You can have the most innovative product, but if people don't use it, it might as well not exist.

The root issue often comes down to a lack of strategic attention on product engagement and product adoption – or simply conflating the two metrics.

While they may seem similar, understanding the nuances between these key metrics can significantly impact how a business strategizes product development and customer relationship management. Both are critical metrics for measuring the health and performance of products, growth, and customer success.

This comprehensive guide will explore the key differences between adoption metrics and engagement metrics and provide several tactical strategies to improve both.

What is Product Adoption in SaaS?

In the SaaS industry, product adoption refers to the process of customers discovering, integrating, and actively using a product over time. It’s a critical metric because it indicates how well users are accepting and embedding a product into their everyday workflows. High product adoption means that users find value in the software and are likely to continue using it, while low adoption signals that users may struggle to see the product's value or face barriers in using it effectively.

Product adoption doesn’t happen overnight. It typically follows a journey that includes:

• Onboarding: The initial introduction to the product, where users learn how to get started.
• Engagement: Continued use and exploration of product features as users integrate it into their daily activities.
• Retention: The ongoing use of the product over time, showing that the customer sees continued value.

The goal for SaaS companies is to ensure smooth adoption by offering intuitive product designs, helpful onboarding, and constant support. Effective product adoption leads to increased customer satisfaction, reduces churn, and sets the foundation for long-term customer success.

Understanding Product Adoption Metrics

Product adoption metrics focus on the initial stages of a user's interaction with a product. They measure the rate at which new users start using a product or feature.

1. Sign-Up Rate

This is your first win in the user journey. If 1,000 people visit your site and 100 sign up, that's a 10% sign-up rate. But it's not just about the numbers - you want quality sign-ups who are likely to become active users. Pay attention to:

• Which marketing channels bring in users who actually sign up
• How your sign-up rate changes with different messaging or offers
• Whether simplified sign-up forms increase conversions
• If free trials or demos impact your sign-up rate

This is often compared to website visitor counts to calculate overall website to sign-up conversions.

2. Activation Rate

The proportion of new users who take a specific, desired action within the product.

Think of this as your "aha moment" metric. It's when users take that crucial first step that makes them more likely to stick around.

This metric varies greatly by industry and type of company. For instance, this can be "adding six friends" for Facebook, or "creating a demo and sharing it" for Supademo.

3. Feature Adoption Rate

How often new users engage with a particular feature. This can be done on a singular or thematic batch of features (i.e. editing tools).

This shows how successfully users are discovering and using specific features. Let's break it down:

• Core features: What percentage of users adopt must-have features?
• Premium features: Are users finding and using the features that justify higher-tier pricing?
• New features: How quickly do users try newly launched features?

4. Time to First Action

The time it takes for a new user to engage with your product after signing up. Speed matters here. The faster you get them to act, the more sticky your product typically becomes. For instance:

• If users take action within minutes of signing up: Great!
• If it takes days: You might need to improve your onboarding
• If they never take action: Time to revamp your activation strategy

5. Time-to-Value

This is crucial - how quickly do users experience your product's real benefits? Examples:

• For an analytics tool: Getting their first meaningful insight
• For a social media scheduler: Scheduling their first week of posts
• For an email marketing platform: Sending their first successful campaign

The shorter this time, the more likely users are to stick around. If it takes too long, you risk losing them before they see your product's true value.

Adoption metrics are crucial for understanding how well your product attracts and initiates new users.

What is Product Engagement in SaaS?

Product engagement in SaaS refers to how frequently and meaningfully users interact with a product after the initial onboarding phase. Unlike product adoption, which focuses on the initial uptake of a product, engagement is a deeper, ongoing measure of how actively users are interacting with the product over time. It shows whether users are not just using the product, but are deriving value from it and making it a part of their regular routines.

Key indicators of product engagement include:

• Frequency of Use: How often users log in or use the product.
• Feature Utilization: Whether users are exploring and taking advantage of advanced features, rather than sticking to basic functionality.
• User Behavior: How deeply users engage with the product, such as completing tasks, setting goals, or collaborating with others within the software.

High product engagement suggests that users are finding value in the product, and are likely to become long-term customers. It also provides valuable insights into which features are most useful, allowing SaaS companies to refine their product based on real user behavior.

In SaaS, fostering strong product engagement is crucial for building loyalty, reducing churn, and driving growth. By continuously optimizing the user experience and providing ongoing support, companies can keep users engaged and satisfied long after the initial adoption phase.

Understanding Product Engagement Metrics

Product engagement metrics, on the other hand, measure how active and involved users are with your product over time. These metrics are indicators of how valuable and sticky your product is for your users. Common engagement metrics include:

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

Think of this as your product's daily or monthly pulse check. If 500 different people use your product today, that's your DAU. If 2,000 unique users engage with it over a month, that's your MAU.

For example, if you're running a task management app, an "active" user might be someone who creates or completes a task. This metric helps you understand how sticky your product is - are people making it part of their routine?

Products like Mixpanel, Amplitude, or Intercom help track these relatively easily.

2. Session Length

This tells you how long users spend with your product in one sitting.

Let's say you have a learning platform - if users typically spend 45 minutes per session, that's pretty engaging. But if they're only staying for 2 minutes, something might be off. The ideal session length varies by product type - what's good for a meditation app might be concerning for a project management tool.

Products like Hotjar or Fullstory capture these in addition to actual session recordings.

3. Frequency of Use

This shows how often users come back. This is a leading indicator of whether the user will churn or retain over time.

Some users might log in daily, others weekly, and some monthly. For instance, if you're running a fitness app, you might want to see users returning at least 3-4 times a week.

Low frequency often signals that users aren't getting enough value, making them more likely to churn.

4. User Retention Rate

This is the big picture - how many users stick around over time. There are two ways to look at it:

• Usage retention: Of the people who signed up in January, how many are still actively using the product in March?
• Dollar retention: Are customers spending more (expansion), the same (flat), or less (contraction) over time? If your net dollar retention is over 100%, it means your existing customers are spending more money over time - that's the sweet spot.

Engagement metrics help you understand the depth of the relationship between your users and your product.

Key Differences Between Product Adoption and Engagement

If you've gotten to this section, you already have an understanding of how adoption and engagement differ. In essence, the key difference lies in the stages of the customer journey they represent.

➡️ Product adoption metrics are about the "firsts" – first interaction, first use, first action. They are leading retention indicators and measure how successful you are at getting users to try something new.

➡️ Product engagement metrics, however, are about the ongoing relationship – how users interact with your product over time. It measures how engaged your existing users are via metrics like time-spent, sessions, and frequency of use. They are often lagging indicators that take time to accrue. Engagement is also a leading indicator to whether you'll likely retain or churn that customers. Generally speaking, the more engaged = less likely to churn. Less engaged = more likely to churn.

4 Tips to Improve Product Adoption Metrics

While there are many ways to drive user adoption, here are several strategies to drive this metric:

1. Simplify the Onboarding Process

This means only 20% of top-of-funnel users come back to use your product in a meaningful way – highlighting the weighted importance they have on your business metrics.

This is why you need to prioritize, simplify, and optimize your product-led onboarding experience.

Make the user's first experience as smooth and straightforward as possible.

This includes simplifying the signup process and making onboarding self-paced, async, and accessible any time.

2. Clear Value Proposition

Ensure that your product's value is immediately apparent to new users. Your signup and onboarding flow should be focused on accelerating time-to-value and maximizing activation rate.

3. Leverage Self-Paced Education

Provide resources like tutorials, guides, and FAQs to help new users understand how to use your product. Leverage interactive demos within knowledge bases or training to visually guide customers step-by-step – humans are visual learners after all!

Here's an example from ProcessMaker:

What did we like about this self-paced interactive demo?

• ProcessMaker’s demo is directly embedded in their knowledge base for easy access. Additionally, viewers can choose between autoplay and self-actioned tours. By using a self-directed demo or engaging in a video-like overview, users can select the demo that suits them.
• The demo uses a simple, conversational tone and offers examples of different steps, making it easy for viewers to understand.
• Despite being somewhat longer than preferred, the demo directly addresses a common problem. And ensures that each step helps users resolve the problem they’re facing.

4. Leverage Feedback Loops

Collect and act on feedback from new users to continuously improve the adoption process. Regularly ask for customer feedback in all stages of their journey: when they first sign up, when they start using the product, when they become power users, and when they churn.

4 Tips to Improve Product Engagement Metrics

1. Personalization

Tailor the user experience based on individual user behavior and preferences. This starts from the initial signup flow, where you can personalize the setup of the user's dashboard based on their sign up answers.

Personalization is also effective for when onboarding users at scale – like using dynamic variables for "welcome demos" in onboarding emails:

2. Regular Updates and Documentation

Continuously update your product with new features and improvements based on user feedback. Extensive documentation on new features, technologies, and updates can be a driver for continued engagement from new and existing customers.

In fact, regular newsletters or product update emails can be a huge driver to re-activating churned customers or interested users that had forgoten about your product or service.

3. Community Building

Communities can be a huge driver to retaining power users or converting existing users into more frequent users. While this method takes considerable time and effort, you can take the first steps of building a community around your product through forums, social media, and events.

Slack communities are a natural medium for B2B companies looking to solicit feedback and get more engagement from their users.

4. Reward Loyalty

If you have loyal users, they're likely already recommending your product or services to their friends and family. By implementing formal affiliate, referral, or loyalty programs, you can gamify your platform for continued use.

Measuring and Analyzing Product Adoption and Engagement Metrics

To effectively measure and analyze both sets of metrics, use analytics tools that track user behavior from the first interaction through to regular use.

Metrics to measure product adoption

1. Sign-Up Rate
2. Activation Rate
3. Feature Adoption Rate
4. Time to First Action
5. Time-to-Value

Metrics to measure product engagement

1. Daily/Monthly Active Users (DAU/MAU)
2. Session Length
3. Frequency of Use
4. User Retention Rate

Popular tools for measuring adoption and engagement metrics include:

• Mixpanel: Offers in-depth analytics that go beyond basic metrics, allowing companies to understand user behavior in more detail.
• Heap: Known for its ability to automatically capture all user interactions, providing a comprehensive dataset for analysis without requiring manual tracking setup.
• Customer.io: Offers tools for improving user adoption through feature and event tracking, retention cohort analysis, and product adoption dashboards.
• Intercom: A customer communication platform that facilitates targeted interactions with customers through your website and within your web and mobile applications, aiming to enhance customer support and engagement.
• Amplitude: A comprehensive SaaS platform that provides businesses with sophisticated analytics to track user behavior and activity data, enabling them to gain actionable insights for optimizing user engagement and product development
• Hotjar: Known for its heatmaps and session recordings, which offer insights into how users interact with your website or app.
• FullStory: Offers session replay technology that helps in understanding user interactions on a website or app in great detail.

These tools vary in their specific features and capabilities, but all aim to provide insights into user behavior, engagement, and adoption.

We recommend regularly reviewing your adoption and engagement metrics (like the ones prefaced above) to understand trends, identify areas for improvement, and adjust your strategies accordingly.

Wrapping up!

Understanding and differentiating between product adoption and engagement metrics is crucial for any SaaS business. The first step is to understand the differences between the two. Next, it's a continuous process to improve both. Finally, you need to measure your outcomes and be data-driven to ensure adoption and engagement improve over time.

By focusing on the above strategies, you can ensure not only a great start for your users but also a lasting and evolving relationship with your product.

And, with Supademo, you can tactically improve both engagement and adoption by using high-converting, engaging product demos and guides. Best of all, you can create your first demo in seconds with no technical expertise required.

So, head over to Supademo to start creating engaging interactive demo – it's free!