Glossary / P / Product adoption

Product adoption

Que désigne « l'adoption des produits » ?

Product adoption is the process of user (or customer) activation for a web or mobile application. Adoption helps product teams determine if the product is delivering on its intended value, measured by how many users interact with the product. In the most basic sense, adoption is a leading indicator of a healthy software product (and company).

Pourquoi l'adoption des produits est-elle importante ?

With the shift to subscription-based software licensing, product engagement—and specifically product adoption—has become much more critical than it was in the on-prem era. Product managers have always focused on improving the customer experience, but promoting activation early is more important than ever in SaaS, where software products are purchased every month.

Indicateurs d'adoption de produit 

L'adoption du produit peut être mesurée grâce aux indicateurs suivants :

  • Stickiness: Stickiness refers to the number of users who log in to the product a minimum number of times, expressed as a count over time. 
  • Feature adoption: Feature adoption measures how many users interact with your product’s specific features at a given moment, or over time.
  • Growth: Growth measures the net effect of your user acquisition and retention efforts. In other words, are you gaining new users faster than you are losing existing ones? Growth can be achieved by adding new accounts or increasing usage within existing accounts. It’s expressed as the sum of new and recovered accounts or visitors divided by dropped accounts or visitors. 
  • Monthly active users (MAU): The average number of unique visitors to your product each month.
  • Weekly active users (WAU): The average number of unique visitors to your product each week.
  • Daily active users (DAU): The average number of unique visitors to your product each day.

How can product adoption rate be measured?

You can measure product adoption as a rate relative to new user signups for a given period of time. For example: 

Monthly Product Adoption Rate (%) = [new MAU / monthly signups] * 100.

The way you choose to measure product adoption will largely depend on what it means to be an active user of your product. If your software is one customers should be accessing every day, a DAU metric might make the most sense. Or, if your product is B2C, you might want to look at frequency of conversions (e.g. purchases) or time spent in the app.

Comment augmenter l'adoption d'un produit

Pour augmenter le taux d'adoption d'un produit, il convient avant tout d'améliorer votre produit ; plus l'expérience est bonne, plus les utilisateurs sont susceptibles de continuer à l'utiliser. Outre l'élaboration d'une stratégie d'onboarding in-app réfléchie, il existe d'autres moyens d'améliorer l'adoption du produit :

  • Leverage product usage data: You can’t improve what you don’t measure. In order to assess product adoption, you should lean on product usage data to understand how users are engaging, where they are getting stuck, and any opportunities to improve their experience with your application. There are plenty of product adoption metrics to choose from, but we recommend tracking feature adoption, stickiness, and growth (which also make up your Product Engagement Score).
  • Communicate with users in-app: The best way to raise awareness of key features and encourage better use of your product is through in-app messaging. By communicating with users in-app, you’ll be able to reach them when this information will be most relevant, whether the purpose is user education, feature announcements, onboarding, or otherwise. 
  • Intégrez l'assistance au produit : Proposer des ressources d'assistance au sein de votre produit encourage les utilisateurs à trouver par eux-mêmes des solutions lorsqu'ils sont bloqués ou se posent des questions. Cela minimise la probabilité qu'ils abandonnent et délaissent définitivement le produit. Bien que ce ne soit pas la première chose qui vienne à l'esprit, rendre l'assistance plus accessible est une tactique importante pour favoriser l'adoption du produit.
  • Recueillez le retour des utilisateurs : En plus des données d'utilisation quantitatives, il est important de recueillir les retours qualitatifs de vos utilisateurs pour mieux comprendre leur expérience avec votre produit et tout ce qui fait défaut selon eux. Vous pouvez utiliser des enquêtes intégrées pour demander aux utilisateurs ce qu'ils pensent d'une fonctionnalité donnée, ou pour atteindre certains segments d'utilisateurs.

How does onboarding impact product adoption? 

La période post-inscription est la plus importante du cycle de vie d'un produit – passé le premier jour, les taux d'adoption de produit chutent brusquement. Aider les nouveaux utilisateurs à prendre en main l'application Web ou mobile dès la première ouverture est donc absolument essentiel. En réalité, les utilisateurs finiront par apprendre, que l'expérience soit organisée ou non. Néanmoins, les entreprises qui mettent l'accent sur la prise en main permettent aux utilisateurs d'être efficaces bien plus rapidement, ce qui booste les indicateurs d'adoption tels que l'utilisation active et la fidélisation.

L'amélioration de l'offre des applications SaaS a considérablement réduit les coûts subis par les clients pour changer d'outil. Ceux-ci sont beaucoup plus susceptibles de se désabonner s'ils ne sont pas satisfaits rapidement. L'adoption du produit dépend d'un flux d'onboarding spécifique :

  • Expliquer rapidement le fonctionnement du produit et ses cas d'utilisation
  • Communiquer les avantages concurrentiels du produit
  • Présenter les fonctionnalités les plus précieuses au consommateur
  • Inciter les utilisateurs à revenir encore et toujours au produit

What is the product adoption curve? 

The product adoption curve is a way to think about how (and when) different types of users adopt your product. As the name suggests, it is shaped like a bell curve and includes five types of software users: Innovators, Early Adopters, Early Majority, Late Majority, and Laggards.

Every product’s user base is diverse—including different personas, use cases, and technical proficiencies. It’s important to consider how these factors will impact users’ likelihood to adopt as well as your adoption strategies and tactics. Here’s a quick overview of the product adoption curve:

  • Innovators: These are the very first people to use and purchase your product. They are likely tech enthusiasts (and already using plenty of other software products), looking to explore the latest tool in your space. While these users are the least likely to purchase your highest pricing tier, they are a great source of feedback as some of the first people to utilize your solution. Pro tip: Use in-app guides to collect feedback from Innovators while they are actively engaging with your product.
  • Early Adopters: This group is similar to Innovators in that they are interested in trying out what’s new, but they are more likely to have a direct need for your product. Early Adopters can also help inform your go-to-market strategy, since your product should aim to solve these users’ pain points.
  • Early Majority: The Early Majority group is interested in a product that directly solves their needs. Compared to Early Adopters, they are less likely to tolerate product bugs and issues, making it crucial to ensure your product is stable and helps users achieve their jobs-to-be-done. Based on the product adoption curve, roughly a third of your users will come from this group.
  • Late Majority: These users likely know your product exists, but haven’t made the leap to use or purchase it yet. In order to drive adoption within this group, it’s important to educate them about your product in a way that addresses their past hesitation. One angle that can be effective is that using your product will offer them a competitive advantage in the market.
  • Laggards: Laggards are the last people to adopt your product, as they are (or have been) skeptical of its value. Since these users make up a relatively small portion of your user base, it’s not as important to sell to them directly. Reaching this phase might even signal the need for more innovation or iteration of your product offering.

What factors influence product adoption rate? 

There are multiple factors that influence your product adoption rate. In the most basic sense, users need to have a clear understanding of the value your product delivers, what its key features are, and how to use it effectively. This is where onboarding comes in. Your onboarding experience needs to help users become comfortable enough in the product that they start using it for its intended purpose—and make it part of their everyday lives. By leveraging in-app onboarding, teams can educate and guide new users to success with walkthroughs, tooltips, and other types of in-app messages. Even better, this strategy also allows you to personalize onboarding flows for different types of users (e.g. users with different roles) and ensure the content is relevant to users’ specific needs.

Beyond onboarding, adoption also hinges on your product having an intuitive user interface (UI) that doesn’t add friction to users’ experience. In order to identify pain points or where users are getting stuck, teams can utilize product analytics to understand how users move through the product, which (if any) key features aren’t being used, and if there is any dropoff that needs to be addressed. From there, leverage in-app guides to nudge users to and through workflows and provide in-context help as they navigate the product.

Where can I learn more about product adoption? 

Pour les personnes qui souhaitent en savoir plus sur l'adoption du produit et des fonctionnalités, il existe un certain nombre de livres consacrés à ce sujet, dont Crossing the Chasm par Geoffrey A. Moore, The Innovator's Dilemma de Clayton M. Christensen et The Lean Startup par Eric Ries. Pendo a également publié des articles sur le processus d'onboarding des utilisateurs, ainsi que sur la façon de booster le ROI des produits.