Product adoption is an important goal for your business. You may be good at acquiring many visitors, but if they don’t use your product you won’t reach your goals. When customers adopt your product, it creates a base of customers. This also helps you to reach a position in the market. Besides that, product adoption denotes the shift from a foreign and unfamiliar product to one that users use and welcome.

In this article, we will discuss product adoption and its stages. We will also go through several types of adopters. Look out for some interesting tips and best practices as well.

What is Product Adoption?

Product adoption is when individuals use your app or product to meet their objectives. For this, they also need to be aware of your brand. Product adoption is different from acquisition. In acquisition, you bring visitors to your site. But with product adoption, it is more important to convert those people into consumers or users. This is why product adoption is also known as user adoption. It is when a user begins to use your website or product the way it was meant to. 

Each individual user determines product adoption. There are various adopters that you will find in your potential consumer base. And each consumer has their own set of values. These adopters are classified into five types: 

• Innovators
• Early Adopters
• Early Majority
• Late Majority
• Laggards

The first groups that express interest in new products are early adopters and innovators. You will find that the laggard group is most against change. Thus they are less likely to embrace any additions to their lives. You can help product adoption by knowing the factors that affect the behaviours of users. 

In addition to using these factors, you should remove any tension while users are getting on board your product. Also, try leading users to use the product as soon as they can. 

Benefits and Importance

Product adoption is important for all kinds of businesses. This is because there are a lot of benefits that you can acquire from customers adopting your product. 

• Product adoption leads to success with customers.

• It also reduces the churn or attrition that customers may have towards your company.

• It increases your chances of cross-selling and upselling your product.

• You can even focus on expanding your footprint in the market.

Besides all of this, product adoption also affects almost all important growth metrics. For instance, your customer lifetime value and conversion rate are affected. Also, your cost per lead and cost per customer is impacted.

Product Adoption Process

Regardless of the product type in the market, each user may go through 5 stages in the product adoption process. They are listed as follows:

• Awareness: This is the stage where consumers become aware of your product. They can also come to learn more about it since they don’t know enough to make a decision. As a result, you must teach them about what exactly is the problem that your product fixes. You should also use this opportunity to not only make them aware of the product but also of your brand as a whole.

• Interest: Customers show interest in your product. In this case, you will need to have a user-friendly website and customer service desk. You should also have a help centre or a chatbot to help answer any questions they may have. You can then provide them with more information.

• Evaluation: This is where customers start considering your product. They may also compare it with other products in the market that are similar. This can also help them to choose your product over others. You can even post any research or case studies that can show your prospects how people benefit from your product. 

• Trial: This is when your potential customers are convinced that your product has value. They are not totally onboard and may be willing to try it for a short time. You can use free trials or schemes like guaranteed money-back. This can entice them to try the product.

• Adoption/Rejection: By now, the trial period of potential customers may be complete. All that is left is for them to make a decision. If they believe your product gives them the values they seek, then they will invest, buy, or subscribe. If not, then they will likely reject your product.

How to Measure Product Adoption

Product adoption rate talks about the ratio of new consumers to all consumers. For this, you need to understand the metrics involved. Your most important metrics are as follows:

• Conversion rate from the moment a customer signs up to their first action.
• Time-to-value is the average amount of time it takes for a new user to use a current feature or product. It also refers to how long it takes for an existing user to make use of a new feature.
• Adoption rate is how much percentage of new consumers are there to all consumers.

You can use various tools to measure and monitor these metrics. They can review the onboarding of a new user. They also analyse what users have trouble with. You can make use of tools like Amplitude, Mixpanel or Woopra to measure your product adoption rate.

Pros and Cons

Here are some pros to product adoption:

• Product adoption helps to boost your rates of customer retention and creates long-term users.

• It even leads to good predictions of revenue streams.

• Product adoption helps encourage your users to find new elements and products. They can also discover different features of a current product. 
• It is also less expensive to keep your current customers than to get new ones. 

Here are some cons to product adoption:

• If your product or feature is too complex, customers are less likely to buy it.

• Product adoption requires compatibility. If the customer has different values and experiences they won’t make a purchase.

• If you have a bad customer support system, customers will likely get put off by your brand.

Tips

When coming up with a plan to improve your product adoption, there are some things you can do. Here are some useful tips to keep in mind:

• Create awareness: A good way to improve your product adoption is by creating awareness about your product or services. You should communicate with your audience or prospects about new features and updated products. 

• Personalised trial: You can find out who are some important users of your product. You can then invite them all to a personal introduction to a certain product or feature. 

• Start onboarding: It is important to get customers to use your product as soon as possible. You can do this by providing them with all the things they require to start the onboarding process.

• Customer Feedback: It is crucial that your customers feel heard. You should try and create features or make changes based on customer input. This shows both old and new customers that you value their voice and understand their needs. Thus providing them with a good customer experience.

• Create a satisfactory experience:  Users want to feel like your product can actually solve a product before they make a purchase. You should try and zone in on the great experiences current customers have with that product or service.

• Good product design: A big part of a buyer’s journey depends on the process and experience. If you have a good product or create a good experience, they are likely to buy your product. This will also encourage them to use your product more often.

• Develop tutorials and guides: It is important that your users aren’t lost while trying to navigate your product. For this, you can create detailed tutorials and guides for them. You can also provide helpful tips and practices for them to have the best experience.

Best Practices

Here are some of the best practices you can follow to improve product adoption.

• Improved products: Customers like to see new and current ideas. If you aren’t constantly launching new products, you can add new features to existing ones. This is one practice that Apple has incorporated into their strategy.

• Onboarding experience: It is important for customers to have a great onboarding experience. You should try and improve their experience by adding features that help them. You can provide guides, tips and tutorials to users. This will help them understand the product better and thus adopt more products and features. You can even customise the onboarding experience to each customer. For this, you will have to divide your customers into various buyer personas. By creating an optimum experience, your customers will stick to your product since they understand it better.

• Customer support: Before making a purchase, users want to believe that your product can actually solve a problem. You should focus on the positive experiences that current customers have had with that product or service. You will also need a user-friendly website as well as a customer service desk. Then, you can then offer them more information.

• User Input: Also, it is critical that your customers believe they have been heard. You should try to add features or make changes based on customer feedback. This demonstrates to both old and new customers that you value their input and understand their requirements. As a result, they will have a positive customer experience.

• Resolve or make tweaks: If there are any problems with your product or website, make sure you fix them immediately. Also, don’t hide these issues but address them as well as any questions users might have. This helps build confidence and transparency within your brand.

Top Product Adoption Examples

• Hubspot: This brand makes use of a chatbot to improve the customer experience. The chatbot automatically appears when a prospect lands on its website. It provides the customer with information about whatever they need to make a decision. Thus fulfilling the interest stage of the process of product adoption.

• Basecamp: Basecamp is a platform that helps you to manage your projects. The page lists some software that customers have used in the past. They also show the aspects of those software that didn’t fulfil a customer’s needs. Next, they talk about many testimonials that show the positive side of Basecamp.

• Uber: This brand perfected the awareness stage with amazing marketing campaigns. They provided free rides to those who fit their ideal buyer persona. They also hosted various events for these potential customers. Besides that, they had a great referral program. This generated a lot of word-of-mouth marketing.

In Conclusion

Product adoption is important for customer retention and the growth of a company. There are various factors that play a part in a consumer adopting a product or service.

The product adoption process starts with making users aware of new features or products. This awareness then results in the user trying out that feature or product. Which can also lead to them making a purchase. 

• Awareness: This is the first stage in the process of product adoption. It is where potential customers discover your product.

• Interest: When these potential users become aware of your product and start liking it, they will look for more information.  You can also team up with your product and marketing teams to create tutorials, walkthroughs and important use cases. These will help your customers to understand your product better and also improve the customer’s journey. 

• Evaluation: This is the stage where potential users will consider your product. This is why you should clearly mention how your product differs from your competitors’ products.

• Trial: This next stage is also known as the sampling stage. Here consumers can try out your product for a limited time period.

• Adoption/Rejection: Here is where a consumer will decide whether to invest in your product or reject it.

What are some successful ways you have improved your product adoption? Did you find this article helpful? Let us know in the comments section below.