What is product adoption? This question will be answered in this article, we’ll explain everything you need to know about this important process. We’ll discuss factors that influence consumers’ decisions to use or purchase new products, and explore how products may continue to evolve over time once they’ve been adopted.
Product adoption is the process of using or incorporating a product into daily life.
So, what is product adoption? It’s when people discover your product or app, and then start using it to achieve their goals. Adoption is usually a process that takes place over a time period during which the user is activated and retained.
This makes it a better predictor for long-term product metrics like LTV, ARR or retention than acquisition rate. Although you can acquire thousands of customers, if they keep the status quo and don’t use the product, it won’t help you achieve your long-term goals.
What is product adoption? And what factors should be considered when measuring it?
To determine if you can improve adoption, you need to measure it. How users find and engage new features.
How much time and how often users spend on your product throughout their lives. If you don’t understand the underlying factors that influence product adoption, it will be difficult to improve your product’s features or increase its adoption rate. A tech stack that can track user behavior, and pipe it to other systems is essential. This will allow your product team and customers to test and improve your products.
An analytics solution should be included in the stack to allow you to identify which behaviors are related with adoption. This is the goal of the design process. While useful and usable products are important considerations in product design, it’s not all about creating products that are practical and useful. It’s all about creating products that people will use.
Adoption is when people are encouraged to use a product. This is what determines the product’s success. Product adoption is the responsibility of each user. There are many customers that you can reach, each with its own values.
There are five basic types of adopters: innovators, early majority, late majority and laggards. The early adopters and innovators are the first to show interest in the new product.
Laggards are those who resist change the most, while last ones embrace any innovation or change in their lives.
Metrics that measure product adoption success
Companies often measure the success of customers using a product to help them achieve their goals. It can be difficult to determine what constitutes adoption. However, the “adoption event”, which is the best indicator that a user is gaining value from the product, is generally the one that is most important. Although it is tempting to use pageviews as a measure of adoption, these metrics don’t always show whether a user is receiving value from your product.
An easier way to measure adoption is to track how many people use your product. This number is a reliable indicator of ongoing usage and retention. You might track, for example, how often people upload documents, request signatures and add team members to HelloSign.
You can track all these actions to determine which one correlates with retention or LTV.
Probably the most important thing to do when you are defining your product adoption metrics is to track the following:
You’ll need to track these things as you establish product adoption metrics.
-Conversion rate starting at signup and ending with the first key action
-Time to value (TTV) is the time it takes for a major activation to take place.
How closely does this correlate with feature adoption and frequency of use?
-Frequency to purchase
These patterns can be compared to cohorts with high retention to see which adoption behaviors are most predictive of retention.
Why product adoption is crucial for your business
So, it’s important to focus on getting users to adopt your product as soon as possible. Why is that? Well, adoption impacts nearly every key growth metric, like customer lifetime value (CLV), average MRR per user, and churn.
In fact, the higher your product adoption rate, the larger your user base will be. Click To Tweet
This makes adoption a top priority for product managers (even more than retention). Understand which actions provide new users value and get them to repeat them soon after the acquisition, and you’ll be well on your way to meeting your adoption goals.
A slight increase in product acceptance can make a huge difference
It is important to get your product adopted by more people. Users who are successful from the beginning increase their value and accumulate over a longer period of time. High product adoption rates means that people who discover your product are more likely stay with it for longer periods of time, spend more, and generate predictable revenue growth.
However, these benefits can only be realized if companies invest in the technology that drives them.
How to turn prospects into users
It is important that your product is easily adopted by users. This requires that you design with adoption in mind and work with marketing to ensure that the product is ready for use.
The Pre-Design Phase
User research can help you understand the needs of your customers. Market research can help you determine if there is enough demand for your product. Market research can help you understand how potential customers learn about new offerings, and where marketing interventions are most effective in educating or introducing users.
Market research can also give you an idea about the costs associated with creating awareness for a product so that you can budget accordingly. It can also help you plan a strategy to encourage adoption among your target audience. If you are thinking about designing a new product, do your market research first!
The Design Phase
Designers must ensure that they release a product that is both usable and useful. The product should be designed with the user in mind. A product that is attractive is better than one that is only useful and usable. This is why it is important to conduct user research for both the design and testing of the designs.
Marketers should work with the design team during this phase to communicate information about the product development to the user base and prepare for launch. Marketing during this phase should not create insatiable demand nor unrealistic expectations, but build interest in anticipation of release. These are the key activities:
Make sure your product’s web presence and social media are up-to-date
Make sure you have a list media resources and journalists who could be persuaded to deliver announcements or reviews about your product.
You can build a list of influencers (those who have a large impact on your user community), and reach out to them early so they can share information & insights about your product.
Establish a list industry analysts who might be interested in your new offering from an analytical perspective. Develop clear marketing messages that explain how users will benefit by using it
You should prepare any materials, such as flyers, brochures, and adverts, before launch day. If possible, book any media space in advance. Final tip: Create a prelaunch “teaser” campaign. Make sure you have a date fixed.
How product analytics can be used to measure and improve adoption
Product analytics can be used for measuring and improving adoption by identifying the behaviors most likely to predict long-term value. Platforms such as Heap monitor user behavior on your website or product and provide insights that can be used to improve your product adoption strategy.
Product improvements that increase adoption
Armed with product analytics and a clear understanding about product adoption for your team, you can start to test improvements to user experience. This will make it easier for new users get oriented quickly and help them find value.
You can also test product design improvements. This makes it easier for new users to find key features and complete key actions that will drive adoption. In-product messaging and tutorials are a great way to provide clear guidance for users as they use your product.
Customer success workflows must be established to ensure that adoption issues are quickly addressed. The product team can also use behavioral data to plan improvements to their website and platform based on customer behavior.
It is vital to automatically track all events
Heap’s auto capture feature makes it easy for users to keep track of all interactions and behaviors. This allows product teams and managers to quickly see the big picture and start iterating on new functionality and features that may drive adoption.
The perfect stack to increase product adoption
Heap’s product analysis platform can be integrated with other business applications to give you a complete picture of how users interact with your product. You can track data and test hypotheses seamlessly between systems, so you can use it for marketing, sales, testing, customer success, and other decisions. Our APIs and pre-built Integrations make it easy for data to be shared across multiple apps.
Marketing automation software
HubSpot and Marketo are marketing automation platforms that can help you target customers with product-related campaigns, onboarding flow, and tips on how to use your solution. These campaigns encourage users to read and act on the messages, which increases both feature and product adoption rates.
Conclusion
What is product adoption? It’s the process of using or incorporating a product into daily life. Factors that influence this decision include perceived risks and benefits, social influences, compatibility with current lifestyles and needs, trialability, and observability (i.e., how easy it is for others to see you using the product).
Once adopted, products may continue to evolve through feedback from users which leads to changes in design or functionality over time.
