Customer Digital Adoption, from Top to Bottom

Customer digital adoption is a must for any SaaS company, app developer, or software company.

Whether your customers are B2B clients or mobile consumers, it’s vital to understand the digital adoption funnel.

This is especially true in the digital age.

Here are a few reasons why:

• The digital age is driven by technology. Effective digital adoption, including onboarding and training, is a fundamental part of the customer onboarding process.
• True digital adoption means fully engaging users. To maximize ROI for any software program, engagement must take precedence. To do that, companies should develop a mix of in-app learning, onboarding communications, and analytics. 
• Put simply, good customer adoption makes more profit. Customer adoption, onboarding, and training all contribute to better metrics. Good adoption increases retention, decreases abandonment rates, improves engagement, and raises customer lifetime values.

In short, more effective onboarding processes increase the longevity and purchase volume of customers.

A healthier, more engaged customer base, in turn, boosts other business metrics, such as:

• Decreased need for marketing spend
• A better reputation
• Increased ability to scale
• Happier customers

Below, we’ll explain what makes a good customer digital adoption funnel. 

Then we’ll look at a few ways to achieve these outcomes for yourself.

Customer Digital Adoption: What It Is and How to Profit From It

Customer adoption programs aim to “bring customers into the fold.”

Successful adoption programs have a few aims:

• Onboard new customers.
• Get users engaged and productive
• Lower adoption costs
• Shorten the adoption timeline
• Make user onboarding as painless as possible
• Design top-notch user experiences

These elements help adoption funnels achieve the outcomes mentioned above.

But what are some of the best ways to improve your customer adoption funnel?

Here are five recommendations:

1. Have a structured onboarding process.

The first step is actually having a structured adoption process.

That onboarding funnel should be well-structured, well-designed, and it should have clear objectives.

Those objectives should be:

• Well-defined. Every goal should be specific – such as an action step or a metric. 
• Purposeful. Naturally, each goal should have a purpose. It should introduce features, familiarize users with the interface, and so forth.
• Achievable without much effort. Too much cognitive load will deter customers and push them away. This is the reason why many apps have introductory in-app tutorials that finish in seconds.
• Aligned with customer goals. The customer is goal-driven. Whatever doesn’t help them achieve their goals is irrelevant at best, detrimental at worst.

Ultimately, adoption and onboarding should produce a great first impression.

That first impression, after all, will color the rest of their experiences with your brand.

2. Optimize that adoption process over time

Don’t “set and forget” your customer digital adoption funnel.

This process should be optimized as you go, by:

• Analyzing and measuring the adoption funnel
• Adapting it to user feedback and analytics
• Continually testing new approaches and ideas
• Finding new ways to shorten learning curves and adoption timelines

Ongoing optimization will improve your digital adoption metrics across the board – helping to increase ROI, user engagement, and customer satisfaction.

3. Create user-driven user experiences

Customer-centrism drives customer success.

By focusing on customer goals, you can:

• Eliminate irrelevant elements from the adoption process
• Help customers achieve what they want to achieve 
• And both of the above will further increase engagement and investment in your product

To do this, follow a method such as lean.

A simplified version of the lean approach to optimization is:

• Build an iteration of your product – in this case, your adoption process
• Collect feedback through customer surveys and open lines of communication
• Study behavioral data and analytics
• Analyze that information and learn from it

Finally, rinse and repeat. 

4. Enhance adoption through digital adoption platforms

Digital adoption platforms (DAPs) are specifically designed to enhance and optimize digital adoption.

They help digital adoption professionals with the core elements of digital adoption:

• Training, through in-app tutorials and guidance
• Understanding user behavior, through analytics and AI-powered data analysis
• Simplifying complex software, apps, and web apps

DAPs dramatically improve customer digital adoption, providing a serious competitive edge.

5. Personalize

There is no one-size-fits-all approach to digital adoption.

When possible, personalize your adoption and onboarding through:

• Segmentation – Divide audiences up into segments, based on their goals, products or plans they’ve purchased, demographics, or other available data. 
• Interactive Onboarding – Interacting with a chat bot, for example, can help you deliver only the most relevant onboarding flows.
• Split Test – As mentioned above, testing is crucial to finding the most profitable onboarding flow. If your budget warrants it, then consider split-testing different onboarding approaches.

Personalization can be found wherever user experiences exist.

Though it may not be as discussed in regards to customer adoption, it can add significant value.

After all – vast sums are spent split-testing advertising and marketing campaigns. 

The customer experience doesn’t end once the customer makes the first purchase … it’s just beginning.

You should do everything you can to start it off on the right foot.