Ideas are worthless without execution. I had to sit back and think about the first time I heard this sentence because it was true and powerful. Ideas won’t bring anything without action.
It doesn’t matter how we imagine something; it matters how we transform something for the better.
How many products turn out to be a failure? Poor execution won’t get the job done. Look at the Amazon Fire Phone, Apple PDA, and Microsoft Tablet — they all failed because they didn’t manage to get enough adoption. Why did that happen? Because products cannot survive without customers.
As obvious as this statement can be, companies often fail to address product adoption adequately. Let’s talk about it during this post.
Product adoption is when users discover your product, test and try it out, and ultimately adopt it (aka integrate it) into their lives. The goal of some product adoption strategies is for users to adopt it into their lives daily, whereas other products may hope for a different cadence, like every other day or weekly. The way adoption looks for a user depends on the product itself and its purpose.
I like looking at product adoption as milestones:
When people associate getting their jobs done with a product, you have high adoption. Let me give you a couple of examples:
The products I mentioned above have high adoption because we associate jobs with them. And we trust that these products will help us reach our goals smoothly.
The more customers associate your products with jobs, the faster you can grow.
Nailing jobs that customers do frequently will improve your product adoption. Customers need to understand what your product does for them. In other words, the jobs your product gets done.
The biggest challenge is discovering the relevant jobs to focus on. We’re tempted to deliver more and increase the offering of our product, and that’s generally the mistake. Try to serve everyone, you end up serving no one.
Keep your product as simple as possible. Ensure that your user experience relates to your value proposition and customers understand it.
Don’t be afraid of removing low-used features from your product. Be fearful of leaving distractions on your product that confuses customers.
Tip: talk to customers and understand what they understand from your product. Strive to uncover the job they try getting done, and from there, you can improve it.
A few things will hurt your product adoption more than a bad experience. Customers with a bad experience become detractors and diminish your product’s image.
For every bad experience a customer has, you must provide 10 great experiences to regain trust. The problem is that you may not have the chance to do that. Given the saturated market we’re in, customers have the option to knock at your competitors the moment you make them unhappy.
Here are key aspects to pay particular attention to:
You cannot expect high adoption of your product from day one. Adoption requires hard work and continuous improvement.
I cannot give you a process that ensures increasing adoption, but I can tell you what works for me:
Keep an open mind and find opportunities to improve your product for your customers.
How do you know your product is improving its adoption? First, you need to understand your scenario and identify its metrics.
For example, recurrence is critical to adoption, but you must understand what’s realistic for your business model. For social media, daily recurrence is vital, but for the actual state, that would be different.
As you understand your scenario, I suggest looking at the following metrics:
Product adoption is a continuous effort, and you will never be finished. The moment you settle, your competition will have you for breakfast.
To continuously improve your adoption, work on the following:
Featured image source: IconScout
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With LogRocket, you can understand the scope of the issues affecting your product and prioritize the changes that need to be made. LogRocket simplifies workflows by allowing Engineering, Product, UX, and Design teams to work from the same data as you, eliminating any confusion about what needs to be done.
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