Stages of Feature Adoption: A Comprehensive Guide
In the world of Software as a Service (SaaS) products, feature adoption is a critical factor for success. Ensuring that users not only discover but also effectively utilize new features is essential for sustained growth and customer satisfaction. In this comprehensive guide, we will explore the various stages of feature adoption and provide insights from industry experts on how to navigate and optimize each stage.
The stages of feature adoption can be broadly divided into four main categories:
- Awareness
- Interest and Trial
- Adoption and Usage
- Advocacy
1. Awareness
The first stage of feature adoption is making users aware of the new feature. This can be achieved through various channels, such as email campaigns, in-app notifications, blog posts, and social media announcements. The goal is to communicate the value proposition of the new feature and how it can benefit users.
As Jack Wei, Head of Product Marketing at Sendbird, highlights, the key is to drive adoption and set benchmarks that vary across B2B and B2C businesses. He says, "the product you launched has technically crossed into the majority if >50% of your user base has adopted / upgraded / migrated to the new solution." He also emphasizes the importance of a strong close rate for signaling strong market acceptance.
2. Interest and Trial
Once users are aware of the new feature, the next stage is to pique their interest and encourage them to try it out. This can be accomplished by providing a smooth onboarding experience, offering guided tours, or showcasing use cases that demonstrate the feature's potential benefits.
Ivan Dwyer, Product Marketing at Okta, suggests following a narrative from top to bottom, starting with "the what," hooking with "the why," and winning over with "the how." He also emphasizes the importance of speaking to pain points and appealing to the audience's needs and aspirations.
3. Adoption and Usage
The third stage of feature adoption is ensuring that users not only try the new feature but also continue to use it regularly. This requires understanding user behavior, identifying any barriers to adoption, and addressing those issues to optimize the experience.
Priya Kotak, Product Marketing at Figma, recommends starting by understanding the users who have adopted the feature and those who have not. She emphasizes the importance of taking a step back to understand the root cause of lagging adoption and addressing the right problem to improve engagement. Kotak shares an example from her experience at Figma, where they prioritized changes to the product UI and created a template-focused re-engagement campaign after identifying discoverability as the main issue.
4. Advocacy
The final stage of feature adoption is turning satisfied users into advocates. This can be achieved by consistently delivering value, providing exceptional customer support, and actively engaging with users to gather feedback and address their concerns.
Amanda Groves, Senior Director of Product Marketing at Crossbeam, emphasizes the importance of tailoring messages and calls-to-action based on buyer stages. She suggests using email/in-app posts for awareness, tours for explaining how a feature works, help docs for getting started, and contact/CTA for conversion.
Madison Leonard, Product Marketing & Growth Advisor, highlights the need for collaboration between Product, Growth, and Product Marketing teams to co-own adoption KPIs, particularly for large tier 1 features. This ensures that all teams are responsible for the outcome and work together to optimize the adoption experience.
Conclusion
Understanding and optimizing each stage of feature adoption is crucial for the success of any SaaS product. By focusing on raising awareness, generating interest, ensuring adoption and usage, and fostering advocacy, businesses can drive user engagement and satisfaction, ultimately leading to sustained growth and success.
In this comprehensive guide, we have distilled insights from industry experts such as Jack Wei (Sendbird), Ivan Dwyer (Okta), Priya Kotak (Figma), Amanda Groves (Crossbeam), and Madison Leonard (Product Marketing & Growth Advisor) to provide a clear roadmap for navigating the stages of feature adoption. By applying these expert insights, businesses can set themselves up for success in their feature adoption journey.