AIETA : Product Adoption Process

A process by which customers hear about a new product or a service and become recurring users of it.

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What is product adoption?

Product adoption describes the process of users becoming aware of a product, understanding its value, and beginning to use it. The process is usually broken down into four discrete stages: awareness, interest, evaluation, and conversion.

When people think about product adoption, often metrics like the number of sign-ups or daily active users come to mind. But these metrics taken in isolation don’t reflect whether users are successfully incorporating your product into their daily routine, adding it to their lineup of business tools, or embracing it as something they can’t do without. True product adoption comes when the value of your product is so great that it outweighs the effort and cost required of the user to make a change.

Keep in mind it’s not just new users or early adopters you need to win over. As you add new features and make improvements, you need to consider how to help existing customers continue to see value in your product.

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Product Adoption Stages

Every user respectively goes through the 5 stages of product adoption no matter what kind of product it is.

Let’s see what each stage is about and some tips to improve them.

1. Product Awareness

The consumer becomes aware of the new product but lacks information about it. Initially, the consumer must become aware of the new product.

Awareness leads to interest, and the customer seeks information about the new product.

Whether an innovation is continuous or not, people are either little aware or aware of it initially.

Innovator, therefore, has to inform the adopters about the innovation. In the awareness stage, individuals become aware that the product exists, but they have little information about it and are not concerned about getting more.

Adopters may be informed through advertising, publicity, or any other effort of the marketer.

2. Product Interest

The consumer seeks information about the new product. Once the information has been gathered, the consumer enters the evaluation stage and considers buying the new product.

By this time, the innovation is introduced. It is now the time for the decision-makers to determine whether the innovation relates to their needs.

They enter the interest stage when they are motivated to get information about its features, uses, advantages, disadvantages, price, or location.

Interest may or may not spark, depending on whether the decision-makers perceive the innovation as a relevant, feasible alternative to existing items.

3. Product Evaluation

Next, in the trial stage, the consumer tries the product on a small scale to improve its value estimate. The consumer considers whether trying the new product makes sense.

Adopters of the innovations have to establish some evaluation measures to compare the new product with existing ones.

During the evaluation stage, individuals consider whether the product will satisfy certain critical criteria for meeting their specific needs. The potential adopters consider the innovation’s benefits and determine whether to try it.

4. Product Trial

The consumer tries the new product on a small scale to improve their estimate of its value. If the consumer is satisfied with the product, they enter the adoption stage, deciding to use the new product thoroughly and regularly.

At this stage, the potential adopters examine, test, or try the innovative product to determine its usefulness.

In this stage, they use or experience the product for the first time, possibly by purchasing a small quantity, taking advantage of a free sample or demonstration, or borrowing the product from someone.

During this stage, potential adopters determine the product’s usefulness under the specific conditions they need.

The trial stage for innovations is complex. Successful introduction depends greatly on the new product’s characteristics, benefits, and perceived risks. Effective communication is the key to achieving trial by consumers.

5. Product Adoption

The consumer decides to make full and regular use of the new product. The new product is a good, service, or idea perceived by some potential customers as new.

Individuals move into the adoption stage when choosing that specific product when they need a product of that general type. Here the buyers purchase the new product and can be expected to use it to solve problems.

So, this final stage of the process is indicated most directly by sales, but the innovation’s visibility is also a success measure.

An Example of the New Product Adoption Process from Real Life:

Let’s assume that you are walking home from a long day at work:

1. You saw a billboard that says a new local pizza place named DeliciousPizza has opened. (Awareness)

2. When you went home, you looked for some information on the web to know more about DeliciousPizza’s menu and prices. (Interest)

3. You considered whether you want to try it or not. (Evaluation)

4. You said what the hell and tried a small pizza(just to be safe). (Trial)

5. It arrived quickly and was de-li-ci-ous so you’ve concluded that DeliciousPizza is your new go-to pizza place. (Adoption)

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How to measure product adoption

There are 3 metrics that will help you know where you are with the product adoption situation.

Here are the user adoption metrics you need to calculate your adoption rate:

1) Adoption Rate:

It is the percentage of new users to all users, whether it is for a product or a specific feature.

number of new users x 100 / number of total users

For example, if you have 22 new users this month and the number of total users is 200: Your adoption rate is 22/200 x 100 = % 11. It can be calculated on a daily, weekly, monthly, or yearly basis.

2) Time-to-first key action:

The average time it takes a new customer to use an existing feature, or an existing customer to use a new feature for the first time.

3) Percentage of users who performed the core action for the first time:

The name of this metric clearly reveals its definition. It is the percentage of customers who have performed a core feature for the first time in a given period of time.

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What factors influence the adoption process of a new product?

According to Everett M. Rogers, there are 5 factors that influence the adoption of a product.

1. Relative Advantage: Does your product offer better value than your competitor’s? If a user is already using your competitor, they will be more likely to switch if what you offer is better.

2. Compatibility: Does your product fall in line with the characteristics of your audience? Your product should be compatible with the lifestyle of your potential users.

3. Complexity: Is your product simple to use? Users should not have a hard time using your product.

4. Triability: To what extent can users try your product? If not much, you might try to expand your freemium plan or free-trial period.

5. Observability: How visible is your product to your audience? You must be present where your audience is present.

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How to Increase Product Adoption

Seeing an improvement in the product adoption metrics is every product person’s dream. You just have to work for it! Here are 5 ways to grind for a better product adoption:

1) Improve your product

If your product is better and offers more value, your product adoption will be improved.

Don’t know where to improve? Just ask your users.

Here’s how you can collect feedback and utilize it effectively.

Offering something better or new can be more helpful in convincing users to try and adopt your product.

2- Make your support more supportive

There will always be pain points no matter how much you fix your product.

And some of them will be a reason for churn.

Unless you are there for users every time they experience something bad or need assistance.

Make sure that reaching out to support is easy and even easier to find on your UI. And I’m pretty sure I don’t need to tell you that your support representatives are friendly and knowledgeable 😉

3- Invest in a better user onboarding experience

Maybe the problem is your user onboarding.

For most low product adoption rate cases, it’s the user onboarding. It’s simple, if you can’t teach your product effectively, users can’t use it.

Therefore, you’ll need to take a thorough look at your user onboarding to see if there are any pain points and fix them.

But how effective can you make changes in your onboarding if you’re not the one creating them if you are dependent on the developers?

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