Product Adoption: Tips and Best Practices for your SaaS

Nowadays, a successful product is one that your users need every single day. It’s not enough for customers to simply sign up anymore – they need to use it daily to truly consider it a successful product.

This is what we call product adoption: it’s the process that your customers go through, from being aware of your product all the way to having it become a part of their everyday life. But how exactly does product adoption work? How can you measure it? And, most importantly, how can you increase it? Read on to find out, including:

• What is Product Adoption?
• Factors that influence Product Adoption
• How to Measure Product Adoption
• How to Improve Product Adoption
• Increase your SaaS (Software-as-a-Service) Product Adoption!

Ready? Let’s dive in!

What is Product Adoption?

Product adoption happens when your users literally ‘adopt’ your product into their daily lives. The process measures the progress of a user becoming aware of your product, learning its value, all the way to using it regularly. It’s that one step further than just reaching your target customers; when done right, product adoption turns trying customers into paying customers. And it plays a super important role in customer health, acquisition, and successful growth.

Don’t forget about your existing customers, either! They also need product adoption to new updates or changes. So, when releasing new features or product changes, you can ensure they remain loyal users by keeping them in the loop through email newsletters, video tutorials, or update guides.

Factors that influence Product Adoption

There are four factors that may make a customer stop using a product and decide to try a new one:

• The push-away: Show your future customers that you can do what others can’t. Point out their flaws, and highlight how your product takes care of those exact problems. This will encourage customers to check your product out.
• The pull effect: Make your product as appealing as you can so customers get value from the start. Simplify the process of onboarding with case studies, demos, and tutorials.
• The anxiety: Switching products is a risk, so reassure them with free trials and onboarding periods where they see the value you offer quickly. The faster they get their ‘aha moment,’ the better!
• The inertia: Word of mouth is real – it’s common for people to choose a product because their friends use it, too. Keep this in mind when marketing your product to future customers. Enhance all the features that make you different, and prove why they should choose you over what their community recommends.

How to Measure Product Adoption

Okay, so you know why product adoption is important and the forces that influence customers – now let’s see how you can measure it to get the most out of it. There are three important metrics you should consider:

1. Adoption Rate

The adoption rate is the percentage of new users you acquired in relation to all your users. You can get this number with the following formula:

The # of new users

                             ————— X 100

The # of total users

If you have 50 new users and a total of 100 users, your adoption rate will be 50%. You can calculate it for products or specific features on a weekly, monthly, or yearly basis.

2. Time to Value

Time to value (TTV) is a metric that measures the time customers take to fall in love with your product (when their ‘aha moment’ happens). They start to understand the purpose of your product, which will allow you to gather the percentage of users who perform core actions for the first time and how fast they did it. Basically, the quicker the time to value, the more likely your users love what you’re offering! A low TTV = higher product adoption.

3. Time-to-first Action

The time-to-first key action is the time new customers take using an existing feature of your product. It’s super helpful when understanding if your onboarding process works or what step is taking particularly long. If your users aren’t regularly using a certain feature, then maybe you don’t need it! Fast time-to-first action means higher product adoption.

How to Improve Product Adoption

So, you know how to measure your product adoption, but maybe you find there’s room for improvement. Not to fear! There are many ways you can improve product adoption. Here are the most useful ones:

1. Improve your Product Onboarding

Customers want one thing: to start seeing the benefits of using your product as soon as possible. So help them reach their goals quickly by improving your product onboarding.

2. Provide top-notch Support

In today’s frenetic pace of consumption, customers appreciate when they’re taken care of. So make your customer support as helpful and accessible as possible – that way, when they ask for help, you’ll be able to respond to them right away. Start by:

• Creating short demo videos that provide relevant information
• Implementing a chat widget that will answer your users’ more pressing questions
• Having a knowledge base that both your team and users can access to solve doubts

A great way to optimize customer support is by making sure you centralize your communications. You can manage customer issues quickly and easily, creating a more proactive customer support system. You’ll be providing the answers way before your customers have questions!

3. Engage with your users

Keep in mind that sometimes users will need a little push to start paying attention to certain features of your product. So, start engaging with them with in-app messages and a good knowledge base that will allow them to fully understand how to use your product.

You can engage your users with email flows, in-app messages, and dynamic live chats that will guide them to the right agent to solve their issues.

4. Improving your product

Your existing customers are the key to any product improvements. Listen to their feedback by providing customer surveys, and use the data you gather to focus on the areas of your product that need the most improvement.

Increase your SaaS Product Adoption!

Successful product adoption happens when your customers leave their comfort zone to try something new. Although it may seem daunting, there are some key methods you can adopt in your strategy to turn potential customers into brand ambassadors who will use your product every day.

You can achieve increased product adoption by improving your onboarding process, having top-notch customer support, constant engagement with your users, and an incredible product that will support all of it. Before you know it, you’ll see those new customers flooding in!