Top 5 Metrics to Track for Digital Product Adoption

Remember when everyone would go to the bank to cash a check? Or buy groceries at the store? Or call the doctor to get an update? Sometimes, you still have to go in person or make the call, but you can usually get things done online using an app or portal.

In today’s world, having a digital app or product isn’t just a perk—it’s a strategic imperative. Leading businesses invest in making their digital experiences a seamless extension of their brand. When they do, they amplify engagement across diverse channels, personalize customer experiences, and transition costlier in-person touchpoints to efficient digital avenues.

But for businesses to increase users of their digital channels, their online experiences must be intuitive and engaging to use. Building intuitive products requires access to user behavioral data, a usercentric design approach, and tracking the right digital adoption metrics.

Enterprises can track various product metrics to measure and improve digital product adoption. They can also use these metrics to monitor user behavior, engagement, and retention. By tracking the right metrics, large enterprises can identify areas to improve the user experience and make data-driven product development and marketing decisions.

5 key metrics to track for digital product adoption

To help organizations focus on specific KPIs that align with their goals, we’ve outlined five foundational metrics that provide insights into digital product adoption.

Get your copy of the Product Metrics Guide for a full list of 15 metrics and how to track them.

1. Feature usage

Feature usage is a window into user interaction and engagement. It tracks the usage frequency and the average time users interact with specific features within your product. A granular understanding of usage empowers organizations to make informed decisions for in-app product optimization and strategic growth.

By closely monitoring feature usage, organizations can:

• Identify popular features. Recognize the key features that delight users and guide resource allocation toward enhancing them.
• Prioritize feature development. Allocate development efforts strategically by channeling more time into refining popular features and improving user experiences. It also helps uncover ideas for new features, ensuring that functionality aligns with user preferences.
• Uncover user behavior patterns. Analyze feature usage patterns to understand how users interact with the product, surfacing preferences and pain points.
• Address underutilization. Identify underutilized features, enabling targeted improvements to increase adoption and boost product usage.
• Unlock cross-sell and upsell opportunities. Spot avenues for cross-selling and upselling by understanding which features complement each other.

By consistently benchmarking feature usage against industry standards, organizations can gauge their product's performance in the competitive landscape, guiding them toward data-driven enhancements and staying ahead in digital product adoption.

2. Activation rate

The activation rate gauges the percentage of users who complete a predefined action that signifies a meaningful engagement with your product. That engagement might look like creating an account, making a money transfer, orposting a picture.

Measuring the activation rate involves dividing the number of customers who completed a specific action by the total number of users who initiated the onboarding process. The activation rate is a compass for understanding user engagement levels early in the customer journey and setting activation benchmarks.

Your activation rate can also reveal the effectiveness of your onboarding strategies and product usability. By carefully monitoring this metric, you can:

• Optimize onboarding flows. Understand where users might drop off during onboarding, enabling targeted improvements to streamline the process.
• Uncover conversion opportunities. Identify conversion points within the onboarding journey and ways to enhance conversion rates.
• Unearth user experience issues. Identify pain points or friction areas in the onboarding process, providing insights for creating smoother user experiences.
• Assess audience suitability. Evaluate whether the target audience finds value in the product by measuring the rate of successful activations.

In the dynamic landscape of digital product adoption, the activation rate is a barometer for the initial user experience, guiding organizations to refine onboarding and engagement.

3. Adoption rate

Your product’s adoption rate provides crucial insights into how much users embrace your product. To determine this metric, calculate the percentage of users who actively engage with your product within a specified timeframe.

Measuring product adoption rate offers several advantages:

• Understanding the user base. Your adoption rate reveals the percentage of users who have embraced your product.
• Segmenting users. By segmenting users based on their adoption behavior, you can gain a clear picture of different user groups, enabling tailored strategies for engagement and retention.
• Providing market penetration insight. Your adoption rate provides insights into the market penetration of your target audience, guiding expansion efforts and potential areas for growth.
• Identifying room for improvement. Measuring product adoption rate means highlighting sections of the user journey that might require improvement.

It's also valuable to analyze your feature adoption rate—the extent to which users adopt individual features within your product. While the adoption rate offers a holistic view of user engagement, the feature adoption rate illuminates the popularity specific product features. By understanding both metrics, organizations can better understand user adoption trends and devise data-driven strategies to improve them.

4. Time to activate

The time to activate quantifies the time it takes for a new user to perform a significant action within the product, which often indicates that they grasp the product's core value.

This is also referred to as the aha moment—the point at which users realize why they need or love the product. It's the moment where the product's value proposition clicks, transforming casual users into engaged advocates.

Measuring the time to activate offers critical insights into the new user engagement. A swift aha moment signifies that users quickly comprehend the product's value, resulting in a more engaged and invested user base. On the contrary, a prolonged time to active could indicate hurdles in user onboarding or value communication.

By consistently tracking the time to activate, organizations can refine their onboarding processes, elevate the user experience, and improve the likelihood of users promptly achieving the aha moment. In this way, the metric can guide product enhancements and strategies for increased user activation.

5. Net Promoter Score (NPS)

The Net Promoter Score (NPS) is a widely recognized metric that assesses customer satisfaction and loyalty. Companies obtain their NPS through a simple survey asking active users to rate their likelihood of recommending your product to others on a scale of 0 to 10. The NPS system categorizes responses into promoters (scores 9-10), passives (scores 7-8), and detractors (scores 0-6).

The correlation between NPS and digital product adoption comes from its insight into user sentiment about the overall customer experience. A high NPS signifies strong customer satisfaction and a higher likelihood of users becoming advocates of your product. In the context of digital product adoption, a favorable NPS suggests that users find value in your product and are likely to encourage others to adopt it.

However, low NPS scores or a significant gap between promoters and detractors signify potential issues negatively affecting the user experience and hindering adoption and retention. It’s important to not only focus on quantitative metrics like the adoption rate but also understand the qualitative aspects of user sentiment. By measuring NPS alongside other adoption metrics, you gain a more holistic view of your digital product adoption and areas for improvement.

Amplitude's role in tracking product adoption

As businesses navigate the dynamic landscape of digital product adoption, Amplitude plays a pivotal role in providing comprehensive insights and solutions. With Amplitude's advanced analytics capabilities, businesses can elevate their understanding of user behavior, streamline product improvements, and enhance their digital product adoption strategies.

Amplitude's self-serve platform empowers organizations to perfect their products with data-backed precision. Teams can quickly uncover customer trends, behavioral insights, and industry-specific metrics through automated insights. The platform helps turn questions into insights, guiding users to understand conversion patterns, spot trends, and explore the "why" behind their user journeys.

By partnering with Amplitude, businesses can experiment, iterate, and improve user experiences, ensuring personalized interactions that drive product adoption and improve retention. Amplitude empowers businesses to visualize user paths, identify friction points, and optimize for customer value, contributing to the success of their digital product adoption journey.

Ready to revolutionize your digital product adoption? Download The Strategies for Effective Digital Product Adoption guide and unlock a data-driven pathway to excellent customer experiences.