Getting users to migrate to a new product can be like herding cats. Your product might be better with more features and an improved design, but people love what they know. Comfort with the status quo can be the hardest hurdle to overcome with new product launches.

That’s why you need a user adoption strategy ASAP.

What is user adoption?

User adoption refers to the end result of the journey to your target audience embracing your new product, service, or technology.

Its focus is on the long-term, as it involves getting your customer to integrate a new tool or experience into their day-to-day, ultimately driving long-term engagement and success.

A high user adoption rate signifies that most users not only adopted the new software but also found value in it, leading to increased usage and a positive experience.

Conversely, low user adoption indicates that users need help understanding, engaging with, or seeing the benefits of the software, potentially leading to churn or dissatisfaction.

Why is user adoption important?

A high user adoption rate directly impacts the success of a product or service. Here are some of the areas a higher user adoption affects:

• Better return on investment (ROI): A high user adoption rate ensures that businesses see a return on their investment in a product or service. When users effectively integrate a new tool into their workflows and find value in it, they are more likely to continue using it and generate revenue for the company.
• Reduced churn: Low user adoption rates often correlate with poor retention and increased churn, as users who need help understanding or engaging with a product are likelier to abandon it. Companies can minimize churn and retain their customers by focusing on user adoption.
• Increased customer satisfaction: A seamless onboarding experience and effective user adoption increase customer satisfaction. Satisfied customers are more likely to become long-term users and get better buy-in from potential new customers.
• Competitive advantage: Strong user adoption rates can set a company apart from its competitors in highly competitive markets (for example, among SaaS companies). By offering a product that users find valuable, easy to use, and well-supported.
• Data-driven decision-making: High user adoption rates provide businesses with valuable data about how new and existing customers use their product, popular features, and areas of improvement. This data allows companies to make informed decisions about product development and refine their offerings to better meet user needs.

Our 2022 benchmark report found that a higher adoption rate often correlates with a bigger team (50+ people) – small businesses may not always have the resources to invest in onboarding and other key activation tasks. 

However, successful user adoption is influenced by more than team size – user experience design, great customer support, and high average contract value (ACV) are just some of several.

As a result, businesses must proactively approach user adoption success, monitoring user engagement and addressing any issues that may arise.

3 steps to creating an effective user adoption strategy

A user adoption strategy is your plan for getting people hooked on your product from Day 1. The key is understanding what makes your individual users unique. Users are not a monolith — they are fearless feature testers, curmudgeonly habit-followers, aloof executives, and everyone in between. 

A good user adoption strategy finds a way to reach all these people, educating them on your product and convincing them that they need it.

Put in place a user adoption strategy based on trackable goals so every team member—no matter who they are—can see the value of your product and learn how to use it to drive product adoption from the get-go. Here’s how.

1. Determine your user adoption end goal

A good strategy starts with a clear idea of what success means to you. This objective isn't a feel-good, everyone-gets-a-participation-medal sort of thing. You need to nail down a robust, trackable goal for your adoption strategy, so you can gauge how well your strategy is working. 

For example, your goal could be:

1. x% of users still use the product regularly after 2 months
2. x% of users try out 3 of the 5 main features after onboarding
3. x% of users complete the onboarding and setup process

Your goal should tie into getting your users to their ”aha” moment—the point where the light bulb turns on in their heads, and they understand what this product can help them achieve.

So if you believe that users will have their aha moment after they use your program for a few months and start to see results, a goal like our first example might be the one for you. On the other hand, if you know your product will click for them right away, then your focus needs to be on getting users through product onboarding. Goal #3 is likely more your speed.

It’s important to remember that you might be wrong about your end goal (shocking, we know), but you can always come back and realign on your objective. Your user adoption strategy will forever be a work in progress. The important thing, for now, is getting started.

2. Understand how you’ll track your goal

Track progress toward your objective by measuring individual metrics and using analytics tools. In terms of metrics, choose the ones that capture the activity that drives your goal.

Consider the examples from Step 1:

Goal

1. x% of users still use the product regularly after 2 months
2. x% of users try out 3 of the 5 main features after onboarding
3. x% of users complete the onboarding and setup process

Metric

1. The average number of logins a week after 2 months
2. Percentage of users who trigger 3 events tied to your five main features
3. Onboarding and setup completion rate

Other metrics you might track include time on page, conversion rate, clicks, signups, and downloads.

Once you’ve identified the metrics you’ll track, you’ll need a platform for measuring these KPIs, so you can draw conclusions from the data. Some of the most useful tools to track your metrics and pull insights from are event analytics, flow analytics, and segmentation platforms.

• Event analytics tools can help you understand what leads to a predefined event being triggered on your app or program. For instance, you could use event triggering to tell you how often users click on the “contact customer service” button on your platform. The data you collect could then be used to understand what pages, features, or circumstances are most likely to lead to people needing help. These insights could direct you to problematic areas in your UX that could be fixed in future updates.
• Flow analytics tools monitor how well your onboarding process works for users—whether that’s a series of tooltips or a video—so you can smooth out friction points, and users can easily start using your product.
• Segmentation tools help you divide up your user base into different chunks based on demographics. Segmentation will complement your event and flow analytics because you’ll get insights into how different groups are adapting to your platform. If you’re only looking at data as an average across all users, you might not see how one group is being left behind.

With these tools, you can collect more than surface-level data about your chosen KPIs. This way, when it comes time to analyze how well you’ve done with your goal, you can do more than just tell if you’ve passed or failed. 

The more you know about your users and how they interact with your product, the more you can understand why you did or didn’t reach your goals—making it easier to tweak your adoption strategy for maximum results.

3. Learn from the results

So after patiently waiting for enough data to roll in so you can draw meaningful conclusions from your goals, it’s time to see how you did.

Start by looking at your goal at the most basic level. Did you achieve it or not? If yes, then great, let’s figure out why, so we can improve even more. If no, why not? What can we learn from our mistakes to improve our user adoption strategy?

That brings us to the next step: digging into the details. Regardless of whether you hit your goal, you’re going to want to understand the whys behind the result more than the result itself. Be on the lookout for friction points—places where users are struggling—so you know where to direct your optimizing efforts.

 3 common user adoption challenges

Digging deeper into the data can be easier said than done. So, let’s look at some hypotheticals based on our previous examples to see how you can find the questions you need to ask if you want to supercharge your user adoption strategy.

Potential friction point 1: User frequency drop off

Your goal was to have 50% of new users still using your product at least 3 times a week after 2 months. Your events analytics tool shows that login rates begin to drop after Week 2 for 70% of people, and only 40% of users stabilize to 3 times a week by the end of the 2 months. You’ll want to ask yourself:

• Why do login rates drop after Week 2?
• Who makes up the 40% who stabilize? What makes them stay?
• Who makes up the 60% who don’t reach an average of 3 logins? What features bring them back when they do log on?

Potential friction point 2: Some features are being underused

Your goal was to have 80% of users using 3 out of your 5 main features at least once in the month after onboarding. You completed your goal, but when you look closer, you see that 90% of people aren’t using one of the features. You’ll want to ask yourself:

• Could the onboarding flow do more to showcase this feature?
• How many people try to use the feature and give up partway? Why?
• Who is using this feature? Could it be promoted to other people in their segment?

Potential friction point 3: Low onboarding completion rate

Your goal was to have 50% of your users complete the onboarding process, but the completion rate was only 40%. You’ll want to ask yourself:

• Where did people drop off in the customer journey?
• Could the onboarding process be streamlined or more explanatory?
• Are there certain segments more likely to take longer or who are more likely to drop off altogether?

It might seem silly to sit there asking yourself questions (it helps to not do it aloud in the office), but these questions will be the basis for continuing to improve your user adoption strategy. 

Take your questions and then do your best to answer them based on your data. Once you have a reasonable, data-supported hypothesis, use A/B testing to see if you’re right.

If the data shows a significant number of users give up partway through using one of your awesome features, you could presume the problem lies in your training. You could then go back, revamp that section’s training flow, and A/B test the changes. 

If you see improvement, you’re on the right track to improving user adoption of your product; if not, head back to the drawing board to try again.

📚 Suggested reading: Improve user adoption: Understanding how to remove friction

4 tactics to improve user adoption

Segment your onboarding flows and in-app guidance

Creating personalized user onboarding experiences tailored to different user segments is essential to improve adoption. By segmenting your onboarding flows and in-app guidance, you can address each user group's unique needs and goals.

• Identify user personas: Define your target audience by creating user personas, which represent different types of users based on their job roles, goals, and pain points.
• Customize onboarding flows: Create onboarding flows that cater to each user persona's specific needs and preferences, ensuring that relevant content is presented to users during their initial experience with your product.
• Adjust in-app guidance: Provide contextual, persona-based guidance within your app to help users navigate the platform and achieve their desired outcomes.

Showcase your most critical features in your product tour

Highlighting your product's most valuable and essential features during the initial product tour can drive user adoption by demonstrating its immediate value.

• Identify key features: Determine the ones most critical to user success and satisfaction by analyzing usage data and gathering user feedback. You can gather this data more easily by integrating onboarding surveys for first time users. If you think your users are missing out on specific useful features, point it out to them like Chorus does.
• Design an engaging product tour: Create a tour that showcases your key features, explaining their benefits and how they address user pain points. 
• Offer hands-on experiences: Allow users to interact with your key features during the walkthrough, providing a hands-on learning experience that encourages engagement and adoption. You can ensure users have at least engaged with each feature by integrating checklists into your onboarding.

Provide users with in-app on-demand help content 

Making help content easily accessible within your app can ensure customer success, as it allows users to find the information they need to overcome challenges they might run into while using your product.

• Create a comprehensive knowledge base: Develop a robust library of help articles, tutorials, and videos that cover various aspects of your product and address common user questions.
• Implement in-app help: Integrate your knowledge base within your app, allowing users to access help content without leaving the platform. Consider using chatbots to offer help – Appcues’ partnership with Drift allows companies to provide support directly from a bot conversation.

• Use contextual help: Provide context-sensitive help content based on the user's current actions, guiding them through the process and offering support where needed. Github does a great job of this with tooltips that provide context and related help content for users to access if they need to.

Gather user feedback where there’s friction

Collecting feedback at points of friction can help you identify areas for improvement and enhance the overall user experience, ultimately driving user adoption.

• Monitor user behavior: Use analytics tools to track user behavior and identify friction points, such as high bounce rates, abandoned tasks, or low feature engagement.
• Implement feedback mechanisms: Integrate feedback collection tools, such as in-app surveys or prompts, at friction points to gather insights into challenges and frustrations within the user journey.
• Act on feedback: Analyze user feedback to identify patterns and prioritize improvements to your product, addressing areas of friction and enhancing the user experience. Regularly communicate updates and changes to users to demonstrate your commitment to their success.

Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs) about user adoption

What are the user adoption metrics I should be watching?

Like the strategy section highlighted, the end goal of user adoption is different for business. However, there are some common user adoption metrics you can keep an eye on to determine how successful your strategy is:

• Conversion rate
• Adoption rate
• Time to value (time to adopt)
• Activation rate
• Usage frequency
• Churn rate
• Customer lifetime value
• Average session duration
• Upsell rate
• Net promoter score (NPS)

Read more about adoption metrics here: 12 product adoption metrics to track for success

What is user adoption vs. acquisition?

User adoption refers to users embracing, accepting, and effectively using a new product or service, integrating it into their daily routines. It involves ensuring long-term engagement and satisfaction. In contrast, user acquisition focuses on attracting new users to a product or service through marketing efforts, promotions, and other outreach strategies. 

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While acquisition is the initial step to gaining users, adoption emphasizes retaining those users and ensuring they find value and continued success with the product, ultimately impacting customer satisfaction, loyalty, and a company's overall success.

What are the phases of user adoption?

User adoption happens in five milestones ranging from evaluation to advocacy.

1. solutions. They are open to new technology that will enhance their quality of life.
2. Activation: Users likely know nothing about how your product works but will allow you to impress them. The user onboarding process is your time to shine at this stage. They will likely sign up for a free trial or demo to test it out.
3. Adoption: This is the stage where users are done with onboarding and comfortable using your product. This is the most critical phase of the user adoption process, as you need to boost engagement.
4. Expansion: Users in the expansion stage are finding new ways that your product makes their lives and jobs easier. They are ready to be upsold on new features or pricing tiers.
5. Advocacy: At this stage, users become disciples of your business, telling everyone that will listen about your product. By providing the best user experience, you’ve earned their loyalty.

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For in-depth detail about the phases of user adoption: The 5 stages of product adoption for product-led growth

A user adoption strategy is never perfect

The perfect user adoption strategy doesn’t exist, but that doesn’t mean you shouldn't shoot for one. By continually creating goals, measuring results, asking questions, and testing new hypotheses, you'll build a user adoption strategy that works for your product and your user base. The trick is to accept that there's always more work to be done. So keep on pluggin’ away—and enjoy seeing your users learn to love your product the way you do.

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