Measuring user adoption for a new product launch

Congratulations! You’ve just launched a new sales enablement and product configuration tool. Let’s call it Build-O-Matic. Your distributed sales team now has the ability to drag and drop to create a visual remodeling plan for your customers and close the sale in real time. 

Fast-forward 12 months. There’s been a small change in Minnesota’s building requirements that hasn’t been updated in the Build-o-Matic. Because of this, salespeople in Minnesota have stopped using it. But at this point, all you know is that there was a drop in Build-o-Matic usage last quarter.

At the same time, some salespeople are having trouble closing business because of a gap in Build-O-Matic’s promotions and financing features. Calls back to the regional manager are slowing down the sale, and folks are using workarounds to close deals. 

So Build-O-Matic is now seen as a tool that isn’t doing what people need it to do, and your management team is considering a large investment to replace it. And they’re looking at you, wondering why they spent all that money to develop and deploy something that didn’t last a full year.

If you had known about these problems earlier, you would have solved them immediately with incremental (and likely more affordable) investments, right? This is why measuring user adoption is vital. Understanding usage trends for your digital products can tell you what’s working, what needs improvement, and even use cases you hadn’t predicted (but can now capitalize on) – enabling you to address issues and maximize impact in (close to) real-time.

Takeaway: Without meaningful and actionable user adoption intelligence, your organization is at the mercy of anecdotal feedback and secondhand information.  Market leaders use adoption metrics to forecast revenue, troubleshoot customer lifecycle issues, and manage their sales channels. Using a handful of adoption KPIs, you can make sure you understand the true nature of your product deployment.

Defining & Measuring User Adoption for Your Product

Market leaders ask the following questions to drive their user adoption strategy:

• What does successful adoption by sales teams, distributors, and channel partners look like?
• By when do we want to reach these levels of adoption?
• What communications and training plans must be put in place to reach those goals?
• What needs to be tracked in order to provide actionable insights?
• What should be the frequency of measuring and analyzing adoption? 
• Who will be accountable for analysis and recommendations?
• Who will be accountable for taking action on those recommendations?

While not exhaustive, the following list provides KPIs to consider when defining user adoption.

1. Rate of Adoption (RoA)

The Rate of Adoption (RoA) can be measured as the number of adopted users over the total number of users.

If you have 100 users and 25 of them have adopted your product, your adoption rate is 25%.

Defining an Adopted User

For this to be a useful metric, your team must be aligned on the definition of an adopted user. For example, is an adopted user someone who has logged in to the tool, or done something in the application that indicates use such as creating a configuration or a proposal?

The Making of an Adopted User

Once you know what “adoption” means to you, it’s time to take the steps to get there. At the most fundamental level, those steps are:

• Make sure users understand
  • how to use the tool
  • expectations for usage (see definition, above)
  • how the tool brings value to the organization (the “why”)
  • the benefits the tool brings to them
• Make sure users’ managers are prepared to lead adoption of the tool
• Have a plan to encourage and reinforce adoption for the long-term, and for driving adoption in any stragglers

Rate of Adoption Trend Analysis

In order to make decisions regarding RoA, trend analysis is critical. 

• Over what period of time and with what frequency will you evaluate RoA? Is reviewing adoption weekly meaningful, or is a monthly or quarterly review more useful? 
• Are there seasonal and/or geographic considerations that drive usage? For example, will the usage of a gutter configuration feature decline during the winter months in the Midwest?
• What is a reasonable benchmark for onboarding new users? In other words, what is the expectation of time to adoption?

2. Daily/Monthly Active Users (DAU/MAU)

Analyzed in combination with your rate of adoption, this metric provides a window into what users do with the tool. You may have a high percentage of the sales team logging in  and periodically viewing a product catalog, but a low number who use the application every day. 

Low DAU/MAU is often an early indicator of adoption issues or attrition. This insight provides an opportunity to revisit and possibly revise your efforts to drive engagement and adoption, including  training on key features or activation programs to drive engagement and usage.

3. “First Key Action” Completion Rate

A “first key action” might be viewing a critical sales or training asset, creating a configuration, or sending a proposal to a customer. The completion rate metric measures the number of users who complete a first key action compared to the total number of users 

With this information, you can determine onboarding or training issues, problems with a feature or interaction, and/or process and accountability gaps.

4. Time to First Sale

This metric is pretty straightforward. Time to First Sale measures the amount of time it takes users, on average, to close the first deal using your tool. This KPI can also take a more generic form with a different  key customer action replacing the sale.The number of clicks into the product configuration function, for example.

5. Time Spent Using a Feature

Let’s say your company has incorporated new features into the tool. It could be wise to review  a metric that tracks the amount of time your users spend with these new features. Then you could define a KPI as the amount of time spent over sales dollars. 

If that number is too high, the feature has likely been hard for most users to work with. If the value is too low, it may not look attractive enough.

Measuring user adoption leads to better decisions

Sales enablement and product configuration solutions are critical for companies. The investment of time, resources, and capital in developing and managing these tools is substantial. Without meaningful and actionable adoption intelligence, your organization is at the mercy of anecdotal feedback and secondhand information.  Market leaders use adoption metrics to forecast revenue, troubleshoot customer lifecycle issues, and manage their sales channels. Using a handful of adoption KPIs, you can make the impossible inevitable. 

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