Effective user adoption strategies can mean the difference between achieving your business goals, or falling short. After all, when a customer commits to your product, you want to keep them on board long term, and prevent them from jumping ship. In doing so, you can decrease churn rates, improve the customer experience, and ultimately improve your profitability.
But what exactly is user adoption and what strategies can you use to improve customer retention and value?
What is user adoption?
User adoption refers to the user journey of adopting your product, learning how to use it, and committing to using it on an ongoing basis. It is how a new user builds your product into their life and creates habits around usage.
Part of the user adoption process centers around the initial onboarding process, where the user learns and understands how to use the product. However, it is also about the longevity of your product and ensuring that existing users find value in what you have to offer.
The aim is to ensure that your product adds value for your customer on a long-term or even permanent basis. If your product becomes an essential part of your customer’s life in some way, your churn rates will remain low and you can increase customer retention.
Why is user adoption important?
With so many new technologies on offer all the time, some organizations are using enterprise architecture to reorganize and optimize their tech stacks in line with business goals. SaaS businesses need to ensure they stand out in a competitive market. Prioritizing user adoption can help with that.
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User adoption is critical to the success of your SaaS business. As we explained above, a successful user adoption rate can have a huge impact on customer retention. In fact, it can impact many common KPIs, including:
- Customer acquisition cost (CAC): How much you are spending to acquire new customers.
- Customer lifetime value (CLV): How valuable a customer is to your business across the entire business-customer relationship.
- Average revenue per user (ARPU): How much revenue you make from each user on average.
- Net Promoter Score (NPS): Measures customer satisfaction by asking them how likely it is that they would recommend you to others.
- Customer churn rate – Measures how many customers you are losing over a certain period of time.
Since user adoption has such an impact on so many aspects of your business, it is certainly something that deserves your attention. So, how can you ensure that more users are committing to your product on a long-term basis?
8 user adoption strategies for increasing customer retention and value
We’ve established why user adoption deserves your attention. But knowing its importance isn’t enough. You need to take the time to establish a proper user adoption strategy if you’re serious about increasing customer retention and value.
Let’s take a look at eight of the best strategies you can start using today to improve user adoption.
1. Personalize the onboarding process
During the onboarding process, your customers will be forming an opinion of your product and your business as a whole. Don’t assume that because they have signed up to your product, that they’ll stick around. Use the onboarding process to gather information about their needs and personalize their experience as much as possible.
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For example, you could ask them to complete a welcome survey and their answers could trigger a particular onboarding flow depending on their needs. You could even offer a video call service during the onboarding phase to iron out any pain points and answer any questions.
Tailoring the onboarding experience in this way can help users see that they matter to you, and therefore improve your adoption rates.
2. Enhance the customer journey beyond the onboarding phase
Yes – onboarding is typically linked to the initial stages of adoption. However, onboarding should be seen as a longer term strategy in which you drip-feed users with information or features to keep them engaged.
You don’t want to give your new users lots of care and attention when they first begin using your product, then leave them to fend for themselves. You want them to continually see how they can get more out of your product, and remain engaged throughout their customer journey.
What’s more, you should continually review your onboarding process to ensure it is evolving alongside your company, industry trends, and customer needs. Continually improving your onboarding process will positively impact your user adoption rates.
3.Use an onboarding checklist
On the subject of onboarding, another great user adoption strategy to increase customer retention is to use an onboarding checklist. Onboarding checklists prompt users to try different features of your product depending on their stage in the customer journey.
You could even personalize your onboarding checklists and tailor them to each user’s needs. After gathering information on your users’ needs and goals, you could highlight particular features that will be useful to them.
4. Identify your activation criteria and “Aha! moments”
Your activation criteria are the actions that customers take early on in their experience with you, that indicate they will stick around. It is an action that is useful to the user. “Aha! moments” are the times when the user truly sees the value in what your product has to offer them.
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Both activations and “Aha! moments” are critical because they indicate that the user understands how to use your product and sees value in what it has to offer.
Once you know what these moments are for your typical user, you can use this information to your advantage by:
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- Ensuring you highlight those features in your onboarding process
- Using them in your marketing campaigns or sales pitches
- Make product improvements based on the features your users love
Ultimately, if you can help users see the value in your product early on in their customer experience, you will see user engagement increase, and therefore your adoption rates will increase too.
5. Unify your customer communications
When users sign up to your product, they are also signing up to your brand. The customer experience goes far beyond what they get with the product itself. You will likely be communicating with your users via your product, your website, emails, or even using your business phone service.
Ensure that new users (and all users) have a coherent, consistent, omnichannel experience when they interact with your brand. By unifying customer communications in this way, you ensure users remain engaged and are more likely to adopt your product and your brand.
6. Regularly highlight the benefits of your product
You need to keep educating your users on the features and benefits of your product, as well as keep them informed on any new releases. This reminds them of the value of the product and your business as a whole.
Avoid becoming complacent, and don’t assume that your users will stick around. Consider using case studies to highlight how other users are benefitting from your products. Or highlight positive reviews and testimonials in your email campaigns. It can also be useful to include a blog on your website to keep users up to date with hot topics from within your industry.
7. Use analytics to reduce friction and frustrations
It would be unrealistic to expect that your users will not come across any friction or pain points when using your product. However, once we understand those pain points, we can do something about them.
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Use product usage analytics to understand how your users are using your products, which features are successful, and which are causing friction. Is there a particular feature that is simply not being used? Once you know which features have a low adoption rate, you can delve a little deeper and make data-driven decisions on what to do next.
How does this affect your user adoption? Well, if you can reduce friction and frustrations, you can improve customer success when using your product. Customers who gain value from your product with little friction, will be more likely to stick around.
8. Provide high-quality training and support
When new users try your product for the first time, you need to provide comprehensive training so that they can fully understand how to use it effectively to meet their needs. After all, it’s no use having an amazing product if no one knows how to use it.
Ensure you accommodate different learning styles by offering different forms of training, too. Some users may prefer an e-book with step-by-step instructions while others will benefit from in-person training or online tutorials.
Not only that but when users come across a problem, it is essential that you offer high-quality and accessible support. You may offer support through a virtual call center, an in-app support feature, or a dedicated phone line. However you choose to support your users, ensure they can access the support as quickly as possible.
Conclusion
There’s no doubt about it, user adoption can help you improve customer experience, boost retention, and help your SaaS business grow. Prioritize your user adoption by implementing the strategies outlined in this article – you won’t regret it.
Frequently asked questions
What is user adoption?
User adoption refers to the process of users adopting your product, learning how to use it, and committing to using it on an ongoing basis. It is how a new user builds your product into their life and creates habits around usage.
Does user adoption impact SaaS KPIs?
Yes, user adoption can impact several KPIs including:
- Customer retention rate (CRR)
- Customer acquisition cost (CAC)
- Customer lifetime value (CLV)
- Average revenue per user (ARPU)
- Net Promoter Score (NPS)
- Customer churn rate
Originally published Aug 14, 2024, updated Aug 16, 2024
