Your key performance indicator for attaining customer success will be product adoption. In order to decrease churn and boost retention, you must keep track of it constantly. Use product adoption metrics to quantify how much value your clients are getting from your solution. User retention rates and lifetime value will rise if they are significantly benefiting from the service. Expect turnover to soar and revenues to plummet if customers are receiving very little value.
You won’t find a foolproof method to increase overall product adoption by searching for “product adoption measures” (though it would be nice if this were the case). Selecting just one statistic, such as “I want to increase new user adoption,” can prevent you from identifying additional issues. You risk dispersing your efforts if you concentrate on everything, and you are not likely going to get the outcomes you want.
Instead, you should evaluate your own business strategy, decide which product adoption metrics or KPIs are most pertinent, and then establish benchmarks in light of the results.
Additional Resource: A deeper dive into product adoption
Understanding the who, what, when, and how of product adoption
When a consumer experiences an “aha moment” along the customer journey, product adoption takes place. Until they recognize the value of your product, people won’t utilize it repeatedly. But how can you convey that value to users? You may encourage more “aha” moments in the future if you increase product adoption by learning the specifics of the process—who is adopting, what features they appreciate, etc.
Adoption of a product involves much more than just determining whether it is being used. It’s crucial to comprehend the big picture before delving into individual product adoption measures.
- Find out the appropriate usage frequency for your product, such as how frequently customers must use it over the course of a given period of time for it to be worthwhile. Then take a look at all of your users and divide them into Daily Active Users (DAUs), Weekly Active Users (WAUs), and Monthly Active Users (MAUs). Keep track of the number of users who use your optimum frequency and the number who don’t.
- Users’ inability to live without useful features is frequently the cause of high product adoption. By finding the features that have the most traction, you can determine which ones are encouraging adoption and which ones aren’t. Even though a sizable portion of your customers may be DAUs, some of them could not be making use of a crucial feature. Additionally, a shallow level of adoption may be indicated if consumers only interact with one feature (out of many).
- When it comes to the adoption of a product, timing is important. Users might choose another product if they take too long to realize the value. This may also be true if people wait too long to accept a new feature that you’ve launched because they’re losing out on the chance to get more use out of your product. If a user “can’t figure things out,” it may also be a sign of their displeasure (which may be brought on by UI/UX problems).
- Users may immediately accept a product (a great onboarding experience can help!) but eventually get disinterested in it. The duration reveals if users continue to find value when the novelty wears off.
Low levels of product adoption may indicate that your product requires an update or that customers favor newly released rival items. Users will probably churn over time if the duration of adoption is poor and you are unable to enhance it.
5 Product Adoption Metrics To Keep Track of
Conversion Rate
Conversion rate measures how many individuals “look at” versus “starting using” your product. Depending on how you define a conversion, your “total visitors” may include everyone who registers for a free trial, clicks on an advertisement, or fills out a form, as opposed to only those who make a purchase.
The conversion rate, for instance, provides information about the breadth of adoption and time to value if you provide free trials. Within a predetermined period of time, you can observe who has used the product. Low conversion rates indicate that people aren’t seeing value or that it takes too long for them to do so.
Suggested Read: 7 SaaS Customer Success Metrics You Can’t Do Without
Usage Counter
Usage counters can help you learn how frequently your customer uses the product. This could signify how many files are uploaded to it in a certain time period. It could also refer to the volume of file uploads during a particular day, week, or month.
Using this metric you can monitor any type of engagement that your product generates. Utilization counters demonstrate the true benefit users derive from your offering.
Measures of Activation
Activation metrics are a different pack of data you may use to gain an understanding of how a customer adopts your product. These will gauge activation or the utilization of the capabilities of your product. For instance, you can determine how much available space a user’s account has for uploading files.
Learn about some common product challenges that plague B2B SaaS!
Ratios of Use
Usage ratios are quite helpful in determining whether your product is benefiting your user base as a whole. Daily Active Users/Monthly Active Users, or DAU/MAU, is the utilization ratio that is most frequently utilized.
DAU/MAU is a ratio that counts both daily active users and concurrent active users. It will display user retention rates for you.
Time Windows
You may own a product that intends for daily usage. Alternately, it can be used less frequently or more frequently at particular seasons of the year. As a result, you might need to change the time windows, perhaps by the day, week, month, or year. The time window should match the usage that your product sees.
Time Windows also should account for the product milestones a user/account is achieving. Having a good map of the product usage journey along with the milestones for intended success is a handy arsenal in your product adoption workbook. This is one of the critical product adoption metrics you can track for your business.
Takeaway
Measuring product adoption in isolation won’t make your product successful overnight. However, it frequently provides enough insight into potential places of friction to enable you to optimize and boost utilization.
Try out our boosting product adoption guide. Or you can get rid of a feature when you find out it doesn’t meet user expectations. In any case, be honest about what you need o improve so you can concentrate on creating the features that will keep users enamored with your product.
