The second you launch a new feature or a customer signs up for your product, the clock starts ticking.
The faster you can get users to embrace your product, the sooner it will start paying off. That’s what makes product adoption so critical.
However, what many product leaders and managers don’t realize is that there’s a set of tools that can both inform and fast-track your product adoption plan: product analytics.
Here’s how to measure product adoption using product analytics.
What Is Product Adoption?
Product adoption describes how a customer becomes aware of your product, makes purchases within your platform, and uses your tool. Product adoption is foundational for SaaS companies because they need customers to use their products in order to start hauling in revenue. And product adoption is a key piece of product-led growth strategies because it’s one gear that helps churn out higher net dollar retention and more growth.
Why?
Simply put, the sooner your users see your product’s value and the more immersed they become in your product, the more opportunities for new contracts, subscriptions, upgrades, upsells, and cross-sells will open up.
How the Product Adoption Process Works
Unfortunately, securing better product adoption can seem like an impossible task for product leaders and managers. And it can be extremely difficult if you try tackling the challenges of product adoption blind without product analytics. This approach leaves you fumbling around in the dark, making guesses about your users, and conducting moves with little evidence to back your decision.
That’s why in-product analytics are so critical to product adoption progress. By digging into product analytics, you can identify who is picking up your product or features and who isn’t. Better yet, you can see the user’s biggest friction points, eliminate those barriers blocking their path to higher adoption, and measure the results. That iterative process makes it easier to understand your users, deliver faster value, and prove ROI.
How To Measure Product Adoption
The best product-led growth strategies use metrics to shine a light on problems and reveal the best route to stronger adoption. Here are a few ways you can actively measure and improve product adoption:
Lean on behavioral analytics.
With behavioral analytics such as path analysis, you can see what steps users are taking as they move through your product. So if you identify users who aren’t adopting your product or a feature the way you want them to, these tools show you what’s stopping them. With that clear visual in front of you, you can then work to wipe out those friction points and push your users onward.
Build customer feedback loops.
Customer feedback loops are in-product processes you embed in your user’s journey. These processes gather feedback from your users through assets such as surveys or chats. Next, they allow you to analyze the feedback and make adjustments to improve the user’s experience. Finally, you can test the results of your moves. From there, you rinse and repeat, ultimately polishing the user’s experience and boosting adoption.
Sway users with engagement tools.
To drive adoption higher, you can drop in-app engagements, checklists, guides, or other support points into your user’s experience at strategic moments. For instance, if you notice a group of new users isn’t latching onto a new feature fast enough, it may be a smart move to throw in an engagement at a high friction point. That extra push or educational piece could be the perfect way to nudge them forward.
Metrics You Can Use To Measure Product Adoption
Once you’ve set up the scaffolding to support your product adoption plan, you can use metrics and KPIs to build toward even stronger engagement. Here are a few important product adoption metrics to include in your product-led growth strategy:
- Deployment levels will tell you how many users have activated a product, feature, or subscription that they have access to. Some examples of deployment could include activating things such as licenses, enabled features, or training completions. By watching your deployment levels, you’ll know who is—and who isn’t—using the perks that they’re meant to enjoy.
- Time to value (TTV) will tell you how fast your users are discovering value from your product. It’s a critical metric to watch and improve because the sooner your user realizes your product or feature is valuable, the faster you’ll start seeing ROI streaming into the company.
- Active users per total users will show you what percentage of your users are accessing your product or features. If your users aren’t logging in, it’s probably a strong sign that you need to craft a plan to up your product adoption levels.
- Breadth of adoption digs into your active users and shows you how often they’re accessing the features they need to use to squeeze high value out of your product. It’s not just important to have users activate your product or features. Product growth also hinges on breadth of adoption. For example, if you have sticky features you want users to enjoy, breadth of adoption will help you understand how users are accessing those value drivers.
Start Unlocking Product-Led Success
There’s no doubt that product adoption is an important part of your product-led growth plan. However, it’s just one of many interlocking pieces that will work together to drive product-led success. Now that you know how to measure product adoption, are you ready to start using your in-product analytics to boost adoption, onboarding, retention, and growth? Start now by reading our full ebook, “Product-Led Success: The Professional’s Handbook.”
