What is product benchmarking?

Product benchmarking is the practice of comparing your various product metrics against a set of standards to judge how well your product is performing. These standards are goals that you’ll want to at least match, and ideally exceed. Product benchmarking allows you to assess your product’s performance relative to industry norms.

A lot of the time, product benchmarking involves analyzing your product against your competitors, seeing how you shape up against others in your industry. You can also benchmark against industry norms, which are the average performance metrics that you can expect an everyday company in your industry to achieve.

Benchmarking helps you assess your product’s strengths and weaknesses and lets you see how you’re getting on compared to the rest of the field. It’s like comparing your grades to everyone else in your class. If the class average is a C+ and you’re getting an A, that means you’re one of the star pupils. Great.

The goal of product benchmarking is to find gaps and uncover opportunities to make sure your product stays competitive. Benchmarking is not a one-and-done task, it’s an ongoing process that allows you to make data-driven decisions about every aspect of your product, like product pricing strategies, the features you offer, and more. 

The two types of product benchmarking

There are two main types of product benchmarking, internal and external. 

• Internal benchmarking: Focuses on comparing your performance and outcomes against yourself, seeing how things have changed over a period of time. By comparing performance against yourself, you’ll be able to see what initiatives have worked and what needs to change to improve performance. 
  
• External benchmarking: This involves analyzing your product against competitors or a set of industry standards. This is where you find out how you stack up against the real world. This is useful when you want to assess your product positioning and find areas where competitors have the edge. 

Ideally, you’ll be using both types of product benchmarking to get a better sense of how you’re doing relative to your industry and to yourself. Focusing on your own product performance helps keep you grounded too. You always want to be a little bit better than yesterday. 

What are the benefits of product benchmarking? 

Product benchmarking is something you definitely should be doing as a Product Manager. There’s a whole range of benefits waiting for you each time you analyze your performance against industry or internal benchmarks. When you benchmark properly, here are some of the things you’ll be able to do: 

Prioritize with precision 

Benchmarking helps you focus on what truly matters by revealing where your product excels and where it stinks. It can confirm areas where you’re already leading the pack or highlight hidden opportunities for improvement. For instance, if your conversion rates are already stellar, you can shift attention to other areas like retention or scalability.

Uncover market trends and stay relevant

Regular benchmarking keeps you informed about market shifts and emerging trends. This helps you adapt your product to meet changing customer expectations, adopt new ideas that are gaining traction, and avoid clinging to outdated features that no longer serve your audience.

Foster continuous improvement

Benchmarking provides actionable insights to improve not only your product but also your processes. Whether it’s optimizing workflows or refining features, this data-driven approach supports ongoing innovation.

Enable data-backed decision-making

With insights from benchmarking, you can confidently prioritize updates, allocate resources, and plan roadmaps based on facts, not hunches. This facilitates data-driven Product Management which allows you to reduce the risk of investing in features or strategies that don’t deliver ROI. 

Set realistic goals

Aiming for the sky is admirable, but set your target too high and you’re just going to end up disappointed. Benchmarking gives you a sense of what’s achievable by showing you where top performers are in your market. This helps set practical yet ambitious goals for your product and team.

What metrics should you measure when product benchmarking? 

When benchmarking your product, the metrics you focus on will typically differ depending on your industry and the type of product you have. For example, a B2B SaaS tool will want to focus on different metrics than an entertainment platform.

That said, some metrics are just more important than others and will be ones that you’ll want to measure and compare against regardless of the industry you’re in. We’ve broken down the most common metrics to benchmark and explain why they matter and why everyone looks at them. 

1. Activation rate

Activation rate measures the percentage of users who complete a key action that signifies they’ve experienced your product’s core value proposition. Known as user activation, this is often the first major hurdle in the user journey. A strong activation rate indicates that your onboarding process and initial value delivery are working as intended.

By comparing your activation rate to that of competitors, you can evaluate whether your entry-point experience meets industry expectations and pinpoint areas for improvement if your rate lags behind.

2. Product stickiness

Product stickiness refers to how often users engage with your product, typically measured by the ratio of Daily Active Users (DAU) to Monthly Active Users (MAU). A sticky product is one that users find indispensable, making it a critical indicator of long-term engagement and user retention.

Benchmarking your product’s stickiness against competitors allows you to gauge whether users are engaging with your product on a regular basis, signaling that your product is meeting their day-to-day needs. If your stickiness is lower than competitors, it might point to areas where your product is failing to capture frequent usage or ongoing user interest.

3. Feature adoption rate

Feature adoption rate tracks the percentage of users who regularly use a specific feature out of the total number of active users. This metric helps you understand how well individual features resonate with your user base. When benchmarking feature adoption, comparing your rates to others in your space can highlight features that are underutilized and suggest opportunities to improve those features, making them more valuable and appealing.

If a particular feature has low adoption compared to industry standards, it could indicate usability issues or a lack of user education around its benefits, which you can address by creating a killer product tour to improve overall engagement.

4. Net Promoter Score (NPS)

Net Promoter Score (NPS) measures customer loyalty and satisfaction by asking users how likely they are to recommend your product to others on a scale of 0 to 10. This score gives a broad picture of your product’s reputation and overall customer sentiment.

A high NPS compared to industry benchmarks can suggest that users are highly satisfied and willing to advocate for your product. On the other hand, a low score signals areas for improvement.

By benchmarking your NPS against the average standard in your industry, you can gain insights into where your product stands in terms of user loyalty and identify specific areas to focus on for boosting customer satisfaction.

5. Customer churn rate

Customer churn rate refers to the percentage of customers who stop using your product within a specific time frame. High churn is often a warning sign that your product may not be meeting users’ needs or that there are issues with user retention.

By comparing your churn rate to benchmarks, you can determine whether your retention efforts are on par with industry standards. If your churn rate is higher than average, it might suggest a need for improvements in user engagement, product-market fit, or customer support to keep users satisfied and reduce turnover.

6. Pirate Metrics (AARRR Framework)

The Pirate Metrics framework, encompassing Acquisition, Activation, Retention, Referral, and Revenue (AARRR), provides a comprehensive view of your product’s performance throughout the entire user lifecycle. Benchmarking each stage of the AARRR funnel helps you identify strengths and weaknesses across your product’s journey.

For instance, if your retention rate is lower than the benchmark, it might suggest that your users aren’t finding lasting value or engagement in your product. Understanding how each of these stages stacks up against the rest of the industry helps you focus on areas with the greatest impact on your overall performance, guiding you toward optimizing your product for long-term success.

While the above metrics are common benchmarks, the specifics will shift based on your industry:

• B2B SaaS: Should also focus on metrics like free-to-paid conversion rates, customer lifetime value (CLTV), and time-to-value. These reflect the subscription-based nature of the model and the importance of long-term customer relationships.
• B2C Products: Metrics like DAU, MAU, and user engagement are more critical, as these products typically rely on high-volume, frequent interactions to thrive.
• E-commerce: Metrics such as average order value, cart abandonment rate, and purchase frequency come into play.

By customizing your benchmarking efforts to your industry and target audience, you can ensure you’re tracking the metrics that matter most, providing insights that directly support your product strategy.

So you know what to measure, but what are the benchmarks you’re looking to beat? Well, Mind The Product has a pretty interesting benchmarking tool that gives details on the overall performance of these metrics for various industries. It’s worth checking out. 

Common product benchmarking mistakes you might be making

Alright, here’s the juicy bit. There are a lot of things at play that mean that you may not be getting the most out of your product benchmarking.

Have you ever done your product benchmarking and felt like crying because everything pales in comparison? Have you ever done your benchmarking, seen where you’re lagging behind, but have no idea how to improve it? If these are common experiences for you when undertaking product benchmarking, the good news is that we’re going to help set you straight and turn this comparison exercise into something truly valuable for you.

If product benchmarking isn’t doing it for you right now, here’s where you may be going wrong: 

You’re comparing against the wrong benchmarks

You need to find the most relevant benchmarks you can to get the most useful comparison. Don’t base your assessment on extremely broad benchmarks that haven’t drilled down into your niche. It’s important to do your research and try to find the most granular data you can. If your product is a B2B SaaS tool, don’t settle for benchmarks for all ‘digital products’.

If your product is an e-commerce platform and you want to assess your ‘time on page’ performance (for example), don’t base your comparison on a general benchmark, look for specific e-commerce website benchmarks. 

Otherwise, you run the risk of unfairly comparing your performance against products that will always have a stronger performance in some areas than you. For example, if you are managing an e-commerce site as your product, you don’t want to be assessing your performance based on benchmarks for, say, returning traffic, which also include tools like email platforms. People are in their emails every day – you can’t compete with that! And nor should you. You need to be looking at benchmarks for returning traffic that are specific to the e-commerce industry.

You’ll also hit issues if you’re trying to conduct your product benchmarking against specific products rather than general industry data.  And that’s because it’s only the super mega-successful companies that are openly sharing their performance metrics! 

It’s a lot easier to gather information from the likes of Google, Slack, and Dropbox, as they are proud of what they’ve achieved and want to boast. These companies often share eye-popping metrics that seem like the gold standard. But here’s the issue: their performance isn’t typical – it’s exceptional. These companies operate on a scale, budget, and level of maturity that most businesses can’t match.

The issue here is that measuring up against these companies means that you end up comparing yourself against the top 1%. Setting your product benchmarking against ultra-successful companies leads to unrealistic expectations. It’s like comparing your weekend jog to an Olympian marathon runner – it sets you up for disappointment and skews your understanding of where you really stand.

It’s fine to aspire to these performance results and try and learn from these companies that are killing it, but it’s not fair to assess your performance against them right now.

The fix: Use benchmarks relevant to your industry and based on aggregate data across the broad spectrum of products in the space.  

It’s like boxing, a Heavyweight can’t fight a Featherweight as it’s an unfair matchup. This “weight class” approach ensures the comparison is fair and actionable. You’ll gain insights that are actually relevant to your business. 

You’re measuring against unreliable data

So you want to benchmark against competitors, but that creates another issue. Unlike big players that often flaunt their success, most companies keep their performance metrics close to their chest. I imagine you’re not posting every minute detail about your Q3 performance, so don’t expect your competitors to do the same.

This means that you have to rely on industry reports that provide an average across a specific market – that’s what benchmarks are after all. Although useful, you need to be mindful that this only provides a snapshot, and may not be as nuanced as you’d ideally like. Plus, these reports are usually released annually, meaning that you end up benchmarking against outdated statistics.

All this can lead you to draw wrong conclusions about your product performance.

The fix: Combine external benchmarks with internal data. If you’re struggling to establish a baseline, draw on your own performance metrics to establish what you need to do and where you need to be going. This can help you supplement the industry benchmarks you may already know. 

You’re focusing on vanity metrics 

Some metrics are great for stoking your ego but don’t really tell you the true health and performance of your product. They may look impressive at first, but may not give you any actionable insights to help you improve things.

For example, having a huge number of overall app downloads might look cool, but it means nothing if your activation and retention rate is abysmal. By skimming this surface-level insight, you risk ignoring more useful metrics about your product’s actual performance.

The fix: Shift your attention from vanity metrics to actionable metrics tied to product outcomes. Things like activation and feature adoption give you more of a clue on whether users find your product valuable. With these detailed metrics as part of your product benchmarking, you’ll know what you need to focus on to improve. 

You’re looking at lagging metrics

Product benchmarking metrics can either look backward or point forward. Metrics like churn rate or revenue often reflect outcomes from decisions made weeks or months ago. While important, they’re backward-looking indicators that tell you what happened, not what’s happening now or what’s likely to happen in the future.

Lagging metrics don’t give you the foresight to make proactive changes. By the time you identify a problem, the damage might already be done. For example, noticing a spike in churn after months of decline means you’re reacting to a crisis instead of preventing it.

The fix: Focus on leading metrics when product benchmarking. These are statistics that by improving them, you’re sure to drive growth. metrics such as activation rate, feature engagement, or product stickiness, provide early signals of potential success or failure. Use these to stay ahead of problems and respond to trends before they snowball into larger issues. 

Your product benchmarking metrics don’t tell you how to improve

All metrics paint a picture and let you know how you’re performing, but when benchmarking your product, you want to isolate metrics that give you insight into where you need to improve. For example, say you’re benchmarking ARR and see that you’re pretty far behind the industry standard. It’s useful to know that you’re behind, but now you’ll be scratching your head trying to figure out why.

It’s like comparing your 100m sprint time to 2024 Olympic Champion Noah Lyles. You can see that your time of 15s (we’re being generous here) against his 9.78s is worse, but why? This metric doesn’t tell where to improve. Is it because he’s got a longer stride? A quicker reaction time off the blocks? Has better lung capacity? You just don’t know where to start to make the biggest improvements. This could lead to you focusing on improving something that gives you marginal gains.

Say you find out that your reaction time off the block is actually comparable to Noah’s, but it’s your stride length that’s letting you down. You’ll get bigger gains by focusing on what’s worse. This is the same thing you need to do with your product – look at metrics that shine a light on the best areas to improve so that you can allocate resources well and efficiently to improve performance.

The fix: Every metric you track in product benchmarking should have a clear purpose, and make it clear what aspect of your product you need to work on. Tracking monthly recurring revenue tells you nothing – but tracking your Customer Retention Rate tells you whether users are sticking around long enough to generate that revenue, and this can give a better indication of what you must do to improve it. 

So, how do you measure up?

Not getting the most out of your product benchmarking? Well, hopefully with this overview and advice on how to fix common mistakes, you’ll be able to compare better and see how you match up. Benchmarking is more than just seeing how you’re doing against others; the focus should be on learning where you should look to improve to make gains and stay competitive.

Product benchmarking is a tool to drive product growth and to make you more successful, so be sure to utilize these tips to take your product benchmarking to the next level.

And if you’re keen to improve your entire Product Management process, why not give ProdPad a try? Our tools help PMs implement best practices into their everyday workflow, helping you to manage roadmaps, tie customer feedback to ideas, and a hell of a lot more. Plus, we’re benchmarking pretty well against other Product Management tools .

But don’t just take our word for it word for it, why not see for yourself. Schedule a demo with one of our product experts and see what ProdPad can do for you.

The post Product Benchmarking: How to Do It Right to Improve Your Product Performance appeared first on ProdPad.

How do you define a North Star metric? 

A North Star metric is essentially the single metric that every team in your entire company strives to achieve. It’s a customer-focused metric and should be one that if you hit it, you’ll be able to drive revenue growth and product success. It’s the key measurement that guides a company’s product strategy by clearly connecting customer value to business growth. This vital metric helps align Product Teams and more around a common goal, ensuring that efforts are focused on what truly matters for long-term success and avoiding the pitfalls of dangerous vanity metrics.

Got it? If not, we have a deep and detailed glossary article on North Star metrics that covers EVERYTHING you need to know about them. Check it out if you want to learn more, like why it’s important, how to set one for your own product, and how to properly measure it.

How do you choose your North Star metric? 

Not to catch you out, but if you’ve read our North Star metric glossary article, you’ll already know how to set this key metric. Seriously, we have a whole dang infographic on that. 

Keeping things light here, the most important thing you need to know is that choosing a North Star metric boils down to defining a metric that connects customer value to business growth. If it sounds like we’re repeating ourselves, that’s ‘cause we are! Your North Star metric revolves around this idea, so it’s worth saying twice. 

There are many questions you can ask yourself to help you land on the perfect North Star metric example for you, but it really all simmers down to these three must-haves: 

1. Has to reflect customer value: Your North Star needs to capture the essence of what users value most about the product. That’s why many North Star metric examples are related to user activation, tracking the occurrence of the vital customer action that gets them hooked. 

2. Has to be measurable: There’s little point having a North Star metric that you can’t measure in your product data. It needs to be something tangible and quantitative. Sure, improving customer satisfaction is a good goal to have, but it’s harder to measure reliably than something based on their actual use of your product. So better to choose a weekly usage statistic as your North Star and use that as an indicator of customer satisfaction.  

3. Has to focus on long-term success: Rather than focusing on short-term gains, the best North Star metric examples signal ongoing engagement and loyalty. You’re tracking this metric for the long haul for sustainable growth, it’s not a short-term hyperfixation for a specified length of time. 

North Star metric examples for different types of products

Now it’s time to get into what you came for – some real-world North Star metric examples. Getting a sense of what successful businesses choose for their North Star can help you figure out the best one for you. 

That said, there is one important rule: don’t copy these North Star metric examples word for word. Doing so won’t make you magically have a good one yourself. That’s because North Star metrics are super personal. They relate heavily to each individual business. Your North Star needs to relate to your product vision, not someone else’s.

Now that you’ve been warned not to copy someone else’s homework, let’s take a look. We’ve broken things up into different product types to help you understand how the market and types of customers affect your overall product goals. 

Business software

Hey look, that’s us! If we’re going to be analyzing North Star metric examples, we may as well start with us. Our North Star is all about customer retention, tracking Net MRR (Monthly Recurring Revenue) to ensure that what we’re doing entices users to stick around. And to pat ourselves on the back a bit, we’re doing a good job at that. 

We love our North Star metric because of how it aligns all our teams to this customer-driven focus. It ensures that everyone in the product trio, plus Customer Success, Sales, and even Marketing is driven to provide great value in everything we do – be it a new feature release, product improvements, or customer support. 

We want our users to be lifelong advocates of ProdPad. Kind of like a fan of a band from the 90s who’s still listening to their music 30 years later. This should be a goal of any form of B2B SaaS, as these types of products thrive on sustained usage, making a metric focused on MRR a good option. It shows that customers are finding continuous value with the product. 

But enough about us, what are some other good North Star metric examples for business software? Some things you can track include:

• Feature engagement percentage: This measures how deeply users interact with key features, highlighting whether customers find real utility in the SaaS tool. For instance, if 70% of users are actively using a new feature, it’s a sign the feature hits the mark, and that customers are seeing the value in what you’re providing.
• Customer lifetime value (LTV): Tracking customer lifetime value allows SaaS businesses to understand the total revenue a customer generates throughout their relationship. This metric emphasizes the importance of retaining customers and enhancing the customer experience.

E-commerce

If we’re going to be talking about e-commerce, we can’t look beyond Amazon, the leading e-commerce business in the world – by a long shot. Amazon keeps an eye on purchases per month as their North Star metric. 

This is a solid North Star metric example as it relates to the core action of an e-commerce product – buying products – but also gives them a glimpse into customer satisfaction. If users are increasing their purchases, then their satisfaction is clearly not on a downward trajectory.  

Of course, Amazon tracks a lot of other key performance indicators alongside their North Star metric, and that’s something you should be doing too. 

Remember, your North Star metric isn’t a replacement for tracking others KPIs, it’s just the one you care about the most – like a favorite child. In fact, you should track related KPIs that give your North Star some more context. For Amazon, they track things like average delivery times, the number of returned items, and more, which are all focused on their core mission – to be the most customer-centric business in the world.

As an e-commerce business, your goal for growth is to get users to continue buying from you time and time again. To that end, here are a couple more North Star metric examples you can focus on if you don’t vibe with Amazon’s:

• Returning customer rate: Tracking your returning customer rate is an insightful North Star metric for e-commerce products as it signals longterm customer loyalty and satisfaction. High returning customer rates shows that users enjoy the e-commerce experience and trust the brand, leading to predictable revenue growth. 
• Average order value (AOV): AOV measures the average amount spent per transaction. Increasing this metric can indicate successful upselling or cross-selling strategies and helps gauge the effectiveness of promotions or product bundling. Higher AOV also directly impacts revenue without needing to get more customers.

Communication tools

Zoom’s North Star metric is a powerful example fora communication tool, as it highlights the importance of identifying actions that reflect genuine user engagement. For Zoom, the focus on frequency – tracking the number of critical actions, like meetings or calls per week- enables them to gauge both product stickiness and user reliance. This is particularly important when you have a communication product, where long-term growth often hinges on consistent, habitual usage rather than occasional or one-time interactions.

Frequency-focused metrics like Zoom’s help track sustained engagement and user retention. By honing in on weekly active usage, Zoom captures a real-time snapshot of customer loyalty and satisfaction, which is crucial for adapting and responding to market needs. This also supports data driven Product Management: if the frequency drops, it could indicate a need for new features, improvements, or more effective customer support.

Additionally, Zoom’s approach aligns with the trend of Product-Led Growth (PLG), where the product itself drives user acquisition and retention. A frequency-based metric allows Zoom to pinpoint precisely how often users find value in their platform, shaping their growth strategies around improving those moments.

Some other great communication-focused North Star metrics include:

• Time spent in meetings/calls: Tracking the total time users spend in meetings or calls gives you insight into how well your product is meeting customer needs. A longer average suggests that users rely on your product for in-depth discussions or prolonged interactions, indicating strong engagement and utility.
• Time to value (TTV): Time to value tracks the time it takes for a new user to experience the product’s wow moment. Reducing TTV is critical for improving user onboarding and increasing conversion rates, as quicker value realization encourages users to engage more deeply with the product.

Collaboration tools

The value of collaboration products comes from users having other active teams to interact and work with. If that number is below your benchmark, they may not be getting the most value out of the product. That’s why tracking daily active users is such a useful North Star metric for Slack. It directly correlates to its goal of being an everyday utility for teams. 

DAUs reflect engagement and reliability, showing how much teams depend on Slack for their workflows. By improving DAUs, Slack measures how effectively they make work-life easier and more connected, a critical element for a productivity tool aiming to boost collaboration.

Of course, there are other metrics collaboration tools can follow, such as:

• Daily messages sent per user: This product adoption metric measures how many messages each user sends daily, reflecting individual engagement levels. A higher average indicates that users are actively utilizing the platform for communication, which suggests that the tool is integral to their daily workflows.
• Average response time to messages: Measuring the average response time to messages can indicate how quickly users are communicating. A shorter response time suggests that the platform facilitates prompt interactions, which is crucial for effective collaboration and maintaining productivity.

Entertainment and media

Entertainment and media products will have slightly different North Star metric examples, more focused on total usage. Your goal is to keep users engaged with your product and to increase screen time, so Netflix’s North Star of total hours viewed is a great example. It’s a direct reflection of engagement. When people spend more time watching, it indicates they find value in the content. Hours viewed shows that users are not only engaging with Netflix but enjoying it enough to stay. This metric is ideal for Netflix, as it directly ties into their goal of being the go-to entertainment platform.

If your product is focused on written content, like Medium, you can augment this metric into something like ‘minutes spent reading per week.’ There are actually quite a lot of potential North Star metric examples that will work for media products. A few more include:

• Subscriber growth rate: Many media products use a subscription-based product pricing strategy, so tracking the growth rate of subscribers provides insight into the company’s ability to attract and retain paying customers. A consistent growth rate indicates strong demand for the content offered and effective marketing strategies.
• Content completion rate: This metric measures the percentage of viewers who finish watching or reading a piece of content, such as a movie, episode, or blog. A high completion rate indicates that the content is engaging enough to keep viewers interested from start to finish, which can inform product production decisions.

Hospitality and travel

For hospitality and travel products, things are a bit more unique. These apps must cater to users who are frequently on the move, seeking seamless, personal experiences that enhance their journey. They demand intuitive interfaces, quick access to essential information, and features that cater to both planning and in-the-moment needs. Ensuring high user engagement, a smooth user interface, and strong retention is key to making every interaction feel valuable to the customer.

Tracking the number of nights booked is crucial for hospitality and travel products like Airbnb because it captures the platform’s effectiveness in meeting the needs of both sides of its marketplace: travelers and hosts. Each booking reflects not just the platform’s reach but its reliability and value, creating a direct link between user satisfaction and business growth. 

Each night booked serves as a tangible indicator of entire marketplace trust. For travelers, it shows they trust the platform to offer secure, enjoyable, and unique accommodations. For hosts, it reflects trust in Airbnb’s ability to connect them with reliable guests. This trust is essential to Airbnb’s brand and long-term sustainability.

It also provides a good customer feedback loop. Nights booked offers a metric that reflects the overall user experience. High booking rates imply that users find value in the offerings, feel that the interface is intuitive, and trust the payment and communication systems. Tracking this metric can inform Airbnb of areas where experience can be further enhanced or optimized. 

Of course, there are more things you can check out when looking for a North Star metric example for a hospitality and travel product. Other important metrics that can become your North Star include:

• Booking conversion rate: This tracks how many users go from browsing to booking, reflecting the product’s ability to convert interest into action. It’s a crucial North Star metric because it directly measures the app’s effectiveness in turning potential interest into actual revenue. A high conversion rate suggests that the app is successfully engaging users, providing relevant options, and simplifying the decision-making process. 
• Time from search to booking:  Shorter times suggest a smooth user experience, an intuitive interface, and successful personalization and recommendations, encouraging users to act quickly. A shorter booking time often means users aren’t facing barriers or confusion, which is key in travel where decisions may need to be quick and convenient. 

Bad North Star metric examples

To help you create your North Star metric, it’s not enough to just see the best-in-class examples. It’s also worthwhile to see some bad ones so you know what to stay away from. 

Now we’re not going to be cruel and highlight any real examples because we don’t want to pick on anyone. That’s not nice. Instead, here are some generic creations that you might see and why they suck. 

If you’re reading these and notice a stark resemblance to your North Star metric, I don’t know what to tell you. You know what you need to do. These are the kinds of things you want to avoid. 

Number of sign-ups 

This is a pretty poor North Star metric as it only tracks the acquisition stage of the customer journey. This metric tells you next to nothing about how they’re using the product, and if they’re getting value from it. 

Users may sign up and never return, making this an unreliable measure of how well your product is doing. Something better may involve tracking active users. 

Number of free trial users

Oh boy, tracking something like this is a bad move. Yeah, free trials indicate the interest people have in your product, but again, it doesn’t let you see if users are finding the value in your product. And remember, it’s that value that drives success. 

You may see a huge uptick in trials and think, great, people love our product, but that can be explained by a good marketing strategy or offers, not because your product rules. This metric doesn’t highlight long-term customer retention or engagement, which are crucial for growth.

Any vanity metric

To be honest, if you’re using vanity metrics as your North Star, you’re completely missing the mark. Website visitors, app downloads, and even feature usage counts won’t work because they fail to measure product value. These metrics are as hollow as a balloon. They can paint a rosy picture, but won’t inform you if your product is solving customer problems. 

North Star metric examples – your role models

Your North Star metric serves as your torch in the dark. It shines a light on your product to help you align your strategies around a common goal and drive meaningful growth. This metric encapsulates what success looks like for an organization, focusing on user engagement, satisfaction, and long-term value. While it’s essential to look at industry-specific North Star metric examples for inspiration, it’s crucial to remember that these should serve as role models rather than exact blueprints.

Every business is unique, with its own goals, customer base, and challenges. Adopting a North Star metric that directly reflects your specific objectives will ensure that it resonates with your team and truly drives your success. Use these examples to ignite your creativity and spark new ideas, but tailor your metrics to suit your organization’s needs.

Define your North Star and let it guide your roadmap. If you’re ready to elevate the way you use product roadmaps, give ProdPad a try. Our free trial shows you how ProdPad streamlines planning, helps prioritize what truly matters, and keeps your entire team aligned with your North Star metric – all so you can build better products with confidence.

The post North Star Metric Examples to Kickstart Your Thinking appeared first on ProdPad.

Why use user onboarding software?

We don’t need to tell you the importance of nailing your product onboarding, right? If you don’t help your first-time users quickly and easily understand your product – what it does, how to use it and why it will be valuable to them – they won’t continue to use it, adopt it or pay for it. Your product will fail. 

So we’re agreed that it’s crucial to guide your users through their first use of your product and give them a specific onboarding experience to ensure they come back for more. But why do you need to use a user onboarding software tool for this job? Why is it better to add a tool to your stack for this, rather than just building your own product tours and onboarding flows directly into your own product? 

There are a couple of pretty compelling reasons.

You have full control

Using user boarding software for your product tours and onboarding flows will give you, as a Product Manager, far greater control. These no-code solutions mean you can just jump into the tool and create your flows, add your copy and make all the tweaks you want to, when you want to, without having to beg, borrow or steal time from your developers.

You can move faster

You can also move a lot faster because you won’t have to rely on any help from developers. 

If you choose to build your own onboarding flows and product tours directly into your product, you’ll need to factor that into your development planning. That will likely mean you need to add that to your product roadmap and prioritize the work amongst everything else. 

Whereas if you use a ready-made tool for this job, then you can just get on with it yourself and you won’t need to disturb the product roadmap. You can get this initiative up and running concurrently to the other initiatives on your roadmap. 

So, you can move faster AND avoid impacting the rest of the product development you want to do.

What is user boarding software?

Regardless of whether you use these tools in your own product yet or not, you will have experienced the work of these tools yourself when you’ve first signed up for a new app. Those tool tips, modals, pop-ups and notifications that guide through and show you how to use the product – that’s user onboarding software in action.  

User onboarding software is the behind-the-scenes toolkit that creates and powers these smooth, helpful experiences for new users.

These tools are typically SaaS products that provide you with a low to no-code way of creating these onboarding flows and integrating them into your product.

What should you look for in user onboarding software?

There are a lot of user onboarding software tools on the market right now and it can be hard to work out which ones are worth evaluating. That’s why we’ve compiled this list – to give you a shortlist to pick. But what are the fundamental features and functionality you should expect from a user onboarding software tool? Let us walk you through the key things you should be looking for in a decent product tour tool.

No-code necessary

The beauty of using user onboarding software rather than building your product tours directly into your product is the ability it affords you as the Product Manager to crack on with it yourself. As we’ve already said, it means you can get in-app tours up and running without having to plan it into your development sprints and patiently wait until it gets prioritized. 

All the tools we’re recommending on this list allow you to build and publish your flows from their own UIs. All you’ll need to do is add a one-time script to your product and then you can create, tweak and publish to your heart’s content.

Analytics to measure performance

The whole point of creating these product tours is to guide as many new users as possible through certain activation tasks and valuable actions. So you need your user onboarding software to tell you how successfully that is being achieved. 

You need to use a product tour tool with a robust analytics suite that will allow you to see things like views and completion rates for complete flows, as well as individual steps. Ideally you would also be able to filter the analytics by different user segments so you can drill down further. 

Analytics for individual sessions can also be useful, providing details of the events and the timings so you can form a picture of how your users are moving through the flow step by step. 

Customizable branding & design

You need to be able to customize the appearance of the pop-ups, tool tips and guidance notes that appear for your users so your tours are blended into the overall app experience and don’t feel jarring. It’s important that these tours feel part of a consistent experience and not a bolted-on addition. 

All of the tools on our list have robust out-of-the-box design customization that should allow you to pick your font, colors and more. Some of these user onboarding software tools also offer custom CSS so you can tweak the appearance of any of the tour elements even further, should you need to. 

Integrations

You should consider the integrations you might need when it comes to your user onboarding software. You’ll want to push data into your chosen tool to help improve the targeting of your product tours, and you’ll likely want to push data out to communicate and measure results and to help inform other experiences across other channels. 

So, think about the rest of your tech stack – what integrations would you ideally need? And would you be happy with using something like Zapier to connect the apps, or would a native integration be better? 

Consider the following integrations when selecting your user boarding software:

• Your product analytics tool
• Your CRM
• Calendar tool to book demos or onboarding calls
• Your Live chat tool

Triggers and targeting options

At a basic level you’ll need to be able to set the triggers for when your product tours pop up. That could be a particular page in your app, or it could be based on a particular action a user has taken. You’ll need some level of control on when the product tour first fires so you can be sure it comes in at the right time. 

Some of the user onboarding software tools on our list will allow you to get more sophisticated with your triggers and enable you to segment your users and show different flows to different cohorts. 

Templates to get you started

It’s always helpful to see examples to help kick-start your thinking, so consider whether you’d ideally like your chosen user onboarding software to come with some ready-made template onboarding flows that you can pick up and adapt. They’re a great way to get started and can help you move that bit faster.

A/B testing and experimentation

You’re a Product Manager, so experimentation is in your blood! You’ll want a tool that will allow you to test different flows and measure the results so you can learn and iterate. If this sounds like something you’d want, be sure to double check your chosen tool has the ability to A/B test flows at least.

Common features of user boarding software

Here’s a quick checklist of features you’d typically expect to have in a good user onboarding software tool. 

• Product tours
• Checklists
• Announcements – banners, modals
• Surveys
• Hotspots
• Tooltips
• Analytics
• Segmentation and targeting 

Now you understand the lay of the land when it comes to user onboarding software, let’s dive into our list of the best 9 solutions on the market right now.

The Best User Onboarding Software

In no particular order…

1. Chameleon

Chameleon is a fairly extensive user onboarding tool offering all of the features listed above. They have product tours, tooltips, surveys, widgets, modals, banners and checklists. 

Chameleon also recently launched a universal search bar facility, which is pretty interesting.  It’s called Helpbar.ai. You can connect it to your help center and use it to offer your users the ability to search within your content and to get AI answers to their questions. 

There’s a cool way to try this out. Just add your help center URL into their website and you can instantly use the search functionality to get an AI generated answer to any question. Check it out for yourself. 

They also have a great Inspiration Gallery on their website that showcases a whole bunch of in-product guidance examples including tooltips, onboarding flows, upsell modals and more.

Pricing

Chamelon offers three pricing tiers, from Startup to Enterprise. The cost ranges depending on your product’s userbase. For 2000 monthly users, the Startup tier is priced at $279 a month. A nice bonus is that The HelpBar functionality of Chamelon is free is to use. Find more details on their pricing here. 

2. Appcues

Appcues are one of the major players in the user onboarding software game, with some big SaaS customers using them like AdRoll, ProfitWell and Vidyard. 

Appcues have one of the largest selection of integrations – 28 of which are native. Also, kudos to them on the integrations page on their website – thats some really nice web and UX design right there!

If you’re looking for a product tour tool that will work across both desktop and mobile and/or on mobile native applications, then Appcues should be one of your front runners. They have a particular focus on mobile with the Appcues Mobile tool. 

They also offer AI-powered localization that will deliver your onboarding flows in each user’s local language. So no matter what language you use in your product, you can deliver that all-important guidance and tutorial content in the user’s own language.

Pricing

The cost of Appcues scales depending on your average monthly user base. For 2500 monthly active users, Appcues Essentials plan will cost $249 a month, while their Growth tier costs $879 a month for the same monthly users. There’s also an Enterprise plan with custom pricing. Find out more on their pricing here.

3. Userpilot

Userpilot comes with an analytics tool that goes beyond the engagement with your product tours, so you can use this tool as your overall product analytics tool. Userpilot also has event auto-capture, allowing you to create all your tracking events without needing developers’ involvement.

The analytics for the user onboarding flows in Userpilot also offers the ability to set what they call ‘growth goals’ which you can use to measure your ongoing success rate. For example, you could set a goal of achieving 300 demo bookings with a particular product tour and the grow goals feature will track progress against that goal and surface an easy-to-understand goal report. 

Pricing

Userpilot offers three plans, a Starter, Growth, and Enterpirse tier. Their cheapest plan starts at $249 a month, with their Growth tier costing $749 a month when paid annually. If you’re looking for a pay monthly option, their Starter plan increases to $299 a month. Get the full breakdown of Userpilot pricing here.

4. Product Fruits

From a team based in the Czech Republic, Product Fruits specializes in AI generated product tour content. So if you’re not sure where to start or want to get off the ground particularly quickly, this could be a good way to spin up something as an initial test. 

These guys also allow you to deploy their snippet via Google Tag Manager, so you can get setup and have user tours published to your product without needing to bother your dev team at all.

Pricing

Product Fruits offer three tiers from ‘Core’ to Enterprise. Their lowest package starts at $79 a month for up to 1500 users. They define users as unique, active monthly users. Find more details on their pricing here.

5. UserGuiding

The folks at UserGuiding claim you can get completely set up and running in just 15 minutes. UserGuiding positions itself as the easiest of the user onboarding software tools, with the simplest implementation. 

Interestingly, you actually build your tours through their Chrome extension. This allows you to create and test the tours on top of your product right away, in real time. 

Pricing

UserGuiding offers three different options, a Basic, Professional, and Corporate Plan. The basic plan starts at $89 a month, with the Pro plan costing $249 a month based on a product with 2500 monthly active users. For their Corporate Plan, get in touch directly to get a quote. All the details of UserGuiding’s pricing can be found here.

6. Userflow

Userflow claim that their script has a 5 – 10x smaller footprint than their competitors. This could be a deciding factor for you if you’re concerned about the impact of these user onboarding software scripts on the speed of your app.  

Userflow also allow you to run multiple environments, meaning you can build and test your onboarding flows on your staging environment first before replicating on production. This means you can have one Userflow account and publish to more than one place.

Pricing

Userflow pricing starts at $240 a month for their Startup plan, designed for products with less than 10,000 monthly active users. To access their Pro plan, pricing starts at $680 a month, but scales up based on your overall active users. Find more details on their pricing here.

7. Whatfix

Whatfix, as a user onboarding software, goes a little further than some of the other tools on this list. Whatfix has three core areas to its product. Alongside their ‘digital adoption platform’, they also have a product analytics tool and something called Whatfix Mirror. 

Their Mirror tool is a simulated web application package that lets you create replicas of your web app to use like a sandbox environment for hands-on user training. Pretty cool right? This means, you can spin up a replica of your app without needing to borrow development time to do it. 

Within their user onboarding software tool they have a nice feature which allows you to export any of the content or tours you’ve created as videos, slide decks, how-to articles and PDFs. This is a great feature for helping you to scale your training materials quickly and easily. So every time you create a new product tour, you can spin it out into a whole range of different materials which your CS teams, Sales people and even Marketing can use as content.

Pricing

Whatfix offers three different plans, their Standard, Premium, and Enterprise tiers. In terms of pricing, you’re going to have to ask them directly. You can find out more about what each tier offers and request pricing information here.

8. Intercom

Intercom is first and foremost a Customer Service tool. You might even use it in your company to run your Help Center, live chat and Support tickets. But did you know they also offer a user onboarding tool? 

Needless to say, their product tours integrate seamlessly with the other elements of Intercom including their live chat interface. This means that you can surface relevant product tours to customers when they ask specific questions in the chat window. So, if a user hops into the chat to ask how to use a particular feature, rather than surfacing a help article on it, the chatbot can surface a link directly to the product tour for that feature. Neat hey? 

So if you’re already using Intercom as your Support tool, it could be well worth taking a look at their product tour functionality before you start evaluating brand new tools.

Pricing

Intercom starts at $39 per seat per month for their Essential plan, and rises to $139 per seat per month for the Expert plan. You can also choose to add on Proactive Support Plus for $99 a month to get advanced in-app and outbound support. Learn more about Intercom pricing here.

9. Hopscotch

Hopscotch doesn’t restrict the number of product tours you can create, no matter what pricing tier you are on, which is a nice touch. They also offer discounts for early-stage startups.

With Hopscotch, you can create your own tour templates, making it easier to create more and more tours and have other people on your team build experiences for your users. 

However, if you need to run your tours across both desktop and mobile, Hopscotch won’t be the tool for you as they don’t currently support mobile applications. 

Pricing

Hopscotch keeps things simple, offering a single plan that you can choose to pay monthly or annually. When paid annually, it’ll cost you $6.67 a month, or $79.99 for the year. Their pay monthly plan costs $9.99. Learn more about their pricing here. 

That concludes our list of the best user onboarding software tools. You should find a tool that works for you in terms of both functionality and budget from that lot. For the record, here at ProdPad we use Userflow. If you want to see that tool in action, why not start a free trial of ProdPad and take a look at our onboarding flows. We’d love to know what you think!

The post 9 Best User Onboarding Software Tools appeared first on ProdPad.

So, that’s what we want to help you do – understand exactly where you add value to the business and how to present that to the leadership team so they are left in no doubt about the ROI they get from your salary! 

One of the major ways you deliver ROI as a Product Manager is through the work you do in product discovery. That’s what we’re going to cover today. But, remember, product discovery is only one way in which Product Managers deliver value and return on investment to their organizations. If you’re looking to craft your argument on the ROI you deliver to your employers, this is only one string to that bow. Be sure to consider every aspect of your role and outline how you deliver impact in each instance. 

As well as the work you do in product discovery, you also have a significant financial impact through:

• Prioritization and decision-making
• Strategic planning 
• Momentum and progress monitoring 
• Outcome tracking and measurement
• Feedback analysis 

Luckily we’ve written a complete guide covering each of these areas and how to articulate the economic impact of your work. The guide also includes five different calculations you can use to put real numbers behind that value and prove the ROI you deliver for your organization. 

For today, we’re going to drill down into the ROI of product discovery specifically. This article is designed to provide you with a clear and effective way to articulate what you do in this area and how it delivers real, financial results for your organization.

So, whether you’re forming an argument for the future of your role, trying to convince stakeholders for more resource, or simply want to feel good about your work, let’s take a look at the very real value that comes from product discovery.  

What is product discovery? 

I ask that question… but then I’m not actually going to answer it. You know what product discovery is – you’re already doing it. What you’ve come here to learn, is how to articulate WHY this work is so important to the success of your business. 

Having said that, if you could do with seeing a definition so you can be certain we’re talking about the same thing, or you want a simple explanation to present to your stakeholders, we have an in-depth article all about what product discovery is, what it involves and how to do it well over in our Product Management Glossary. So check it out. 

But, today’s topic is WHY discovery is important and HOW it delivers real, tangible financial returns to your employers. 

The business value of product discovery

Product discovery is, ultimately, a risk-reduction strategy – a proactive, risk-prevention tactic that mitigates against building the wrong thing and wasting costs, time and resources on outputs that don’t drive business-critical outcomes. 

The discipline of product discovery is about verifying assumptions, validating ideas and refining product hypotheses. In this way, it’s the crucial due diligence that provides assurances and confidence that what you invest in as a business is valid and has the potential to be successful. 

Product discovery de-risks the expensive investments made into product development. No business leader would acquire another business without undertaking due diligence and ensuring the business’ financial grounding is sound. Equally, a business should never invest the considerable costs of software development until the product or feature idea has been validated and the hypothesis has been affirmed. 

No matter how experienced and knowledgeable a team is about their target user/consumer any new product ideas they come up with will always be based on assumptions that are just that – assumptions. All assumptions have the potential to prove invalid. 

An example of product discovery

Let us illustrate this with an example.

Imagine you have a mobile banking app. There is a product idea for a new feature that allows people to scan checks using their phone camera and pay them into their bank accounts. 

One of the assumptions here is that people actually have checks that they need to pay into their account. Imagine not running through product discovery to test the assumption that bank customers needed to pay checks into their account, and finding out, once the design team had spent 3 days designing, the dev team had spent 2 sprints developing and the QA testers had spent a day testing, that none of the existing customers regularly, if ever, received checks. No one wants this feature or cares about it. Usage is zero. No new customers are acquired as a result of this feature. 

Yet some product discovery work could have uncovered that truth fairly quickly with a delve into the data from the in-branch paying-in activity, or a quick survey out to the current mobile app users. 

OK, maybe that example feels like an obvious wrong move, but only the most arrogant and foolhardy risk-taker would throw caution to the wind and forgo due diligence on their loose ideas and hunches. Surely? 

Remember, the output of product discovery work isn’t always a straight yes or a no. It’s not always the difference between a product or feature being built and not being built at all. Product discovery, done well, can help you refine an hypothesis, mature the idea and improve the chances of success. Product discovery de-risks from failure. 

Product discovery as a risk-prevention tactic, is crucial to ensure long-term business stability and growth. Without consistently delivering features and products that answer user problems, customers will cease to find the product valuable and will stop paying for it, thus stability is impossible to sustain. 

Growth (whether coming from new customer acquisition or expansion revenue) is dependent on offering revenue-generating features that more and more people are willing to pay for. The more things you build without thorough validation, the less chance you have that the things you ship will hit the mark, therefore reducing the percentage of your output that is effective and, potentially, revenue-generating. Thus growth will be slower if not non-existent. 

Who is responsible for product discovery?

If you’re putting forward a case for the importance of your role as a Product Manager and the specific value YOU deliver to your organization. Then you should make this clear…

Product discovery needs to be conducted by Product Managers.

It’s as simple as that. Yes other team members can and should be involved – like Product Designers, UX Researchers and even Developers (when it comes to technical feasibility) – but without Product Managers leading the charge, you risk discovery negatively affecting your overall velocity. 

Let me explain. To deliver the highest possible ROI from product discovery work, it needs to be conducted as part of a dual-track agile process. That is, discovery should be running concurrently to the rest of the development work – while one thing is being built, another thing is being researched and validated. This ensures there is always a consistent stream of valid product ideas with the highest chances of success entering the delivery phase. This is how you work smart and move fast.

If Designers or Developers were responsible for discovery work, the ability to operate in a dual track way collapses. If Devs or Designers have to conduct their own discovery before picking up a product idea to work on, velocity plummets and output decreases. 

Let’s also understand the skill-set needed to get the best results from product discovery. Not only do you need significant research expertise, but you also need to be experienced in customer and user communication. This is another reason why product discovery work is best owned by Product Managers. 

How to calculate the ROI of product discovery

As we’ve already outlined, the value of product discovery comes from risk-reduction and prevention of lost costs. The work you do as a Product Manager in the area of discovery is about de-risking product development to ensure maximum return and minimal cost inefficiencies. 

Understanding how to quantify the financial value of that risk prevention is one of the fundamental ways you can present an air-tight argument for the importance of the Product Management function and the impact of your role as PM. 

What is ROI?  

So, if someone has invested in you as a Product Manager, and you’re running product discovery, what results should they expect? 

Return on investment is calculated as: 

Benefit – cost / cost x 100

In this calculation ‘benefit’ can be either revenue or cost saving.  In our case, the benefit is the potential costs saved as a result of the risk-prevention work conducted by PMs. We therefore need to propose what those potential lost costs would have been and center our argument around that. 

Thorough discovery guards against teams wasting time and resource (and therefore money) on a feature or product that no one needs or is willing to pay for. This point is best demonstrated with one specific example where a piece of discovery work gave a significant return in the form of cost saving. 

Can you think of any examples in your recent history where you had a product or major feature idea that was dismissed after discovery? Use that as the basis for your ROI calculation to illustrate your point. 

Here’s how you would go about calculating the potential lost costs should that feature have gone ahead only to find it generated no revenue. 

Essentially, it comes down to the costs of discovery work to find out that an idea is not valid versus the cost of the development, delivery and launch activity, then have the feature generate no revenue. 

1. Calculate cost of resource to take the feature to market

Example: Let’s say there is an idea in your backlog about a significant new feature that you intend to create as an add-on to your current product and charge existing and new customers for it. Let’s map out the scenario where that feature goes ahead without discovery work and is later found to be unwanted and not valuable to your audience. 

*The thinking behind those sales hours is as follows: let’s say you have a team of four Account Managers managing 50 customers each who will be trying to sell this new feature as upsell. They each spend one hour writing an outreach sequence to all 50, then an hour trying to reach the top 10 prospects (2.5 hrs), they book a few of initial calls off the back of that (1.5hrs), from that they book one full demo (1hr), following this they try and close the business over an extended period of time (4 hrs invested). They spend another hour with pipeline management, logging feedback and admin around the deal.  They ultimately sell nothing because the feature does not answer a customer problem. 

2. Calculate costs of discovery work

Now let’s work out the costs of the alternative path where product discovery was conducted and the feature was dismissed as a result. 

Here a Product Manager spends one week in discovery – conducting research, looking at usage, competitors, talking to customers – and concludes that the proposed feature has insufficient demand to make it viable. The product idea is archived and not progressed. Therefore, the total costs of the project are (roughly speaking) only the cost of the PMs time to run discovery.  

3. Calculate the cost saving

That makes the potential cost saving of this discovery work $43,528 (the potential full lost cost of developing the feature without it resulting in sales, minus $2,600, the cost of the discovery time in salary).

4. Calculate the return on the investment in discovery based on the benefit of cost saving 

In our example here, the ROI of that discovery work is:

$43,528 – $2,600 / $2,600 x 100 = 1574%

That’s a pretty compelling return-on-investment. Any business leader would feel confident in their investment in Product Management or a PM role if they were shown to be getting that sort of return.

Therefore, whether you feel you need to present a case right now, or you just want to have some proof points in your back pocket, I would urge you to go and find an example or two from your archived product ideas and run the costs to prove the cost-saving return your product discovery work delivered.

More ROI calculations for Product Managers

That’s one way in which you can crunch the numbers and present a financial result from your work as a Product Manager. But it’s not the only way. As we said at the start of this article, you deliver a return on investment from each aspect of your role. To present the most complete picture of your business impact, you’ll want to cover each area in turn and support them with their own ROI calculation. 

Download your copy of our complete guide to proving the ROI of Product Management and get a step-by-step explanation of five different ROI calculations to help prove the financial impact of your work.  

The post How to Prove the ROI of Product Discovery appeared first on ProdPad.

Feature adoption starts at the discovery phase

Getting people to adopt a feature starts long before launch – you lay the groundwork right at the start, in the discovery phase. It’s where you get your feet under you by getting elbow-deep into your users’ problems, pain points, and workflow gaps.

Engage with your users early and often. There’s no point in making something that seems shiny and cool at the time. You need to build something that adds real value to people’s lives.

Validate your assumptions through direct feedback and observation to avoid developing features that miss the mark. Conduct interviews and surveys, and analyze user behavior to pinpoint problems your product can solve in a new or better way than the rest.

With a clear grasp of the problems, get a team together to brainstorm feature ideas with your users in mind. The more diverse your crew the better – including a wide range of skill sets will net you fresh ideas that are both feasible and laser-focused on what users need.

User personas and user story mapping can be a handy way to visualize your user experience and pick out where a new feature could seamlessly integrate into it. 

Understanding your different types of users, and the steps they take to do what they want in your product will help ensure your new features solve real problems and fit naturally into your users’ existing workflows.

Competitive analysis is also really important. Look at how your competitors address similar problems, identify gaps, and find the opportunities they’ve missed. This will help refine your feature ideas – but remember the aim is to outshine them, not just copy their latest successful feature.

De-risk your launches

Nobody wants a feature to land with a thud. That’s where de-risking comes in – it’s like building a safety net for your awesome new feature before you light the fuse on the rocket.

Here’s how to make sure it becomes a user favorite, not a forgotten relic:

Nail your story before you break ground on the code

Take inspiration from Amazon’s “Working Backwards” method, and try writing the press release for your new product before you even start work on it – tell a killer story about what problem it solves and why users will love it. Your putative press release should answer questions like:

• What problem does this feature solve?
• Who will benefit from it?
• How does it improve the user experience?
• What sets it apart from the rest?

If you can’t explain it in a way that’ll make people say “sign me up!”, maybe your idea needs some more work.

Spy on the competition (Shh!)

Before you jump in, check out what your rivals are up to. See what they’re doing well (and not so well) so you can make your feature stand out like a unicorn at a horse race.

Check out what their customers are saying in reviews. See if they have a public roadmap that you could explore. Have a thorough look at their website and help center.

Don’t just steal their ideas, though! Use their strengths and weaknesses to identify gaps in the market. Maybe their feature is clunky and confusing – yours can be smooth and intuitive. Maybe it lacks a key feature – yours can be the whole package.

Talk, talk, talk

Don’t build in a bubble! Talk to your users, your team – basically anyone who might use or be affected by the feature. Get their feedback early and often. It’s like having a built-in focus group before things get serious.

User interviews and surveys are great, but don’t forget your internal team too. Designers, Devs, Marketing, et al. – everyone has a perspective that can help shape the feature.

Test drive before you hit the gas

Don’t unleash a buggy mess on your users. Build a quick and dirty prototype or MVP – think a sketch on a napkin – and see how real people react. This lets you fix any kinks before you invest a ton of time and resources.

A controlled rollout (feature flagging can help here) lets you monitor the feature’s performance and gather feedback from a more manageable group. You can use this feedback to make any necessary adjustments before you commit to a full-scale launch.

Onboarding isn’t just for new products

Launching a feature is like opening a new restaurant – you probably wouldn’t just throw open the doors and hope people know how to order, would you? You’d have a menu and a friendly waiter to explain the dishes and help people pick the perfect combo of options.

Do the same with your feature – make it easy and inviting for users to explore and adopt it. Don’t just drop the feature and expect everyone to figure it out. Use clear messaging, tutorials, and support options to help users understand and embrace your new creation. 

A beta approach to feature adoption

If you feel like you’ve de-risked enough and you can handle the risk, then you might not need a beta. But often beta testing is a great way to understand if the feature will be adopted. If you push it out to a beta group and everyone balks, then you know it probably won’t work when you release it to the wider audience.

Make sure you gather both qualitative and quantitative feedback. See how people interact with the feature, where they struggle, and what they like. Establish a feedback loop –  make necessary adjustments based on the feedback, and communicate those changes back to the people who suggested them. If the feedback is positive, you know you’re on the right track.

How do you measure feature adoption?

Once your new feature is out in the wild, you need to make sure you’ve got the right measures in place to see whether people are actually adopting it. You can’t just press the button and cross your fingers—you need to track how it’s being used.

Event tracking and session replay tools can be incredibly useful to see how people are interacting with your feature. Tools like Mixpanel, Amplitude, and Hotjar let you track specific actions users take, replay sessions to see exactly how they use your feature, and gain insights into their behavior.

Here are some key metrics to track feature adoption:

• Usage Frequency: Measure how often users engage with the feature. Are they using it daily, weekly, or just once and never again?
• Task Completion Rates: Check how effective the feature is by seeing how many users successfully complete the intended tasks using the feature.
• Return Rate: Monitor how often users come back to use the feature again. This helps you understand if the feature has lasting value.

Once you have the usage tracking in place, don’t be blinded by that initial spike when you launch. Sure, it’s exciting, but what you really want to see is sustained usage over time. That’s the pay-dirt.

Make sure the feature becomes part of the fabric of your product, so that people who join later also know about it and use it. Continuous promotion and integration into user onboarding are key to ensuring long-term feature adoption.

By consistently tracking these metrics and keeping a close eye on user behavior, you can understand how well your feature is being adopted and make informed decisions to improve and refine it over time.

How do you sustain feature adoption?

People won’t adopt a feature they don’t know about. So, If you never tell people about the feature again, it just fades into the background. Build it into your onboarding emails, train your Customer Success team to talk about it, and integrate it into in-app flows. This way, new users can discover and start using the feature as part of their regular experience.

You also need to make sure that the feature is easily accessible. There’s no point in hiding it behind complicated menus. Make it a prominent part of the user interface, so people can find it easily and start using it right away.

Regularly update the feature based on user feedback. Show your users that you’re committed to improving the feature and making it even more useful. This continuous improvement helps keep the feature relevant and valuable.

Keep an eye on your adoption metrics and if you see usage dropping, consider promoting the feature afresh. Try dedicating a regular section of your customer newsletter to showcasing a ‘feature of the month’ – it gives you the perfect vehicle for reminding your users about this great feature, well after its launch. That’s what we do here at ProdPad!

Continually promoting your features will help you ensure that they don’t just have a brief blaze of glory but become a valuable and regularly used part of your product.

Who is responsible for feature adoption?

Everyone, frankly. Feature adoption is a whole-team effort. You need to get everyone on board to make sure the feature lands and is successfully adopted.

Product Managers

You’re responsible for understanding user problems, defining the feature, integrating it into the product roadmap, and aligning it with the overall strategy. You’re there to coordinate the efforts across all teams to make sure everyone is aligned. But your job doesn’t stop there.

PMs also own the data. They monitor usage, analyze metrics, and measure how well features have been adopted or not. This data is crucial for understanding user behavior, identifying areas for improvement, and ultimately, driving successful product adoption.

Design and UX

Design and UX teams make sure the feature is intuitive and easy to use. They help create the prototype, then conduct usability tests and iterate on their designs based on user feedback. Their goal is to create a seamless user experience that makes the feature easy to pick up and keep using.

Developers

Developers are the ones who are going to build the feature, so they’re the best people to tell you if it’s feasible before you start. They ensure it works as intended, and iterate on it based on feedback. They also need to thoroughly test it to catch any bugs and ensure it performs well under various conditions.

Marketing

Marketing plays a huge role in promoting the feature. They create campaigns to announce the feature, put out content like blog posts and videos to boost its visibility, and use email marketing to inform customers. They also gather and share user testimonials and case studies to build credibility and show off your product’s real-world value beyond all the marketing-speak.

Customer Success and Support

Your Customer teams provide training and support to users. They create FAQs, help guides, and video tutorials and reach out to users who might benefit from the feature. They’re the front line in helping your users understand and adopt the feature.

Sales

The Sales team can highlight the feature in their pitches and demos to attract and retain customers. They gather insights from potential and existing customers, helping refine the feature to meet user needs better. If they understand how it compares to the competition, they can use that to bolster their pitches.

Everyone has their part to play in feature adoption. By getting everyone to work together, you’ll ensure the feature meets user needs and is easy to use, which in turn should lead to it being adopted.

Feature adoption is about focusing on user needs, not your competitors

In the race to develop new features, it’s easy to become preoccupied with what the competition is doing. It’s worth saying again: your main focus should be on understanding and solving your users’ problems. Your competitors might be doing some flashy stuff, but if it doesn’t resonate with your users… what’s the point?

Find creative solutions and invest in a fantastic UX. Don’t just build a feature, craft an experience that delights users. Think sleek interfaces, intuitive workflows, and features that feel like magic, not a chore.

Personalization is a big plus here – tailor the experience to individual needs and preferences, and try to make each user feel like your product was built just for them.

Don’t try to be everything to everyone, though. Focus on what you do best and make it unbeatable. A master chef excels in specific dishes, not a mediocre buffet. Identify your core competencies – the areas where your product truly shines. Invest in refining these strengths to create an unparalleled user experience that keeps people coming back for more.

When you focus on users, you’ll build features they love, not features that just… exist. Putting user needs first won’t just differentiate your product in the market, it’ll build long-term loyalty and satisfaction among your users.

A loyal user base will be your biggest cheerleader, spreading the word about your amazing product for you, and propelling it towards continued success.

Don’t let sunk costs sink you

Sometimes, a feature just doesn’t take off. It happens! The key is to recognize when to cut your losses and move on.

Here’s how to handle sunk costs smartly:

• Evaluate honestly: Look at the feature’s performance. If it’s not being used, dig into why. Is it hard to find? Not solving the problem? Poorly marketed? Be brutally honest about its shortcomings.
• Iterate or scrap?: If the feature has potential with some tweaks, iterate and improve it. If not, it might be time to let it go. Ask yourself: if you were starting from scratch today, would you build this feature? If the answer is no, it’s probably time to scrap it.
• Learn and document: Capture what went wrong and what you learned from the experience. Document these insights to avoid similar mistakes in the future. This step is crucial for continuous improvement.
• Focus on high-impact areas: Redirect resources to features that show promise or are already successful. Prioritize what will deliver the most value to your users and your business. High-impact areas should get the attention and resources that were previously tied up in the sunk cost feature.
• Communicate clearly: Be transparent with your team and users about the decision. Explain why you’re making the change, how you reached the decision, and how it benefits them in the long run. Clear communication helps maintain trust and keeps everyone aligned.

Sunk costs are a part of the game. Recognize them, learn from them, and move forward with a sharper focus on what really matters. By not letting sunk costs trap you, you can ensure that your efforts and resources are spent on initiatives that provide real value to your users.

Adopting a feature is for life, not just for Christmas

If a tree falls in the woods and no one is around to hear it, did it ever actually fall? And if a feature is launched and no one is around to use it, did you actually launch a feature?

Remember, keep your users at the heart of everything you do, and ditch the copycat mentality. Focus on what makes your product unique and solve the problems that matter most to your users.

Keep an eye on those feature adoption metrics, be ready to pivot if needed, and learn from any bumps along the road. With a data-driven approach and a user-centric mindset, you’ll craft features that solve problems, win hearts, drive engagement, and justify your paycheck!

The post Feature Adoption: How to Make Your New One Stick appeared first on ProdPad.

• What is product-led growth vs sales-led growth?
• What are their benefits?
• Which approach suits your product and business?
• How to blend product-led growth and sales-led growth
• Key considerations to keep in mind
• How to measure your growth

The goal is to arm you with everything you need to align your business’s growth strategy with its overarching objectives, and to guide you to finding the right approach for your product between product-led growth vs sales-led growth.

What is product-led growth?

Product-led growth is when the product itself becomes the main engine for market penetration, customer acquisition, and business expansion.

In a utopian world, your product’s design and utility will be so intuitive that they completely eliminate any need for traditional sales interventions. Ideally, you’ll make a product that’s so user-friendly it’ll encourage users to discover, adopt, and invest in it just by letting them use it.

The allure of product-led growth lies in its scalability and efficiency. There are a lot of success stories in both the B2C and B2B worlds. Think how easy it was to start using streaming services like Spotify and communication tools like Slack, without ever once talking to anyone.

That should already tell you everything you need to know about how a truly well-crafted product can market itself, leverage its inherent and quickly obvious value, and provide a seamless user experience to foster its organic growth. Your work will need to speak for itself, basically.

This is a relatively more recent approach, and it doesn’t just turbo-boost your road to user adoption, it fits in with the modern consumer’s preference for doing things for themselves. Let’s be honest here – nobody really wants to submit a support ticket, do they?

By making building an intuitive UX your priority from the get-go, you can catalyze sustainable growth for your product. Word-of-mouth recommendations, viral marketing, and people loving your product and sticking with it will all bring more and more people in the door.

With product-led growth, your product is the champion. Through its intelligent design and self-explanatory functionality, it’ll be your prime mover, propelling your business forward and ensuring the line keeps going up.

The essence of product-led growth lies in creating a user experience so compelling and intuitive that the product almost sells itself. This approach relies on users discovering the value of the product through direct interaction, facilitated by a set of strategically designed mechanisms. These tools aim to reduce friction at every step of the user’s journey and to empower users to make informed decisions about adopting and upgrading within the product environment.

How can you drive product-led growth?

If you’re trying to create a user experience so compelling and intuitive that your product sells itself, you need your users to discover its value through direct interactions. There are a lot of ways to make this work, designed to reduce friction at every step of the user’s journey and to empower them with everything they need to know about adopting and upgrading.

Methods for driving product-led growth include:

• Free trial: This is your open house invitation. Users get full access to your product for a limited time, encouraging them to dive in and explore all its features. It’s the “try before you buy” ethos that can significantly lower the barrier to entry.
• Freemium model: Here, users get perpetual free access to a basic version of your product. It’s like a teaser that gets them hooked with enough value, betting that their growing needs will push them to upgrade for more features or capacity.
• In-app product tours: Think of this as your product’s guided tour, showcasing its best features and how to use them. It’s a hands-on approach to help new users find their footing right from the get-go, reducing confusion and highlighting value.
• Upgrade paths: These are the well-placed signposts within your product that show users what they could unlock with a premium plan. It’s about teasing the possibilities that lie just one tier up, enticing users to level up their experience.
• Self-serve checkouts: The power is in the users’ hands; they can decide to upgrade or subscribe at any moment without needing to speak to anyone, just by plugging in their card details. This frictionless path to purchase keeps the momentum going from decision to action.
• Automated emails: These are your nudges and whispers, reaching out to users with reminders, tips, and personalized upgrade suggestions based on their usage patterns. It’s a way to stay in the conversation and gently guide them toward deeper engagement or subscription.
• Community building: Creating spaces for users to connect, whether online forums or social media groups, turns the user base into a vibrant ecosystem of support and ideas. This sense of belonging can turn users into advocates and provides invaluable insights directly from those who know your product best.
• Gamification: Sprinkling elements of play, like achievements or progress badges, throughout the user experience can transform routine interactions into engaging and rewarding moments. This approach keeps users coming back, eager to discover what’s next. This is a technique we use here at ProdPad – just start a free trial to see how we use it!
• Referral programs: When users spread the word about your product to friends or colleagues, everyone wins. Incentives for referrals, such as bonus features or discounts, can turbocharge your user base growth, all while lowering the cost of acquiring new users.

What is sales-led growth?

Sales-led growth takes a more traditional and well-trod path vs the self-serve tactics of product-led growth. It puts the spotlight on direct sales efforts, depending on them to capture new clients and grow your business.

This strategy relies heavily on a fantastic Marketing funnel that captures focus and nurtures your leads all the way through to that coveted conversion. It takes a significant focus on personalized interactions with your prospective customers, and regular demos of the product’s value by the Sales team.

Sales-led growth is a very hands-on approach, where each prospect is guided through what your product can do and how it’s better than the rest by your Salespeople.

It’s all about lending that special, personal touch to every interaction you have with your potential clients, tailoring your demos to their specific needs, in the hope of landing what are often large chunks of revenue. It’s still a vital strategy if your product demands a deeper level of engagement and understanding to really get your head around how it can help.

How can you drive sales-led growth?

Sales-led growth strategies hinge on the power of personal touch and direct engagement. You’ll need to focus on understanding each customer’s needs in-depth and presenting them with customized solutions through a more hands-on approach.

From the first hello to the final handshake, sales-led mechanisms are all about creating a dialogue between you and your potential customers, guiding them toward seeing your product as the perfect fit.

Methods for driving sales-led growth include:

• Demos: This is the chance to see your product in action, often tailored to the prospective customer’s interests. It’s a chance to dazzle with a live showcase, highlighting exactly how your product can solve their specific problems.
• Enquiry buttons on pricing pages: These are the “I’m interested, tell me more” buttons that signal a user is considering taking the plunge but needs that extra bit of information or reassurance – opening the door for a direct conversation.
• Sales follow-up: Following up on inquiries or demo attendees with personalized communication can make all the difference. It’s about keeping the conversation going, addressing questions, and moving towards a commitment.
• Cold outreach: Sometimes, you’ve got to make the first move. This can be through targeted emails or calls to potential customers who fit your ideal user profile but haven’t engaged with your product yet. It’s about introducing your solution into their world.
• Invoice creation and contracts: Once a prospect is ready to become a customer, creating invoices and contracts formalizes the relationship. This step often involves negotiation on pricing and terms, paving the way for a long-term partnership.
• Customized onboarding: Especially for complex solutions, offering a tailored onboarding experience can ensure customers integrate the product into their processes effectively, setting the stage for successful adoption and long-term satisfaction.
• Personalized email campaigns: Beyond the initial outreach, crafting email campaigns that speak directly to the prospect’s needs and interests can significantly enhance engagement. Tailoring content based on the prospect’s industry, role, or previous interactions with your product ensures that every message resonates more deeply.
• Targeted advertising: Leveraging data to create highly targeted advertising campaigns can place your product in front of the right eyes at the right time. Whether it’s through social media platforms, search engines, or industry-specific websites, targeted ads can drive awareness and generate leads that are more likely to convert.
• Customer Success teams: Once a sale is closed, Customer Success teams play a crucial role in ensuring clients derive maximum value from your product. By offering ongoing support, training, and advice, these teams can boost customer satisfaction, encourage upsells, and reduce churn.
• Live chat: Offering instant communication options like live chat or chatbots on pricing or product pages can capture prospects at a critical moment of decision-making. These tools allow for real-time answers to questions, helping to remove barriers to conversion on the spot.
• Networking and industry events: Participating in industry events, whether online or in person, can be a powerful way to generate leads and build relationships. Networking opportunities, speaking engagements, and product demos at these events can significantly raise your product’s profile among potential customers.

What are the benefits of product-led growth?

As I mentioned, the draw of product-led growth is how it’s so directly aligned with our digital era’s demands for speed, efficiency, and self-service. There are plenty of ways it can help if you’re aiming to scale rapidly while keeping your focus on your user experience and satisfaction, including:

You’ll have more scalability and lower customer acquisition costs

Product-led growth can help you reach and onboard a potentially massive user base without having to sink your precious cash into a proportional increase in sales or marketing expenses. Salespeople aren’t cheap!

By making your product the primary tool for your customer acquisition and retention, you can achieve remarkable scalability. The reliance on self-service significantly reduces the cost of acquiring new customers, which can make it a huge draw for startups and established businesses alike.

You’ll have enhanced user adoption and retention

If people can easily explore your product and find its value for themselves, you’re far more likely to see higher adoption rates. Intuitive design and user-friendly interfaces are the name of the game – they encourage your users to press every button to see what they can do, and to learn by doing.

It will make people feel like they really own your product, and that’ll surely make them more loyal. Plus they’ll probably stick around for longer, as they keep discovering value and utility as they keep using your product, and you keep making it better with their feedback.

You’ll gain viral growth potential

If you’re aiming for product-led growth, you’ll want to incorporate features that naturally encourage people to share what they’re doing, and ideally promote viral growth.

Whether through built-in collaboration tools, user referrals, or simply making it easy for people to spread the word about how great your product is, you’ll be able to tap into your users’ networks to drive your organic growth.

People will quickly realize your product’s value

Last but certainly not least, one of the biggest hitters of the product-led approach is how it lets your users see your product’s value so quickly. Everyone loves a bit of immediate gratification!

Quickly scratching the itch that drove them to use your product can push people to convert from being free users to paying customers, as they see firsthand how your product does what they want and solves their problems.

What are the benefits of sales-led growth?

Sales-led growth places the responsibility more on the shoulders of Sales and Marketing teams to directly engage with and do their damnedest to convert new customers, and to get existing ones to upgrade. This approach particularly shines if your product is a more complex solution, or if you’re targeting enterprise clients. Its benefits include:

You can target your customer engagement

A sales-led growth strategy will help you to deeply personalize your interactions with potential customers. Your Sales teams can tailor their pitches and demos to address their specific pain points, industry context, and any other particular needs they might have. It helps make the sales process more effective and efficient.

You’ll make bigger deals

Direct sales efforts are often a huge part of securing enterprise-level deals, which are bigger in both scope and value. Through careful negotiation and customized proposals, your Sales teams can communicate what can be done to align your product’s offerings with the strategic goals of large organizations.

The result? Bigger contracts and more valuable deals.

It will help with complex product positioning

If your product needs some explaining or customization to get the most from it, a sales-led approach will help your customers fully grasp what you can do and why they need your product to do it.

This tailored onboarding is really important if you’ve got a steep learning curve, or it takes deep, complex integrations into people’s existing systems and workflows.

You’ll have stronger customer relationships

The personal touch inherent in sales-led models naturally builds stronger relationships between you and your customers. These more intimate relationships can help you keep people happy, driving repeat business, and referrals, and it’ll give you more chances to upsell and cross-sell.

What kind of companies suit a product-led growth approach?

Product-led growth isn’t a one-size-fits-all strategy, but it can be incredibly powerful when you’re in the right position to make the most of it. If your product caters to a broad market, and addresses a clear and immediate need, you’re probably well placed to take this approach.

SaaS companies

With a digital interface and often scalable cloud infrastructure, SaaS companies are by their nature going to benefit. These products are designed to be discovered, trialed, and picked up at the user’s pace, often making them ideal for a product-led approach.

Products and services that draw in a large, diverse audience 

These types of companies can also often succeed with product-led growth. They benefit from frictionless user adoption and the viral potential of their products. Think social media platforms, content streaming services, and productivity tools.

Businesses with a clear value proposition 

These types of products are well suited for product-led growth too. If a user can sign up and quickly see how the product solves their problems or makes their life better, you’re well-positioned to go for product-led growth.

What kind of companies suit a sales-led growth approach?

Sales-led growth can be more steady footing if your product’s value proposition is complex, or if your sales cycle involves a lot of stakeholders and decision-makers.

Enterprise software and B2B solutions

Anything that takes a significant investment or integration into people’s existing systems will often benefit greatly from the personalized touch of a Sales team. These are the products that serve critical business functions and promise a return on investment that can be best shown through direct sales efforts.

Companies with high-value, low-volume products

Businesses in this position often go for a sale-led strategy. If your customer lifetime value is high but you’re serving a more niche market, a sales-led approach will give you the deep, consultative selling you’ll need to close those vital deals. If you’re in this position, you’ll benefit from building your relationships and tailoring your pitches to meet the needs of each and every potential customer.

Specialized industries and bespoke solutions

You’ll likely be better suited to a sales-led strategy if your industry has specific regulations and legal requirements, or if your product requires customization for each client. Here, the sales process is as much about understanding each customer’s unique challenges as it is about selling your product, and often you’ll need to customize your offering to fit the customer’s requirements.

Product-led growth vs sales-led growth – which approach is right for you?

Choosing the right growth strategy can feel a bit like standing at a crossroads, with each path leading to two distinct futures for your business.

How to choose? Here are some tips that’ll help you figure out which route might suit your product best:

• Assess your product: Is it simple and intuitive or complex and customizable? Your product’s nature can point you toward your answer when considering a product-led growth vs sales-led growth strategy.
• Know your audience: Are you aiming for individual consumers or big enterprises? The size and expectations of your target market can dictate whether to lean towards product-led for ease and scalability or sales-led for depth and customization.
• Align with your goals: What are you aiming to achieve? Rapid market spread fits well with product-led growth, while building deep-value customer relationships aligns with a sales-led strategy.
• Check your toolbox: Do you have a killer sales team ready or a tech-savvy squad to enhance the product experience? Your current resources and capabilities should influence your strategy choice.
• Experiment!: Not sure which path to take? Test and learn. Run small pilots and MVPs to see what resonates with your market and what doesn’t.
• Stay agile: The only constant is change, especially in today’s digital world. Be ready to pivot your strategy based on new learnings, market shifts, and feedback.
• Listen to your customers: They’re the best ones to guide you to the right strategy. Their interactions with your product and feedback are golden nuggets of insight.

Remember, picking a growth strategy isn’t a one-and-done deal. It’s an ongoing journey of adaptation and refinement, ensuring your business not only grows but thrives in its unique landscape.

What are the key considerations when being product-led?

Embracing a product-led growth strategy means diving deep into some crucial areas that can skyrocket your product’s success if you nail them.

Here’s what to keep an eye on:

• User experience and intuitiveness: Your product needs to do the talking. Ensure every user interaction is smooth and intuitive, guiding them naturally to value discovery. This is where investing in top-notch UI/UX design pays off, making onboarding a breeze and your product a joy for everyone to use.
• Immediate value delivery: Make sure your product quickly shows off its worth. Aim for that early “Wow!” moment by clearly showcasing how it eases user pain points. It’s all about making that first impression count.
• Feedback loops and product iteration: Listen closely to what your users are telling you. Use their feedback, gathered through various means like surveys or in-app prompts, as an oracle for refining and evolving your product. It’s a journey of continuous improvement.
• Viral mechanisms and shareability: Make your product too good not to share. Embed features that naturally encourage users to spread the word, from collaboration tools to referral perks. The easier it is to share, the faster your product grows!
• Scalable customer support: Even in a self-serve world, users will sometimes need a helping hand. Roll out scalable support solutions, like detailed FAQs and AI chatbots, to ensure help is always at hand as your user base expands.
• Data-driven decision-making: Dive into the data to really understand how users interact with your product. The knowledge you can gain from things like usage patterns and conversion rates is invaluable, helping you tweak and tune the user experience for even better growth.

By putting your heart into these areas, you’re setting the stage for a product-led growth story that will rival the Spotifys of the world.

What are the key considerations when being sales-led?

If you’re setting your sights on a sales-led growth strategy, here’s a list of essentials to make it a roaring success:

• Deep product knowledge: Arm your Sales team with more than just the basics. They should know the product inside and out, understand its standout features, and exactly how it can solve customer problems. This deep dive enables personalized pitches and builds trust with prospects.
• Understanding your customer needs: Success hinges on your team’s ability to get the product and its potential customer in perfect sync. This means doing your homework on the customer’s industry, business processes, and hurdles, and presenting your product as the hero they’ve been looking for.
• Alignment with Marketing: Ensure your Sales and Marketing teams are in a tight partnership, crafting a unified customer journey. Marketing tees up with awareness and interest; Sales knocks it out of the park with insight-informed strategies that resonate.
• Effective Sales process management: Sharpen your Sales process to a repeatable, efficient cycle, from sparking initial interest to sealing the deal. Equip your team with training and tools to ensure a smooth ride through your sales funnels.
• Customer relationship building: Go beyond the sale. Nurturing ongoing support and understanding evolving needs can turn one-time deals into lasting partnerships, spurring renewals, upsells, and that priceless word-of-mouth.
• Flexibility and adaptability: Stay nimble, ready to adjust your sails as market winds shift. This agility allows your team to capture opportunities quickly and navigate around potential setbacks with ease.
• Measuring and optimizing performance: Keep a keen eye on sales metrics to continually refine your approach. A solid analysis of sales performance guides data-driven decisions, aligning sales strategies with broader business objectives.

If you keep all this in mind, your sales-led growth journey will be well-equipped to start driving sustained growth and push you toward a stronger, safer position in the market.

Real-world examples of product-led growth 

Let’s dive into some real-life stories that bring the concepts of product-led growth vs sales-led growth to life, shining a light on how different companies have taken these paths to success. We’ve got some more examples here if you want even more inspiration!

Slack

Ever wonder how Slack became the go-to for team communication? It’s a classic case of product-led magic. With its super intuitive design and the ability to make work life simpler and more productive, Slack naturally found its way into the hearts (and offices) of users worldwide. The key? A product experience so smooth, people couldn’t help but spread the word.

Zoom

Before it turned into a synonym for video calls, Zoom was just another contender in the crowded space of video conferencing. What set it apart? A relentless focus on user simplicity and reliability. Zoom made joining a video call so effortless that it quickly became the preferred choice for both personal chats and professional meetings.

Dropbox

In the early days of cloud storage, Dropbox stood out by making file sharing a breeze. Its clear-cut promise of easy storage and sharing, sweetened with referral bonuses for extra space, saw users flocking. The simplicity of Dropbox’s product did the talking, turning users into advocates.

Real-world examples of sales-led growth

Oracle and SAP

When it comes to handling complex business operations, Oracle and SAP are the heavyweights. Their Enterprise Resource Planning solutions, vital for integrating and managing core business processes, aren’t the simplest tools on the shelf. Through in-depth consultations and demos, their skilled Sales teams have been pivotal in custom-fitting their solutions into the intricate tapestry of businesses worldwide.

IBM

IBM’s journey through the tech world is a testament to the power of a sales-led approach. With a portfolio that stretches across various sectors and solutions, IBM’s success lies in building strong relationships with clients. Their sales teams excel at demystifying complex solutions, showing businesses exactly how IBM’s offerings can transform their operations.

Real-world examples of a blended growth strategy

Let’s take a look at how some companies have masterfully blended product-led and sales-led strategies, capturing the essence of both approaches. This strategy isn’t just about balancing; it’s about harmonizing the strengths of each approach to meet your customers exactly where they are.

Microsoft

Ever think about how Microsoft Teams became so widespread, almost overnight? Microsoft played a clever game here. They used their mighty Sales engine to push Teams into the spotlight, but also ensured the product itself was useful enough to draw people in.

Through Teams, Microsoft showed that even the big boys could dance gracefully between being product-centric and leveraging a world-class Sales team to get their fingers deeper into the pie. They have their cake and eat it too, growing through organic product appeal while solidifying big deals behind the scenes.

ProdPad

Now, for a bit of own-horn-tootin’! Here at ProdPad, we began our journey by letting our product lead the way, attracting our first users with its sheer usefulness. After all, we are Product Managers ourselves, and we made it for our use as much as anyone else’s!

But as we’ve grown, we’ve realized that some of our customers could really benefit from a consultative approach, helping them to understand exactly how ProdPad can help them operate a smoother product process within their particular organization and with their particular structure and existing processes. 

Our Sales team can listen to a customer’s exact use case for ProdPad – or, more accurately, listen to how they work now, understand the problems they are facing, and then show them specifically how they could set up their ProdPad account and process to drive success.

By gradually integrating our sales-led growth efforts into how we do things, we’ve expanded the types of customers we helping, engaging directly with larger teams and organizations to tailor solutions that fit them like a glove.

It’s helping us to not just grow, but to grow smart, reaching wider without losing our product-led soul.

How to blend product-led and sales-led growth strategies

Blending product-led and sales-led growth isn’t just about shoving them together like two Barbies. It’s about creating a dynamic, responsive growth engine that capitalizes on the direct feedback loop between your product and its users, all while keeping the personal touch that your lovely Sales bods can offer.

Here’s a quick guide on making it work:

• Spot the blend moments: Look at the customer journey for moments where a little sales nudge could enrich the product-led path. Maybe it’s when users hit a certain usage threshold on a feature or when big accounts need that human touch.
• Data is your best friend: Dive into how users interact with your product. This treasure trove helps Sales folks pinpoint prospects ripe for a deeper conversation, ensuring efforts are laser-focused.
• Smooth moves between Product and Sales: Aim for a seamless handoff that feels natural to the user, whether through a well-timed email or an in-app prompt that gently introduces Sales into the mix.
• Equip your Sales team: Arm Sales with everything there is to know about how users are engaging with your product. This knowledge turns them into wizards at identifying upsell opportunities and solving user challenges.
• Close your feedback loop: Sales insights can supercharge product development. Those frontline tales and user wishes can guide what your product does next, keeping it fresh and relevant.
• Tailor your approach: Different users need different things. Some love the independence of a self-serve model, while others appreciate a guiding hand. Crafting strategies that respect these preferences ensures everyone gets what they need.
• Tech to tie it together: Harness the power of CRM, automation, and analytics tools to stitch Product and Sales efforts together smoothly, tracking every interaction to refine and improve your approach continually.

How can you measure your growth?

Keeping an eye on your growth and understanding the impact of your strategy, whether it’s product-led growth vs sales-led growth, or a blend, is really the only way to know whether what you’re doing is paying off.

Here are some of the Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) and metrics to keep an eye on to make sure you’re heading in the right direction:

How to measure product-led growth

• User Acquisition Rate: Think of this as how many new friends your product is making over time. A growing circle suggests your product’s charm is working wonders.
• Activation Rate: This one’s about how many of those new friends decide to stick around because they see the value in your product. Whether they’re setting up their profile or making their first purchase, it’s a sign they’re into what you’re offering.
• MAU and DAU: Monthly and Daily Active Users give you a peek into how engaging your product is. A lively party versus a quiet dinner – both have their vibes, and the ratio tells you which one your product is hosting.
• Churn Rate: This tells you how many folks are leaving the party early. Keeping this number low means your product continues to be a hit over time.
• Customer Lifetime Value (CLV): CLV is all about understanding the long-term value each customer brings. A rising CLV signals that your product isn’t just a one-hit-wonder.
• Net Promoter Score (NPS): Essentially, how likely are people to rave about your product to their friends? High scores here mean organic growth is on your side.

How to measure sales-led growth

• Lead Conversion Rate: This is about how well your sales team can turn potential into actual customers. High rates here mean your team is on fire.
• Average Deal Size: Watching this helps you understand if your sales strategies are hitting the mark in upselling or catching the big fish.
• Sales Cycle Length: A shorter cycle means your team is swiftly moving from “hello” to “let’s do this,” speeding up revenue realization.
• Customer Acquisition Cost (CAC): It’s crucial to keep an eye on what it costs to win a customer over. Optimizing CAC is key to ensuring your efforts are profitable.
• Revenue Growth: The ultimate sign of health for sales-led strategies, this metric tells you if your sales efforts are translating into a healthier bottom line.
• Customer Retention Rate: Just like in product-led strategies, keeping customers coming back for more is a sign of lasting relationships built by your sales efforts.

How to measure a blended growth strategy:

• Mix and match: Keep tabs on a cocktail of the above metrics, adjusting your focus based on what your current strategy emphasizes.
• Seamlessness: Pay special attention to how smoothly customers move between experiencing your product and engaging with your sales team. This transition should feel natural and effortless.

Keep an eye on how these metrics ebb and flow over time – it can clue you into deeper insights about how healthy your growth strategy is and if you’re headed in the right direction.  You can also learn where you stand by comparing your numbers against industry standards or your competitors. It’s a reality check that can contextualize what you’ve been doing.

They lied. Size is everything.

Surviving the ever-shifting sands of today’s business landscape is a constant adventure. With markets always on the move and customer tastes evolving at lightning speed, trying to pin down the perfect growth strategy is harder, and yet more crucial, than ever.

Maybe you’re all in on letting your product take the lead, perhaps you see the value in a more hands-on sales-driven approach, or you might be eyeing the best of both worlds with a blended strategy. Whatever your choice, it hinges on really getting your product, knowing your market inside out, and playing to your organizational strengths.

But here’s the thing: choosing your strategy is just the beginning. Keeping tabs on your growth, tuning into feedback, and being ready to tweak your approach are part and parcel of the journey. It’s about picking a direction, yes, but you also need to be nimble enough to get around each twist and turn.

The ultimate aim? Cultivating dynamic growth, and being ready to adapt and thrive no matter what the market throws your way.

In the end, there’s no magic formula for growth. It’s a unique journey for every business, defined by your product, your team, and where you dream of going. Yes, deciding between product-led growth vs sales-led growth is complex, but if you’re armed with the right strategy, you know your product and your customers like the back of your hand, and you’re not afraid to adapt… the possibilities for growth are endless.

The post Product-led growth vs sales-led growth: Which is right for you? appeared first on ProdPad.

What are outcomes in Product Management?

Outcomes are all about the change or benefits that happen because of what you’ve done, like launching a new feature or rolling out a product update. They’re the end game, the reason you’re doing all this work in the first place, aiming to deliver something that your customers and your business truly value.

Think of outcomes as your north star, guiding everything you do in Product Management. They help you stay focused on hitting those goals that matter, ensuring every feature, task, or new initiative is not just busywork but actually moving the needle in ways like boosting customer satisfaction, getting more people engaged, or bumping up that revenue.

What are outputs in Product Management?

On the flip side, outputs are the tangible things your team pumps out. We’re talking new features, bug fixes, updates, or any other deliverable your product team has on their plate.

Outputs are the stuff you can count, the things you can say, “Yep, we did that!” But here’s the kicker—just because you’re cranking out outputs doesn’t mean you’re automatically nailing those outcomes.

Sure, they’re easier to identify and measure because they are concrete things you can show as a result of the work you’ve done. But without looking at the effect the outputs have had on your product, you don’t even know if you’ve made the right thing.

So, to boil down output vs outcome: outputs are what you make, but outcomes are the changes (positive or negative!) those creations bring about.

Output vs outcome in practice

Output example: Picture this—you and your team have been burning the midnight oil to get a shiny new user onboarding tutorial up and running in your app. This tutorial, with all its snazzy video guides and interactive bits, is your output. It’s something tangible you’ve added to your app.

Outcome example: The true test comes when you see what happens after you launch that tutorial. If you start noticing fewer people bouncing in the first week or more users really diving deep into your app, those are your outcomes. It means your tutorial is doing its job, filling in a gap, and providing real value.

Understanding the difference between output vs outcome isn’t just semantics or an interesting side note. Choosing which to focus on is a decision that will impact your strategy, how you prioritize your work, measure success.

Ultimately, it could make all the difference to whether or not what you make improves your customer satisfaction and your company’s growth. By focusing on outcomes, you’re ensuring that your teams aren’t just doing busy work, but are busy working to make a meaningful difference.

How can you shift to being outcome-focused?

Shifting your mindset to be more outcome-focused means you’re not just ticking boxes; you’re aiming to make a real impact for your users and your business. It’s about getting to the heart of what your customers need, understanding the market, and making sure you’re putting your resources where they’ll make the biggest splash.

Being all-in on outcomes means setting clear, measurable goals that shine a light on what
success looks like for you. It’s about seeing beyond just finishing up tasks and fully understanding how these efforts tie back to bigger business goals.

How does being outcome-focused work?

An outcome-focused approach works by prioritizing the work that contributes to your key objectives, the things that are going to move the needle. Then you use measurable goals to determine what success looks like, and use that to guide what you work on next, and your development process generally.

In the battle of output vs outcome, committing to the outcome side will get you thinking strategically about what to build next based on what’ll have the biggest impact, not just what’s next on the feature list. It’s a mix of prioritizing based on impact, embracing agile and iterative development, making data-driven decisions, and always keeping the lines open for customer feedback.

Set clear, measurable goals

Being outcome-focused starts with clarity, and you gain that clarity by setting goals. Not just any goals, though. You want them to be SMART – Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant, and Time-bound. This will let everyone on your team know what success looks like, and they’ll be able to align their efforts accordingly.

So, instead of saying, “We want to improve our app,” and then scratching your chin trying to work out how, you’d set a goal like, “Increase the app’s monthly active users by 20% within the next six months.”

See the difference? The second goal gives you a clear target to aim for and makes it easier to measure your progress.

Look beyond the to-do list

Here’s where the rubber meets the road when it comes to output vs outcome. Being outcome-focused means that every task, every feature, and every sprint has to clearly tie back to your goals. It’s not enough to have a busy team; you need a team that’s busy doing the right things. This is where you ask the tough questions: “How does this task help us achieve our goal? What’s the expected impact of this feature?”

This mindset encourages you to prioritize work based on its potential to move the needle on your key metrics, rather than just what’s next in the backlog or what seems like a good idea at the moment. It’s about making strategic choices that drive you closer to your desired outcomes.

What does being output-focused look like?

Taking an output-focused approach is all about quantity and checking things off the list. Success is measured by how much stuff you get done or how many features you push out, which might sound good, but it can lead you off course if you’re not careful.

There’s no problem with having an eye on outputs. But if you’re output-focused rather than outcome-focused, you’re almost certainly going to miss the ball. You’re just going to do what feels good or what you’ve measured in the past, but not necessarily things that are tied to the outcome.

Keeping track of outputs can show progress, it doesn’t guarantee you’re making the right kind of progress—the kind that aligns with your strategic goals and truly meets your users’ needs.

Example of being output-focused

Imagine a product team setting a goal to release a specific number of new features within a quarter. For instance, they decide to launch a new payment integration, add social sharing, and update their user interface – all within the next three months.

The primary measure of success here is whether these features are developed and released on schedule. All of the team’s efforts are going to be directed towards shipping those deliverables, with no real idea if what they are building addresses what their users want or contributes to their strategic business objectives. The focus is squarely on how much work they get done, and if they stick to their timelines.

Example of being outcome-focused

Now imagine that the same product team identifies a strategic goal to increase their user engagement by 20% over the next quarter. To make this happen, they suggest a range of ideas, like improving the user interface, adding new functionalities like social sharing, or integrating a new payment system.

The difference is that, instead of committing upfront to building specific features, they start by conducting user research and analyzing the data to understand which changes are most likely to boost engagement.

Maybe they decide to experiment by prototyping several ideas and testing them with a segment of their user base, measuring the impact on engagement metrics before fully rolling out the most effective changes.

The success of the team’s efforts here isn’t measured by how many features they’ve foisted on their ungrateful users, but by whether or not they hit their targeted increase in user engagement. Being outcome-focused encourages your team to experiment, adapt, and keep their eyes firmly on on delivering real value to your users and your business.

Where does ProdPad stand in the output vs outcome debate?

Need you ask??

For us, making and improving ProdPad is about more than just building a product; it’s about creating solutions that genuinely make a difference for our users and align with our business objectives. So, yes, we are outcome-focused.

Here’s how we look at it (and we eat our own dogfood – all of this is supported in ProdPad, which we use to help us build ProdPad!):

Setting clear OKRs

Objectives and Key Results (OKRs) are at the heart of how we guide our product development. OKRs help you to set and communicate those clear and measurable goals that reflect what you aim to achieve.

By setting out your OKRs, you’ll be able to prioritize work that directly contributes to these goals, ensuring that everything your teams are working on is aligned with the bigger picture.

Customer journey mapping

Understanding how people use your product is everything if you want to create something that delivers real value. That’s why we look to the process of customer journey mapping as a really useful tool to visualize the entire experience from the user’s perspective.

This method helps identify key touchpoints, pain points, and opportunities for improvement. By focusing on enhancing the user journey, teams can make informed decisions about where to invest their efforts to have the most significant impact on user satisfaction and engagement.

Lean roadmapping

Flexibility is key, and that’s where lean roadmapping comes in. Unlike traditional roadmaps that might lock you into a set path and a set timeline, lean roadmapping keeps things adaptable.

It’s about choosing what to work on based on how well it aligns with your goals, allowing you to shift your focus as needed. This approach ensures that you’re always working on what has the most impact, even as the situation changes around you.

The most well-known version of a lean roadmap is the Now-Next-Later format, which myself and my Co-Founder Simon actually invented. So it’ll come as no surprise that this is the lean roadmap format you’ll find within ProdPad.

Integrating feedback loops

Continuous feedback is a cornerstone of how we do things. Regularly gathering and incorporating feedback from users ensures that our product development is aligned with actual user needs and expectations.

This feedback loop allows us to validate our assumptions, learn from user interactions, and make data-driven decisions that enhance the product in meaningful ways.

Solving real problems

When it comes down to it, ProdPad, both as a company and as a product, is all about addressing actual user problems in the best way possible. It’s not just about adding new bells and whistles because you can.

Every decision, from developing new features to refining what you already have, needs to be driven by a genuine need to solve user issues. Focusing on problem-solving ensures that the work you’re doing is meaningful and truly enhances your user experience.

So, output vs outcome – which is better?

The question of whether being outcome-focused vs being output-focused is better doesn’t have a cut-and-dried, one-size-fits-all answer. It really depends on the context, like the lifecycle stage of your product, the nature of the market you’re targeting, and your organization’s strategic objectives.

That said, the general consensus among Product Management folks these days is that it’s better to be outcome-focused. It makes it easier to be sure that you’re delivering real value to your customers and the business. It fosters a culture of flexibility, innovation, and continuous learning, where your decisions are guided by the desire to achieve meaningful results, rather than just writing code to tick boxes.

Being outcome-focused encourages your teams to look past what’s easy or comfortable, and to consider the wider impact of their work on the product and the people who use it. It promotes working to gain a deeper understanding of what your customers truly need and a commitment to solving their problems in the most effective way possible.

Which, of course, will make people happier with your product, leading to more sustainable growth and success in the long term.

How do you measure your outcomes?

Alright, let’s get into the meat of measuring outcomes because, honestly, what’s the point of being outcome-focused if you can’t tell whether you’re actually making an impact? It’s like going on a diet and never stepping on a scale or looking in a mirror. You’re putting in the work, but how do you know it’s paying off?

Let’s break down how you can keep track of what truly matters and ensure that your product isn’t just spinning its wheels.

Setting the stage with clear, measurable goals

As I mentioned already, clarity is your best friend here. You’ve got to know exactly what you’re aiming for with your product. These goals should be so clear and measurable that anyone on your team can tell you if you’re on track or not (Hello again, OKRs and SMART).

This isn’t just about saying, “We want to make our app better.” It’s about stating, “We aim to increase our app’s user retention rate by 15% in the next quarter.” Boom. Clear, direct, and definitely measurable.

Diving deep with data

Data is the cornerstone of measuring outcomes. It’s not just about collecting numbers and stats for the sake of it. It’s about gathering insights that directly relate to your goals. This means tracking the right metrics that show whether you’re moving closer to your outcomes. For a user retention goal, you’d look at daily active users, session lengths, churn rate, and so on.

But here’s the catch: all that data can be overwhelming. The key is to focus on the metrics that matter most to your specific goals. And remember, data doesn’t just come from analytics tools. It also comes from user feedback, surveys, interviews – any source that gives you a clearer picture of how your product is impacting your users’ lives.

The power of regular reviews and adjustments

Measuring outcomes, like most things in Product Management, isn’t a one-and-done deal. It’s an ongoing process that requires regular check-ins. Think of it like driving a car. You don’t just get in, plug your destination into the GPS, and then start browsing on your phone (yet!).

Rather, you’re constantly turning the wheel and adjusting your speed to keep you on the road, unscathed. In other words, this means setting up regular reviews of your progress toward your outcomes, analyzing what the data is telling you, and being ready to pivot if something isn’t working as expected, rather than Fred Flintstone-ing into a tree. 

This agility is a superpower in Product Management. It allows you to respond to new insights, adapt to changes in the market or user behavior, and ensure that every effort is contributing to your overarching goals.

Aligning your team around outcomes

Last but definitely not least, it’s so, so important that your whole team understands and buys into these outcomes. They need to know not just what they’re working on, but why what they’re doing matters. Aligning your team will turn your goals into everyone’s shared mission, making it easier to prioritize work, make strategic decisions, and stay motivated even when the going gets tough.

Plus, when everyone is aligned on the outcomes, it’ll help you to foster a culture of accountability and ownership. When your people can see how their work contributes to the bigger picture, they’ll be more invested in the success of your product.

Output vs outcome = what vs why

Measuring outcomes is about more than tracking your progress; it’s about ensuring what you are doing as a Product Manager is genuinely effective and aligned with what your users and your business need.

By focusing on outcomes rather than outputs, setting clear goals, focusing on the right data, regularly reviewing your progress, and aligning your team, you turn the concept of being outcome-focused from a pipe dream into an actionable strategy that’ll drive real results.

And that, my friends, is how you make sure you’re not just busy, but busy making a difference.

The post Output vs Outcome: What’s the difference and where should I focus? appeared first on ProdPad.

• Why is having a product adoption strategy so important?
• What makes for a successful product adoption strategy?
• What role feedback and data can play in developing your strategy
• Some proven real-world examples of successful product adoption strategies
• Current and future trends in product adoption

Why having a product adoption strategy matters

Let’s dive into what product adoption really means. Now you’ve developed a product you think people will love, the big question is: How do you get people not just to try it, but to really weave it into the fabric of their daily lives? That’s where the magic of product adoption comes into play. It’s about making your product really ‘sticky’ so it becomes well-embedded with a customer, and therefore very hard to remove. 

Adoption is the bread and butter of your product’s success. If people aren’t picking it over your competitors and using it, no matter how great you think it is, you’re missing the mark. And here’s the kicker: it’s not just about getting your product into users’ hands; it’s about making sure they quickly and clearly see its value, so much so that they’re willing to invest their time, or hey, even their money into it. 

And it’s not just about new customers, because understanding adoption is an important part of both preventing churn and increasing the lifetime value (LTV) of your current customers. You need to keep them engaged and deepen their connection to your product by getting them to use it more and more.

If they’re finding more value in your product, chances are they’ll be willing to spend more on it, be that an upgrade or a longer subscription, or however your particular model works to upsell your users. It’s about embedding your product within their lives, at work or at home, so deeply that removing it would be unthinkable, like cutting off a limb or giving up cheese.

It takes work to get sticky

Crafting a product adoption strategy takes thoughtful planning, a deep understanding of your users, and experimenting with different approaches to see what truly resonates with them. It’s about aligning your efforts with your broader company goals and breaking down the big vision into actionable experiments.

And speaking of understanding your users, that’s a non-negotiable part of the process. You need to think like a detective and gather as many clues as you can about what your users really need, and how your product can make their lives better. I’m a huge fan of the Jobs-to-be-Done (JTBD) framework because it helps you to think beyond demographics. It’s about getting to the heart of why someone would “hire” your product in the first place.

Of course, feedback and data are our north stars. They guide us in refining our strategy, making sure we’re on the right track, and helping us iterate on our product in ways that truly matter to our users. It’s a mix of listening to what they’re telling us and watching what they’re actually doing with our product.

Understanding product adoption is about much more than just the numbers. It’s about making real connections with your users, solving real problems for them, and constantly evolving the product to meet their needs.

What makes up a successful product adoption strategy?

So, to keep this delicious metaphor rolling, let’s cook up a strategy with the same care, precision, and passion a chef pours into their signature dish. But what are the key ingredients?

Clearly understanding your target users

Understanding your users is the first step in creating an effective product adoption strategy. You wouldn’t serve a steak to a vegetarian, right? You’ve got to go deeper than just basic demographics though – you need to understand the challenges, behaviors, and motivations of your target audience.

This is where JTBD comes in, as it’s a way for you to work out what dietary requirements your potential guests have and what flavors they like. Put plainly, JTBD focuses on understanding the specific ‘jobs’ users are hiring your product to do, be it solving a problem or fulfilling a desire. By aligning what your product does and how you talk about it with these jobs they want to do, you can make your product an indispensable part of their lives.

Detailed user segmentation

Picture this as organizing your dinner menu into categories. Some people might be hungry for a zesty appetizer, others for a rich, hearty main, and some for a light, sweet dessert. Segmenting your users allows you to tailor the experience you’re offering, ensuring each interaction is as satisfying as finding your favorite dish, cooked perfectly.

Effective segmentation lets you target and personalize your marketing and onboarding strategies, ensuring that each user gets the most relevant and engaging experience you can give them. This makes it a lot more likely that they’ll adopt your product because they get to directly see the value your product offers, and how it addresses their specific needs.

Strategic experimentation

Here’s where you get to play about a bit in the kitchen. It’s all about trying different cooking techniques, adjusting the seasoning, or even combining unexpected flavors to create something extraordinary. 

Each test and tweak in your approach to onboarding, engagement, and retention is like adjusting the heat, adding a pinch of salt, or a dash of oregano, all to find the perfect balance that will make your dish – and your product – stand out.

So, make sure that you are experimenting in a systematic way, clearly outlining the target outcomes for each change, improvement, or new initiative you are going to try. Then ensure you monitor those target metrics and measure whether what you’ve done has made an impact on adoption or not. 

If it has, what learning can you take from that? Can you apply those principles in another area and increase the impact even further? If the change or addition did not improve adoption, why not? Did you disprove any assumptions you had about what your users value? Can you use that learning to increase the chances of success for the next experiment? 

Knowing your “wow” moments

This sits alongside understanding your target users and segmentation, but it delves deeper into the specific value your product delivers for said user. And, even more specifically, the exact moments in the user journey where your users suddenly get it.

The point in their interaction with your product where they understand the true value the product will bring for them – the moment they go “Oh wow, this is really useful/delightful/fun!”. Knowing what and where these moments are is crucial in building an effective product adoption strategy. 

Once you’ve identified your wow moments – which you should do through user interviews, session recordings, surveys, and usage data – you then use that intelligence to optimize your onboarding process.

One of the key objectives of your onboarding journey should be how to get every user to the relevant “wow” moment in the quickest time possible. This metric is called time-to-value (TTV), and reducing the TTV is an important metric when measuring the success of any onboarding flow.  

All of which neatly brings us to…

A customized and continuous onboarding process

Onboarding is your whole front-of-house experience – it’s all about making sure each customer is taken to the right table, explaining your menu to them, telling them which member of the waiting staff will be taking care of them, and asking them what they want to start off with as they get settled.

In my opinion, you should always be onboarding! Just because somebody has used your product for 30 days, it doesn’t mean you give up on their onboarding flow. Your onboarding is in the first 30 seconds, the first 30 days, and the first 30 months.

Your goal should be to make sure that they go from a basic user to the most advanced user that they need to be to make use of your product to its full. That way they’re less likely to miss the important things that your product can help them with, and end up churning.

You should experiment with different approaches to delivering the onboarding and training to your users. From in-app product tours to training webinars and in-person sessions, to trying a series of emails, seeing how successful it is when you create a how-to video series, maybe even trying gamification with task rewards…

The point is, experiment and learn until you’ve found what gets the best results. And don’t forget about those user segments you created – find the onboarding approach (or combination of approaches) that gets the best results with each type of user you have. 

Pro-active engagement and support

You need to nurture your ongoing relationship with your users, much like a waiter attentively returning to the table and ensuring the diner’s experience is beyond reproach. It’s the follow-up, going back and ensuring the meal is being enjoyed, checking in to see if they need anything else. 

Keeping your users engaged beyond the initial onboarding phase is one of the biggest challenges of, and keys to, long-term product adoption. This means regular updates, valuable content, excellent support, and transparent communication to keep everyone informed, assisted, and interested. And, of course, taking advantage of user feedback to continually improve your product to keep it relevant and valuable to your users.

This is where, as a Product Manager, you need to work cross-functionality to ensure you have a holistic product adoption strategy. It’s here that you’ll need to work with Customer Success, Account Management, and Customer Support to ensure you have a joined-up view of the whole customer journey and a full understanding of all the touchpoints that contribute to keeping them happy and using the product. 

Measurement and analytics

Just as chefs taste their dishes, adjusting based on flavor, texture, and presentation, you too must measure and analyze how your product is being received. Are your users coming back for seconds, or is the dish not to their liking? This data helps you refine your product adoption strategy for better results.

That’s why it’s crucial to track specific metrics and KPIs related to user engagement, retention, and satisfaction, like your daily or monthly active users. Tools like Google Analytics, Mixpanel, Amplitude, and Heap all offer really useful data about how your users are interacting with your product. By gorging yourself on these details, you can determine what’s working and what needs work, helping you make data-driven decisions to optimize your strategy.

Advocacy and referral programs

This is that five-star review in the NYT, and all the Instagram pics influencers take of your new tasty treat. It’s the satisfied diner who raves about their meal to all their friends, drawing them in to experience your delicious dishes for themselves. This is the organic spread of product love, the ultimate compliment to the chef.

Encouraging and incentivizing your users to share their positive experiences can bring in a swathe of new ones, and can help to reinforce the value of your product (especially for things like social media apps that live or die on drawing in networks of people). If someone publicly celebrates your product, effectively lending it their own good name and social cachet, they tend to become even more invested in proving its value and defending its usefulness.

How can feedback and data help you refine your product adoption strategy?

Just like the secret process behind a chef’s signature dish, developing your product adoption strategy is as much a science as it is an art. Every taste test and stir helps to understand what your product needs to be as palatable as possible. Does it need more salt? A simpler sign-in process? A pinch of herbs? A new integration? That’s how the feedback and data you gather can guide you in tweaking your recipe until it’s just right.

Stirring in user feedback

User feedback tells you whether anyone is enjoying what you’re dishing out. Some might want it spicier, some less, while others love it just the way it is.

Listening to your users is crucial because one person’s tasty chicken satay starter is another person’s hospital trip. It’s about finding that balance that pleases most and delights many. You can gather this feedback through direct conversations, surveys, or observing how they interact with your product (either directly or with session tracking tools) – each piece of feedback is a gold nugget that can make your product better if you use it right.

Some approaches that might help include:

• Regularly conducting user interviews – Direct conversations with users can give a deeper look into how they use the product and the challenges they face.
• Implementing feedback loops – Make it easy within the product for users to provide feedback at any point in their journey.
• Analyzing support tickets – Customer support interactions are a goldmine of information on common user issues and areas where the product might be lacking.

Measuring with data analytics

Data analytics gives you precise readings of what’s happening with your product. How many people are coming back for seconds? Which features are, like garlic bread, the most loved?

This data is your reality check, ensuring you’re not just making something to our taste but to our users’ liking. Tools like Google Analytics and the others listed above are like your high-tech kitchen gadgets, helping you measure every aspect of your product’s success, from prep to plate.

Some effective strategies include:

• Setting clear KPIs – Define Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) that align with your product adoption goals to focus your analysis efforts.
• Segmentation: Analyze data based on user segments to understand different behaviors and preferences within your user base.
• Iterative experiments – Conduct experiments to test your hypotheses about product changes and their impact on user behavior, using data to inform your decisions.

Blending feedback and data

The real magic happens when you blend feedback with data. For instance, if the feedback suggests that your users find a particular feature confusing, checking the data on feature usage can confirm the issue.

This enables you to work out how to refine that feature based on user suggestions and data analysis and then to keep checking back with both feedback and analytics to see what difference your changes have made.

Real-world examples of product adoption strategies that worked

Now I’m going to serve out some proven product adoption strategies, sprinkled with a dash of real-world examples, just to keep things spicy and interesting:

Gamifiying your onboarding

Think of it as turning the chore of learning how to use a new app into a fun, engaging game. You know, like when you turn cleaning up after dinner into a dance party for the kids or write yourself a quest log for the day rather than a to-do list.

Duolingo does this beautifully. They make learning a new language addictive by rewarding you with points, levels, and virtual high-fives. Challenges, rewards, and milestones can really help to engage and motivate users new and old.

Here at ProdPad we take a similar approach with our free trial. Our users can earn extra days of trial time when they complete various onboarding tasks. It’s a strategy that has proven very successful for us! Sign up for a trial today and see how it works for yourself. 

Personalize your onboarding

Customize each dish to suit the dietary preferences of your guests (like their job roles, industries, and specific needs) to provide a more relevant and engaging introduction to your product.

Spotify does a great job of this by mixing up playlists that feel like they were curated just for you, right from your first login. Soon enough they get you wondering why you even made playlists yourself in the first place.

Provide interactive walkthroughs

This is like offering cooking classes where you get to make your meal under the guidance of a professional chef. Instead of reading a recipe book, you’re in the kitchen, sleeves rolled up, learning by doing.

Ever noticed how Canva guides you through designing your first graphic? It’s so seamless that before you know it, you’re creating masterpieces, feeling like a pro designer without ever having attended art school.

Here at ProdPad, we have a few ways of doing this, from offering demos from members of our team, as well as a live Sandbox, populated with data, where you can play around with the product to see how it will help you.

Build a community around your product

This is like those supper clubs where everyone shares a love for gourmet food. It’s not just about eating; it’s about connecting, sharing recipes, and learning from each other. A user community that provides support, allows for the sharing of ideas and gives a space for providing feedback fosters a sense of belonging and loyalty among your users.

GitHub has cultivated a massive community of developers by providing them with a platform that doesn’t just host projects but also fosters collaboration and learning. They’ve created an ecosystem where users can contribute to each other’s work, offer feedback, and share insights, all within the context of their product.

Offer incentives for early adoption

Ever seen a new restaurant offering deals to bring people in? After all, who can say no to a free dessert or a half-price bottle of bubbles? Discounts, extended trials, or the chance to test out exclusive features can really help to draw in the early crowds.

Dropbox used to entice its users with extra storage space for every friend they invited, turning them into their most passionate marketers.

Provide continuous user education and support

Offering comprehensive resources, tutorials, and customer support to educate users about your product ensures they can overcome any obstacles they come across, and also clues them in about new features, and how to use them.

That’s the kind of ongoing support and learning tools companies like Semrush offer, not only providing one of the industry standard SEO tools but also a comprehensive knowledge base in the form of their Semrush Academy content. It’s so effective that it’s basically required reading for people entering the industry.

Feedback loops and product iteration

It’s akin to tweaking your grandma’s secret recipe based on what your dinner guests liked most about it. Implementing mechanisms for collecting user feedback and rapidly iterating on your product based on what you find out will help to meet your users’ needs better and faster.

Spotify (again!) is always tuning its playlists and recommendations based on feedback and usage data, ensuring that the more you listen, the better it gets at being DJ to your life’s soundtrack.

There you have it – a veritable feast of strategies that have helped products you probably use to go from being unknowns to must-haves on the menu.

Upcoming trends in product adoption strategies

The world of product adoption is always evolving, and there are some pretty exciting trends on the horizon.

AI and machine learning

Think about how Netflix keeps getting better at knowing what you want to watch next. That’s AI and machine learning doing its thing, getting smart about what you like. Companies are getting better at using this tech to figure out what you might enjoy or find useful, even before you do. So, when it comes to getting folks on board with your product, AI done right could help it be so spot-on with what each user needs that it feels like magic.

Voice and conversational interfaces 

More and more, we’re just speaking up to get things done. “Hey, Siri, turn on the lights” or “Alexa, play some chill music.” Products that respond to people talking, and even being a part of that conversation, are becoming a big deal. It’s all about making it super easy to use something without even lifting a finger.

AR and VR

Picture this: instead of reading about a travel destination, you’re suddenly transported there, feeling the breeze, and hearing the sounds, all from the comfort of your couch. Products are already becoming something you can experience before you ever make a purchase, like test-driving a car, trying on clothes in a virtual fitting room, or walking around a house in 3D.

Learning and sharing with others

As stuff gets more complex, having a place to learn the ropes and share tips with others is becoming key. YouTube, Reddit, Quora, and all sorts of bespoke forums are where it’s at. They might not be brand new, but they are increasing in popularity when it comes to communities centered around particular products. It’s like having a massive group of like-minded friends all figuring it out together, which makes trying something new less of a solo adventure and more of a group journey. One of us!

Digging into the data

With all the analytics tools on the market now, companies can get super smart about what works and what doesn’t, almost in real time. And again, AI could play a larger and larger role in this, providing detailed analysis quicker and faster than ever before.

Being good to the planet and each other

People care more than ever about products being kind to the earth and fair to the folks making them. Products that nail this are winning hearts and minds, big time.

Subscribing instead of buying

You know how you can subscribe to movies or your favorite snacks? That’s happening with more and more types of products. It’s all about keeping you hooked with great stuff on the regular, instead of just a one-off purchase. It’s also why Home Depot only really sells annual plants. You’ve gotta keep ‘em coming back for more.

So, there we have it – a glimpse into the present and future of product adoption strategies, seasoned with a bit of imagination and a lot of anticipation. The key will be to keep experimenting, stay adaptable, and always, always keep the user at the heart of everything we do. Let’s toast to that future, shall we?

Takeaway (get it?)

We’ve explored the essential ingredients that make product adoption strategies successful, the emerging trends that are shaping the future, and the timeless techniques that bring products and users together in perfect harmony.

As we dab our sweaty brows and, like Mr Creosote, refuse just one more wafer-thin mint after this delightful culinary journey through the landscapes of product adoption, remember this: the key to a memorable meal – or a successful product – is not just in the quality of the ingredients but in the passion of the chef. It’s all about understanding your diners, experimenting with new flavors, and always being ready to adapt the recipe based on the feedback you receive.

The future of product adoption promises to be a blend of tradition and innovation, like a vegan steak tartare. As we look ahead, let’s carry forward the lessons learned and the insights gained, ready to meet the evolving tastes of our users with creativity, empathy, and a dash of daring.

So, let’s raise a glass to that future – a future where your product isn’t just used, but loved; where your users aren’t just numbers, but members of your community; and where the journey of product adoption isn’t just a process, but an adventure. Let’s keep cooking up something special, shall we?

The post Product Adoption Strategy: How to Get Your Users Craving More appeared first on ProdPad.

In this article we’ll cover:

• What is customer feedback?
• Why is gathering customer feedback so important?
• What are the best ways to collect customer feedback online?
• What should you do next with your customer feedback?

What is customer feedback?

Customer feedback is any information, good or bad, that you receive about the quality of your products or services from the people paying money to use them.

Sometimes you’ll find it really easy to collect customer feedback – especially when you’re doing things badly. People are naturally more inclined to leave negative reviews than positive ones. In fact, people are 1.7 times more likely to give feedback following a bad experience than a ‘normal’ one. 

So, if something’s really broken, you’ll probably already know about it thanks to some vocal, unhappy customers. But here’s the thing: negative customer feedback is actually a golden opportunity. It’s ironclad proof that something isn’t working; it removes assumptions and shows you exactly what needs to change.

Why is collecting customer feedback so important?

Nobody likes criticism, so it’s tempting to steer clear of willingly soliciting negative feedback. But living in a bubble won’t help your product grow and evolve, and not listening to your customers is a surefire way to frustrate them.

Besides, customers want to be heard, and they trust each other more than they trust you. In 2019, SurveyMonkey found that some 91% of people feel that product innovation should come as a result of listening to customers, versus just 31% who think a team of in-house experts can achieve the same thing.

And you know what else? Any customer feedback you did manage to gather is a powerful indicator of the feedback you didn’t. A recent ThinkJar survey found that only one in 26 customers will voice their complaints; the rest will just up and leave without so much as a murmur.

That means that for every negative piece of customer feedback you manage to collect, 25 other people feel the same but have already moved on to a competitor, without telling you why.

Oh, and another added bonus to sending out those survey questions: if customer feedback is really positive, then you can use what people write as testimonials, both on your site’s product page and in your social media activity.

What are the best ways to collect customer feedback online?

It’s never been easier to understand what people think about your products and services, and it’s never been more important to understand what your customer experience is really like. You need to know what people are thinking if you’re going to have an effective customer feedback strategy.

Here are the top 10 digitally-focussed ways to collect customer feedback:

1. In-app popups
2. in-app feedback widget
3. Customer feedback surveys
4. Customer feedback portal
5. Review sites
6. Live chat
7. Social media
8. Heatmaps
9. Product adoption analytics
10. Be easily contactable

1. In-app popups

If you have customers working within the confines of your tool, you have a captive audience that you can occasionally prod for feedback. A pop-up window in your product – perhaps set to appear after customers have been using it for a certain number of days – can be used to ask them for many different types of responses.

You might ask for:

• direct ratings out of five or ten
• qualitative “tell us what you think” feedback
• reviews on relevant app store pages

Just remember not to bug people too much; with great power, comes great responsibility. You don’t want to end up getting bad feedback about how you collect customer feedback.

2. In-app widget

One top trick is to make it as easy as possible for your users to provide you with their feedback. By including an in-app button that your users can seamlessly use to tell you what they’re thinking, you make it more likely that they will. You can even encourage increased engagement by offering incentives, and thanks to the added convenience you’ll be collecting more valuable customer feedback and gathering actionable insights.

You’ll get real-time information about issues as soon as they occur, which means you can get on with fixing them sooner, and avoid more unhappy customers reporting the same issue.

So many tools out there can help you do this, but we recommend you try using ProdPad to collect your customer feedback. Our in-app widget works hand in hand with our customer feedback portal (more on those below), and together they’re seamless and convenient.

They’re also fully customizable. You can adjust them to fit your branding, increasing trust and credibility with your customers, and providing a more cohesive user experience. It’s a great way to see how well certain parts of your app feed into your overall understanding of your customer satisfaction levels. The widget’s also a smart replacement for live chat if you don’t have the staff to make that work.

3. Customer feedback surveys

There are loads of online survey providers out there, from paid services like SurveyMonkey, or Typeform to free resources like Google Forms. Most are incredibly customizable and easy to use, and they all collate feedback in one place for easy analysis – or let you export it into other formats.

Remember to keep surveys relatively short. Unless you’re offering an incentive like money off a subscription or a prize giveaway, customers will soon tire of filling out questions and are likely to stop answering with any care or accuracy if things drag on.

It’s a good idea to try mixing multiple choice with a few longer-form open-ended question text fields, as well as asking the industry-standard NPS and CSAT questions. 

Customer surveys, whether you use a tool or send out a simple email survey, are a great way to get quantitative and qualitative data about customer satisfaction. Perfect if you want to dig in right in and see how your customers really feel about your product.

4. Customer feedback portal

Having a branded customer feedback portal on your website means your customers can come and ask for features they want and tell you what they think about the ones they’ve been using. This’ll give your product team a clear understanding of what the people who use your product want you to build next, and what needs fixing.

This is an invaluable way to get some good use out of the customer feedback you’re collecting, to close the feedback loop, and to make sure that you’re building things that will boost customer loyalty. 

Using something like ProdPad means you’re not just housing a feedback form on your website. We already mentioned that ProdPad has a customizable feedback portal, but it’s more than just that. You’ll also be collecting those feature requests into a place that helps you to do something useful with them.

You can link specific pieces of feedback directly into your Ideas in your ProdPad backlog, providing valuable insights on which features or fixes your customer base actually wants. That makes it much easier to prioritize the best thing to build that’ll improve your user experience.

PRO TIP – If you collect feedback with ProdPad, your Customer Support team is going to love you. They will know when the requested feature has gone live, so they can quickly email everyone who requested it. As the famous old saying goes, “Happy customers and a happy Customer Support team mean a happy life for a Product Manager.” Or something like that, anyway…

5. Review sites

According to eMarketer, a Bizrate Insights survey showed that a massive 98% of buyers scour online reviews before making a purchase. Like, that’s pretty much everyone.

So, it’s important to know what those reviews are saying about you online. That way you can fix any common concerns and reply to any particularly aggrieved users. In fact, there’s a solid argument to be made for replying to every single review you find, whether it’s good or bad.

The best way to keep on top of reviews on third-party sites is to employ a listening suite that can scour everything from reviews to tweets and aggregate them for you. The best customer experience management suites can collate this with feedback from any other source you can think of, and suggest actions and next steps.

If you work in SaaS in particular, you’ll be no stranger to sites like G2. Generating positive reviews there is a great way to get yourself some of those oh-so-recognizable badges. They’re a wonderful way to show that your product gets so much positive feedback that your customers love you enough to leave you a glowing review. 

6. Live chat

Live chat is a great way to answer customer questions and queries instantly, and it doesn’t require them to hang around on the phone because follow-up replies can happen throughout the day. Even better, live chat can also become a powerful feedback engine.

The end of every live chat is an opportunity to ask for the customer’s opinion – and not just about how their customer support query went. You can take the chance to ask them if they’d be willing to provide a quick review of your product or give insight into what they do or don’t like about it.

As with any method of collecting customer feedback, not everyone will bother. But if you automate the ask, you lose nothing and stand to gain a ton of valuable opinions.

7. Social media

According to Sprout Social, 47% of customers with a complaint to air will do so on social media. If almost half of your negative feedback is plastered over Facebook and Twitter, it pays to be on the lookout for it. Social listening tools (like Sprout Social) can do this for you, while also flagging priority messages that need to be actioned first.

But you can be proactive, too. Why not occasionally run polls in Tweets or Instagram Stories? Or explicitly ask people what they’d like to see in future updates? You’d be surprised how many great ideas and keen advisors there are out there.

The response rate on social media platforms is a real draw too: it’s virtually instantaneous and easy for your customers to leave. You’ll likely be amazed by how much information you gather, especially if you have a large audience on your social media channels. Just ask Wendy’s.

So remember – social media isn’t all eccentric billionaires and cats playing pianos. It’s actually a wonderful way to get direct feedback from an online community of super-engaged people!

8. Heatmaps

Heatmapping technology is a pretty technical way to understand how people are using your product, though it can also pick out any issues they might be facing with it – even ones they might not be able to articulate themselves.

By embedding tools like Smartlook into your product, you can get an aggregate view of scrolling, cursor, and click/tap behavior across all your users. One valuable insight you’ll get from using a heat mapping tool is seeing something in the user flow that you might not have picked up before the feature went live,

For example, you might see that your users are rage-clicking in a particular place, or bouncing when you don’t expect them to. Then, when you look into it a bit further, you might realize that a pop-up is blocking the next action, or that your CTA copy is misleading.

The catch here is that you can’t see individual journeys, and understanding what it all means requires a bit of lateral thinking.

9. Product analytics

Like heatmap tools, product analytics suites are platforms that monitor usage across your entire product. They can track a whole heap of product adoption metrics with feature-level granularity, making them a passive method of collecting customer feedback that doesn’t bother the user for input.

Let’s say you’ve released a new feature in the latest version of your product. Product analytics suites can look at metrics like feature adoption rate, time-to-first-action, and active users, to help you figure out if that new tool is landing how you’d like.

Product analytics tools can be really comprehensive, but they also suffer from the same major drawback as any analytics suite: you need someone who knows how to interpret data in order to derive actionable insight. After all, generating a bunch of stats around product adoption is great for morale, but what’s even better is the ability to learn as much from those metrics as you would from a piece of written feedback.

We’ve actually got a breakdown of the 7 best product analytics suites right here to save you the trouble of searching them down yourself.

10. Be easily contactable!

How many times have you had to dive several clicks deep into a website to find actual contact details for a company? It’s infuriating, right? So, don’t do that.

The humble email is still an excellent way to garner feedback from your customers, so don’t make it difficult for them to reach you.

Have a good long think about how quick and easy it is for users to send you an email. Maybe there should be a button in plain sight somewhere in the product itself? Or perhaps an email link in the footer of your website?

We’d advise cutting down on the required form fields, and maybe even using a dropdown list for possible topics, which are then delivered to separate inboxes.

What are the best ways to collect customer feedback in person?

While we do of course live in a digital age, there’s no better way to be sure of getting some feedback than having your customers there in the room with you.

Here are some of the best ways to collect some direct user feedback:

1. Interviews
2. Focus groups
3. Customer advisory board
4. User testing sessions

1. Interviews

Interviews are a fantastic way to get deep, personal insights into what your customers are thinking and feeling about your product. Start by carefully choosing a diverse mix of users, ensuring you hear from different perspectives. Flexibility in scheduling and creating a comfortable environment (be it in-person or online) is important if you want to encourage people to engage.

You’ll need to have skilled interviewers who can steer the conversation effectively, ask open-ended questions, and really listen, encouraging interviewees to share detailed experiences and ideas. And after each interview, make sure to send a heartfelt “thank you”! It’s more than just good manners; it’s about showing appreciation for their valuable time and thoughts, and building an even more personal connection between them and your product.

Sometimes, you might want to follow up for more clarity, but only if they’re comfortable with it. This follow-up can shed more light on the initial feedback, adding even more value to what you’ve learned. Either way, dive into the data from these interviews, looking for patterns, pain points, and other golden nuggets to build out your user stories. Then, it’s all about turning these insights into action.

2. Focus groups

In a similar vein to interviews, focus groups can be goldmines for getting diverse, in-depth customer feedback, by bringing together a small group of people from different backgrounds and walks of life to talk about your product. It’s fascinating how a mix of perspectives can shed light on things you might not have considered.

Again, make sure to have a skilled moderator to lead the discussion. They’re like the conductor of an orchestra, ensuring everyone’s voice is heard and keeping the conversation flowing and on point.

Preparation is key to getting the most from the process. Set clear goals for what you want to learn from each group. It’s not just a casual chat; you’ll need to have specific topics and questions in mind to steer the conversation. But there’s always room for spontaneity – sometimes the most unexpected insights come from just letting the conversation take its own course.

Try to create a comfortable and inviting atmosphere. You want your participants to open up, share their honest thoughts, and interact with each other. That’s where the magic happens – when people start bouncing ideas off each other, so it can help to use icebreakers to lighten the mood and get everyone talking.

3. Customer Advisory Board

Your Customer Advisory Board (CAB) is like the Small Council from Game of Thrones, made up of your most engaged and influential customers. These members should be hand-picked for their diverse experiences and deep understanding of the market. The idea is to keep this group tight-knit, usually around 10-15 members, to foster meaningful discussions and easy management.

CAB meetings are like regular check-ins, usually happening every quarter or so. Again, you should always be clear about what you want to get out of these sessions – it could be anything from feedback on a new feature to strategies for tackling market changes. The key is to have structured agendas but also leave room for open, candid conversations.

These sessions aren’t just about you talking at your customers. It’s a two-way street, giving you space to dive into problem-solving, and tapping into the diverse expertise of your board members. Their unique perspectives often lead you to innovative solutions you might not have considered otherwise.

Post-meeting, don’t just pat yourself on the back and call it a day though. Follow up with a summary of what was discussed and the action points you plan to tackle. This follow-through is the whole point. It shows your CAB members that their input isn’t just valued, it’s instrumental. And, by implementing their feedback, you’re not just fine-tuning your product; you’re building a partnership with some of your most valuable customers.

4. User testing sessions

User testing sessions make for great reality checks. Bring in people who represent your actual users – you’ll want some that are already customers, and some that might be potential users. The goal is to see your product through their eyes.

It’s all about understanding how your product fits into their daily lives. By creating realistic scenarios for them to work through, you get a window into how intuitive and user-friendly your product really is. After all, you probably know your product inside and out, which means you’re probably not a good judge of how new or less experienced users approach it.

Note where they stumble, what makes them pause, and when those ‘Aha!’ moments crop up. It’s a fascinating process and can be super informative. Encourage them to think out loud as they navigate, giving you a peek into their thought process. This fresh, immediate feedback is gold – it’s raw and often points out things you might not have noticed with your burden of product knowledge.

Next, sift through it all, looking for patterns and key takeaways, then turn these into action points for your team. It’s an ongoing cycle – test, learn, improve, and test again. And again we make sure to loop back with our participants, showing them how their input is shaping our product. It’s not just about finding flaws; it’s about constantly evolving and making our product the best it can be for those who use it.

What should you do next with your customer feedback?

Ok, so you’ve got ears and eyes all over collecting customer feedback, and you’re running feedback sessions and interviews. If what you’re hearing is positive, you proudly display what’s been said on your website as customer testimonials, and share it with your team as a morale boost. But… what if it’s negative?

Well, that’s when you act. Don’t get mad, get fixing! You need to take what people are saying and turn it into improvements that positively impact every customer – not just the ones giving feedback.

Let’s look at a few examples:

“I like what the product does but it’s too pricey for me in the long term.”

If this is a one-off criticism, you might be able to take it with a pinch of salt. But if you hear this a lot, you need to think about your pricing structure. Maybe you can offer a stripped-back free tier or a student rate, or maybe you need to reassess your entire pricing strategy. You could do worse than use this feedback as a jumping-off point to run a focus group on pricing.

“Too complicated. The app has way too much going on.”

You’ve got navigation issues. Sometimes what seems obvious to the team making the product seems alien and confusing to outsiders, and it can be difficult to see the wood for the trees. It would be worth combining this written feedback with some technical insight via eye-tracking software to see how people are navigating your app. Alongside this, why not workshop a more user-friendly set of tutorial screens?

“Crashes all the time.”

Red alert! Even one user claiming that your product is unstable should be enough to launch a full-scale QA investigation. If your product crashes regularly you need to find out what the variables are, and whether it’s a specific browser, chipset, or OS that’s rubbing up against your architecture the wrong way.

What’s crucial is that this becomes a cyclical process. You should be aiming to collect customer feedback as often as humanly possible without it becoming a burden on your target audience.

The aim of the game is to collect feedback and opinions, act on what you learn, and then ask again. If you’re receiving fewer complaints about that issue, you can move on to a different priority on the roadmap.

Developing a product is an infinitely long process, and customer feedback plays a vital role when it comes to closing experience gaps that you might otherwise miss.

And once you’ve used your new feedback-fu, and identified those experience gaps? It’s time to update your roadmap so that the whole team knows what needs to be tackled Now, Next, and Later. 

Top tips for collecting customer feedback

Finally, before we leave you to go listen really hard to your customers to find out exactly how to make them happy, here are a few final ideas to help you nail your feedback loop:

1. Timing is everything: Request feedback following an interaction or at relevant moments. Avoid times when it might be intrusive or irrelevant.
2. Incentivize responses: Offering rewards or incentives can help to increase response rates.
3. Target a diverse audience: Ensure you’re gathering feedback from a wide range of users to avoid biased insights. Consider different user types, demographics, and levels of engagement with your product.
4. Context is king: Choose the right medium (in-app, email, social media) based on the context and nature of the feedback you’re seeking.
5. Keep it short and simple: Lengthy surveys or complicated feedback mechanisms can deter users. Aim for clarity and brevity.
6. Acknowledge and act: Show users that their feedback is valued by acknowledging their contributions and, where feasible, implementing changes based on their input.
7. Continuous process: Regularly update your feedback mechanisms and keep the process ongoing, adapting to changes in user behavior and preferences.
8. Privacy and transparency: Assure users of their privacy and be transparent about how their feedback will be used.
9. Respond quickly to feedback: Reply swiftly to feedback, especially if it’s negative. This shows customers that their opinions are valued and taken seriously, and can turn a negative experience into a positive one.

Now go forth, intrepid feedback hoovers! Unleash the power of your newfound knowledge, engage with your customers in meaningful ways, and turn their complaints and praise into the golden keys that unlock the potential of your product.

The post How to Collect Customer Feedback in 2024 appeared first on ProdPad.