with a seamless onboarding experience that is free of friction. This is crucial from the beginning of user onboarding. These are simple and effective user adoption strategies that will help users stay loyal.

#3 – Identify your activation criteria

Next on our list of best user adoption strategies is to locate your activation criteria as soon as possible.

Your activation criteria are things customers do to increase their likelihood of staying with you for the second month (and beyond).

Here are some examples of activation criteria that have been used by well-known companies.

• Anchor Publish your podcast on your initial visit.
• Intercom Install your Messenger, then send your first visitor an auto message in the initial three days.
• Twitter: Follow 30 people and allow 10 of them to follow back.
• Facebook: Friend seven friends in the first ten days.

What do all these activation criteria (or Aha! What do all these activation criteria (or Aha! moments) have in common

They each provide value to the user immediately. These companies are more likely retain customers.

#4 – Organize your efforts around areas that have business value

The C.A.R.E Model can be applied to four areas of business value.

Each of these four areas is simple, but they are very important.

You can use the C.A.R.E Model to ensure the best possible onboarding experience. It includes the three core competencies discussed above (Contextual Content and Contextual Communication) as well as UI Design Patterns.

Below is a simple example of how an end-to-end Onboarding experience might look.

This can be used to guide you in planning the steps and tactics a customer might use. This will help you visualize your onboarding process. It is also one of my favorite user-adoption strategies for planning the onboarding process.

 

The C.A.R.E model is also useful in planning other areas of your company’s structure.

Here are some ideas to use the C.A.R.E Model.

#5 – Use retention as a means of proactivity

The “danger zone”, a key user adoption strategy, is crucial. This is when a user loses enthusiasm for your product. It is a sign that a user is losing interest in your product if they stop logging in. This is the “danger zone”, where users spend less time engaging in your product.

Below is a graph that shows churn rates. Below is a graph showing how customers sign up and return to the product. It’s different from losing a customer.

As you can see, the customer lost started strong but they stopped logging into as often until they finally canceled their membership.

The yellow area in the graph indicates the danger zone. This is the time to improve your user journey. Users must be able to respond to you and re-engage with you so they don’t fall into further danger.

Even better, reach users before you enter the danger zone. This is the best time for you to invest in retention. Your product provides value to users and, ultimately, a reason to stay.

 

#6 – Make the onboarding period ringfenced

It’s tempting to give information about your company and product to a new user when you have locked them down. Don’t do it!

It is important to carefully choose the topics you will talk about to customers, especially during the onboarding period . You don’t have to share every detail with new users. You can lose customers by bombarding new customers with a lot of information and messages, such as everything you ship and new landing pages.

You must drive the behaviors that are important, but only when they’re important.

 

Concentrate on the actions that activate activation and conversion. Rest can wait.

#7 – Avoid working in silos when you grow

Your company and product grow, so your onboarding “to do” list will also grow.

Here are some examples of the user experiences your customers might have when they use and engage with your product.

All the components that you see above are important for the user’s onboarding experience.

As your company grows, you will assign different components or “tasks” to different departments. (See a sample structure below).

As the company grows and expands, communication and collaboration between teams within the company become more difficult. This lack of communication can lead to a lot of chaos if you don’t manage things quickly.

How can you solve this problem. Or, better yet, how can it be avoided altogether?

 

Make an onboarding team!

This team should include people from all departments to ensure a smooth onboarding experience.

Conclusion

These strategies on  how to drive user adoption should be very helpful. They will help teach you how to drive user adoption and create a smooth and successful process that retains more customers with each passing month.