What is Feature Adoption and How to Increase It — UserGuiding

There is a rapidly growing number of applications and so many features alongside but how many of them are used as much as you have intended? According to the statistics, not many: 12% of features are the attraction points of the majority of clicks on apps.
So, it is prime time to know more about feature adoption/discovery.

We also have an article on product adoption, which basically is your users using your product. Check out our article for further reading What is Product Adoption & How to Measure and Increase It.

What are Feature Adoption and Feature Discovery?

Feature discovery and feature adoption mean your target audience ‘discovers’ a feature in your app, and ‘adopts’ it merely by using it. And feature adoption rates present themselves accordingly.

Getting your users to their “Aha!” moment for available features is the key to success, not offering hundreds of new ones. And you can evaluate your success by analyzing your feature adoption rates.

How to Increase Feature Adoption Rates

Since increasing the feature adoption rates is crucial in having your product achieve success completely, you have to skyrocket these rates.

So, let’s talk about how you increase your feature adoption for long-term success.

Get ready for the best first impression

First impressions are crucial. With so many stimuli around, users may ignore your super helpful new feature. They need to be impressed and understand what the benefit of this new feature is to adopt it. Make sure that the feature is easy to discover and give your users a reason to use it.

Let’s say that you’ve released an update, notify the users. New features should not be overlooked. Quick previews can help make your users aware of what you’ve offered to them. Because the previews can easily get skipped, users won’t get overwhelmed. Take your time to design an attractive preview, which is hard to skip.

Promote existing features

You might want to promote an existing feature that is not getting the attention you thought it would get. In this case, you can adopt a feature promotion strategy, which includes reminding your users who have not interacted with that feature about it. You have to help your users discover features they have not seen yet.

You can increase feature discovery in many ways, it could be a little pop up that shows the pathway to the feature or a segmented in-app message that targets the right users. One thing to be common in these methods would be making this process interesting and directly to the point so your users enjoy their interaction with it.

Analyze your feature adoption rates

Many surprises are waiting for you here. Contrary to your best hopes, you are quite likely to see some of your features don’t get ever used. Many features of most products get lost before reaching users. Besides, some features may not have reached the target users and adopted by another group.

The data from the analysis of feature adoption rates can be an excellent weapon for you to understand the interaction between your users and your product’s features. We recommend you to do regular checks of the adoption rates to see the changes so that you can make a trustworthy design plan.

Expectations vs. Reality

With all the data on users’ responses to your features, check your initial expectations. Are you on the right path? The incompatibility between your initial expectations and proven reality shows how much you know your audience.

Considering your initial target of users and who uses your product is a great opportunity to go through your features. Some features can appeal to only a specific group of users. Alter or build upon your expectations to develop more efficient strategies and features.

Provide a better UX

Simplicity and practicality attract people; this is definitely what they expect from you. On their way to your new feature, users should not encounter any difficulties or confusion.

Better visual designs provide them with a quick introduction of the feature and a good decision process for whether to use it or not. You may also consider putting a ‘feature demo’ in your app’s main menu.

Be accessible if your users need you

Every feedback point can improve your product’s usage. If you provide your users with a chance to reach you on their experience with your product, you won’t regret it. As it is the case with other features, feedback points should be in the foreground.

Although it is not easy to reach every user for feedback, all the data you can get can turn into a treasure for you. Users may not always bother themselves with your gains. But when they want to enhance their own experience, they should have an easy way to do it. Make them know that those comments written by users are not ignored, and they are there for a reason.

Improve yourself continuously

Launching a new feature is not the end of the efforts. You are expected to improve and optimize this feature considering the analysis of feature adoption rates and feedbacks. Make sure that you know about the expectation and behavior of the user and serve accordingly.

With a quality feedback system, you can both improve UX, and analyze the difference between what users expect and what your product’s features offer. This is also a great way to know your audience and reflect this knowledge on your product. Even the worst cases are a great chance for the sake of improvement.

Final words

When all these suggestions considered, it is always a great idea to empathize with users. They are using your product to add value to their lives. Help them achieve this.

And, do not forget this: feature adoption is not a simple issue that can be dealt with at once. It requires process and repeating effective strategies. UserGuiding offers tools to promote features, segment users and message them in-app, track the effectiveness of your guides along with creating onboarding flows. You can start your free trial here.

Originally published at https://blog.userguiding.com on December 16, 2019.