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What is product adoption and why should you care? In this product adoption FAQ, we will answer these questions and more.
Whether your business is adopting new products internally – or whether your business creates products – this FAQ will make product adoption easy to understand.
More importantly, it will make a business case for the value of effective product adoption.
But before we get to the business value of product adoption, let’s start with the most fundamental question…
What Is Product Adoption?
Product adoption revolves around the implementation of new products and their adoption by users.
It is an area of concern for product creators, as well as businesses that adopt new products for internal use.
Product adoption focuses on the areas such as:
- Onboarding
- Training
- Engagement
- The product experience
Though product adoption is only one aspect of digital adoption, it is a very important one.
Why Should Businesses Care About Product Adoption?
One big reason is because product adoption affects the performance and bottom-line profitability of a product.
It affects areas such as:
- User engagement
- User productivity and performance
- User retention
- Software utilization
- The user experience
- Users’ perception of the product and brand
Effective, well-executed product adoption will enhance these factors.
Those enhancements, in turn, will positively affect the product’s performance in the marketplace and its overall profitability.
What Is Product Adoption Management?
Product adoption management focuses on managing and improving product adoption.
In many cases, product adoption managers help customers with the key stages mentioned earlier, such as:
- New user onboarding
- User training
- User support
Product adoption specialists come in a few forms.
They may design and manage product adoption from a high-level perspective.
They may act as account managers, assisting clients with implementation and rollout.
Or they may focus on other specialized areas within product adoption, such as onboarding or training.
What Are the Biggest Challenges to Product Adoption?
Top challenges to product adoption include:
- Keeping new users engaged and interested
- Simplifying the user experience
- Training new users efficiently and effectively
The challenges will depend a great deal on the circumstances.
For mobile app developers, challenges may revolve around user acquisition and engagement.
For B2B software developers, challenges may lean towards employee engagement, productivity, and proficiency.
How Do You Measure Product Adoption?
Because adoption involves implementation, many metrics tend to focus on customer success, regardless of whether those customers are business customers or consumers.
Common factors that are measured in product adoption include:
- User engagement, satisfaction, productivity, retention, as well as other user metrics
- Training efficiency
- Timelines related to adoption, onboarding, and training
- Costs related to adoption, onboarding, training, user acquisition, and so forth
As with the previous question, measurement methods often depend on the circumstances.
B2B platforms will focus on metrics related to employees, such as productivity and proficiency.
B2C applications often focus on engagement, acquisition, and other areas connected to the user experience.
What Makes a Good Product Adoption Strategy?
Effective product adoption strategies revolve around:
- Simplifying and streamlining the new user experience
- Delivering training quickly and efficiently
- Maximizing user engagement and satisfaction
The best product adoption strategies are well-coordinated with other business functions and strategies.
For instance, a high-level perspective on product adoption recognizes that adoption is also related to areas such as:
- Marketing and sales
- Support functions, such as technical support or customer support
- Product design
Strategies that consider the entire product experience will be better able to deliver experiences that are relevant, consistent, and useful.
What Are the Biggest Mistakes to Avoid with Product Adoption?
Perhaps the biggest mistake to avoid is not managing product adoption at all.
If a business doesn’t manage or measure its product adoption efforts, it will have little insight or control over the adoption process.
Other common mistakes include:
- Not measuring product adoption
- Not integrating product adoption with other business functions
- Not letting users inform and lead the product adoption process
- Focusing too much on a specific element within product adoption, while neglecting others
- Not using the right digital adoption solutions, tools, and platforms
The best way to avoid making these mistakes is to dedicate resources to product adoption management, then continually improve that business function over time.
Where Can I Learn More About Product Adoption?
Online, there are many resources that can help business professionals better understand this topic.
These include:
- Blogs dedicated to digital adoption and product adoption, such as digital-adoption.com
- Top research firms that focus on digital transformation, such as McKinsey or Gartner
- Companies that specialize in digital product adoption, such as WalkMe
- Authorities on product design and development, such as the Nielsen Norman Group
Offline, professionals can augment their knowledge through networking, educational courses, attending conferences, and so forth.
Product adoption, like any other business discipline, requires expertise, practice, and knowledge.
For motivated business professionals, following up with the resources covered here can greatly enhance their understanding of product adoption … not to mention their ability to effectively manage and execute adoption initiatives.
