Designing for adoption Building products in the end-user era requires product leaders to take a customer-centric approach to deliver winning user experiences. This session will cover the steps required to create an experience-driven product strategy using usage data, user sentiment, and revenue analysis.

1. ©2007-2020 GAINSIGHT, INC.
Designing for
adoption.
Building products in the end-user era.
Mickey Alon
CTO & Founder Gainsight PX

2. 5 Steps for creating experience driven product
strategy

3. Building A Data
Driven Product
Organization.
#1

4. KEY PRODUCT QUESTIONS.
Product team:
● How can we measure success of new product/feature launch?
● How sticky is your product and to which user cohort?
● Is the product intuitive enough and easy to use?
● What should be the north star metric
● How do customers feel about your product & brand?
● What key features drive adoption & retention ?
Adoption team:
● What metrics should I use in a QBR/EBR?
● How many customers are achieving the outcome the product intends to deliver?
● Are customers performing the intended product actions we like them to take ?
● Are users aware of all the relevant features?

5. ● Understanding usage data in meaningful and actionable way
● Learn about user behavior, objectives and outcome
● Drive more informed roadmap decision
● Measure key performance indicators
● Identify product challenges & opportunities
● Incorporate different data points - behavior, business and sentiment
● Drive adoption, reduce churn
PRODUCT ANALYTICS GOALS.

6. OBJECTIVES, KPIs and NORTH STAR METRIC.
Successful customers = increase shareholder value
Qualifying your KPI
● Captures the outcome that the product delivers
● Mapped to your company objectives and long-term product strategy
● Ties adoption to bookings & revenue (product adoption score)
NPS/CES | Core Features | MAU/WAU
New Features | New Users/Accounts
ARR$/NRR$ (CLTV)

7. OBJECTIVE DRIVEN DASHBOARDING.
Baseline KPIs
● New users
● Value actions (feature trend)
● Path to a-ha moments
● Funnels
● User sentiment

8. Owner Area of focus KPIs
Product
Management
Data driven product strategy,
roadmap, prioritization, communication
and adoption
North Star Metrics, Product adoption,
Product enhancements, PMF,
DAU/MAU, CLV, CAC
Customer success Onboarding, adoption, outcome,
growth/ expansion
TTV, Customer health, User sentiment,
Retention/renewals
Customer/Growth
marketing
Trials, webinars, content nurturing,
adoption, growth, advocacy
Conversion rate, user engagement level,
content performance
UX & Docs Usability and user
enablement/education
Adoption, Time to value, support cases
CROSS FUNCTIONAL KPIs & OBJECTIVES.

9. Feature instrumentation
Every product feature that is delivered yields valuable data.

10. WHAT IS FEATURE INSTRUMENTATION.
Externalizing feature usage and user events for analysis
Types of instrumentation Examples
Tracking feature usage based on real-time user interaction Create report, upload a file
Tracking backend usage Number of saved reports per user/account, CTR
Backend features and services API thresholds
Event metadata Report name, size, category, monetary value
Global event metadata (Global Context) Application version, enabled features, runtime (cloud, on-prem)

11. INSTRUMENTATION CHALLENGES.
● Engineering resources prioritized to deliver features
● Introducing code which needs to be tested and maintained
● Sustaining a growing amount of features and product teams
● Understanding the module/feature context/naming
● Correlation: user to feature and account usage roll-
up,CRM data
● Cross device/channel tracking to a centralized view
● Doing it wrong can lead to performance impact
● Session emulation and context tracking can be heavy lifting

12. PRODUCT INSTRUMENTATION.
Taking automated & near zero coding approach
● Front-end user interaction by adding contextual feature
data
● Backend services data such as API usage and user
metrics
● In-app guidance & engagement data
● User sentiment & feedback
● Supports re-mapping or backfill
● Modular to help you scale and make is maintainable
Cover full customer and product lifecycle
Leads -> Trial -> Adoption -> Retention -> Growth
Product mapping

13. CODED INSTRUMENTATION.
When coding should be used?
● Tracking event metadata such as monetary
values, CTR, calculated fields
● Tracking in product search or video statistics
● Tracking valuable data points such as product
version
● Tracking backend data
● Keeping in sync with feature-flag

14. Design user journeys
towards the desired
outcome that your
product delivers.
#2

15. ADOPTION CURVE.
Map product journeys and adoption path, identify friction points and features discoverability challenges.
● Setup completion
● Enable feature
tracking
● Test in-app editor
Level1
Onboarding - First Mile
Of Product ● Learn about feature
usage
● Building
onboarding
engagement
● Invite colleagues
Level2
Adoption - Initial Value ● Apply adoption
plays
● Create closed-loop
surveys
● Build growth
dashboard
Level3
Adoption - True Value
● Outcome driven
road-mapping
● Expand to new
modules &
products
● Experimentation
Level4
Expansion
Adoption playbook

16. USER PROFILE DATA/ICP.
● Objectives - what are they trying to achieve
short term and long-term.
● Stage: Trial, Onboarding, Adoption
● Role(s): Admin, Designer, Guest
● Entitlement - enabled features
● Outcome - north star metric
● Package: Free, Select, Prime
● Account objectives - ROI/productivity
● ACV - Annual contract $ value
● Number of account users
● Renewal date
Capture user intent, role and long term objectives

17. FEATURE USAGE.
Every product feature that is delivered yields valuable data.
Feature class Core, sticky, competitive
Stage Newly launched
Discoverability Time to first usage
Usability How intuitive is it
Outcome Drives core value
Breadth How many users use it
Depth how frequent is it being used

18. USER ENABLEMENT.
● Set user expectation and use in-
product guidance
● Integrate with knowledge base to
self-serve through the app
● Allow users to reach out to you and
provide feedback
Let the product address the heavy lifting of user onboarding

19. Taking people through everything they need to do
in order to see value through the product.
ONBOARDING CHECKLIST EXAMPLE.

20. Focus On Product
Adoption#3

21. MEASURE PRODUCT STICKINESS.
Deliver value, retain customers, differentiate
& grow
● Know how well your product retains its
users
● Identify the window of time you have to
guide users to realize early value of your
product.
● Validate your hypothesis on which
features and user attributes drive
retention and growth
Key use cases:
● Product-market fit
● Stickiness - measure returning users to
differentiate feature over time.

22. ACCELERATE TIME TO VALUE.
● Understand & Optimize the first mile
of product towards the moment of
value experienced by the user [Initial
Value]
● Identify challenges and improve the
usability and discoverability for core
features.
● Prioritize product roadmap to support
exceptional product experience –
demo/trial/onboarding

23. TRACK ADOPTION FLOWS.
● Visualize user activity to surface
unexpected user flows
● Learn about the first mile of
product for new users
● Learn how users get to a NEW
feature and where do they go next
Key use cases:
● User Onboarding to A-ha moments
● Product launch
● Feature release
● UX Usability analysis
● Value path tracking -
adoption/retention

24. INCREASE RELEASE AWARENESS.
Message to your users based their role,
objective and adoption stage
● Raise awareness of what’s coming
● Monetize your product investments
● Increase customer retention & adoption

25. FEATURE ACTIVATION.
Enable growth plays to new products or high
value features
● Increase feature discoverability
● Promote features in context
● Collect feedback via CES
“Golden features” — are a set of product features that a prospect or
customer should use to realize value and advance to the next stage
of the customer lifecycle.
-Mastering product experience.

26. FEATURE ACTIVATION.
A-ha moment
● For Asana, initial value can mean creating a new
project, with tasks successfully assigned to a team
member.
● For Zoom.us, it can mean signing up, organizing, and
holding the first video conference.
● For Expensify, it could be creating the first expense
report that is approved for payment.

27. Enable Closed-Loop
Feedback
#4

28. USER SATISFACTION & FEEDBACK.
Obtaining user opinion provides qualitative aspect to your data. Listen to
what they say about the product and features.
Learn about their challenges and the Why behind the What.
“One thing I love about customers is that they are divinely discontent.
Their expectations are never static - they go up. It’s human nature. We
didn’t ascend from our hunter-gatherer days by being satisfied.
People have a voracious appetite for a better way… You cannot rest on
your laurels in this world. Customers won’t have it.”

29. USER SATISFACTION & FEEDBACK.
Use your product to collect feedback
● Contextualized to real-time action(s), feature completion
● Targeted - usage, stage, entitlement, account
● Frequency - first time usage vs mature usage
Types of feedback
● NPS: Net promoter score - company satisfaction
● CES: Customer effort score - feature/workflow
● CSAT: product area/releases

30. USER SATISFACTION & FEEDBACK.
Using deeper surveys allows you to cover wider topics:
● Roadmap & beta programs
● Learn about feature request
● Pre-release/post release feedback.

31. © Copyright 2018, Gainsight, Inc., All rights reserved
IN-PRODUCT RESPONSE RATE
Responded Dates Responded
Gainsight 2019/Q4 73.6% responded
22.7% added comments
NPS - avg 2020/Q1 28.9% responded
16.8% added comments
CES - avg 2020/Q1 24.4% responded
CSAT 2019 30.1% completed
Email open click rate 3% (mailchimp)
https://mailchimp.com/resources/email-marketing-benchmarks/
Email surveys to external customers 10-15% response rate.
https://www.surveygizmo.com/resources/blog/survey-response-rates/
Getting much higher reach and response rate!

32. © Copyright 2018, Gainsight, Inc., All rights reserved
TARGETED PROACTIVE FEEDBACK
Feature/Release

33. Focus On Customer
Outcome.#5

34. OUTCOME DRIVEN ROADMAPPING.
● Shift from feature-centric (delivery) to customer outcome driven (revenue)
● Leverage the product to handle some of the heavy-lifting of user onboarding
● Prioritize usability and productivity features towards user goals
● The product is becoming the main
experience channel
● Product teams are focusing on the
entire customer journey
● Create culture around driving
customer value

35. Onboarding: Guide new users so they can
adopt your product effectively
Retention: Re-engage inactive users and
collaborate with CSMs to reduce churn
Adoption: Drive adoption of existing features and
successful new product launch
Growth: Convert users to higher tiers and
expand value with sales
Best-Practices for product teams to drive growth across the user/account lifecycle
OPTIMIZE THE CUSTOMER JOURNEY.
Onboarding
Adoption
Retention
Growth
Customer

36. Learn about the value gap
A The gap between perceived value vs
experienced value

37. Measure time to value
How long does it take for someone to
experience value with your product

38. Eliminate the value gap
Accelerate time to value by designing product
experiences to guide users through the value
path.

39. BUILD PRODUCTS YOUR
CUSTOMERS LOVE.
Deeply understand how your users use your product
and deliver in-product experiences to help users
achieve their desired outcome.

40. PRODUCT ANALYTICS
Usage analytics provide deep insight into how your
customers use your product.
USER ENGAGEMENT
Engage your customers directly within your product,
introducing in-app messaging
FEEDBACK LOOP
Collect qualitative and quantitative data to learn how
users feel about your product

41. TRUSTED BY
INDUSTRY
LEADERS.

42. Thank you.
Mickey Alon,
CTO, Co-founder of Gainsight PX
Entrepreneur, passionate about designing,
building and launching innovative products that
drive business outcomes.
● Co-author of Mastering product experience
in Saas.
● CTO and co-founder of Gainsight PX a
leading Product-led growth platform.
● Previously at Marketo, GVP, Engineering
● CEO and co-founder of Insightera, real-time
targeting and personalization platform
(acquired by Marketo).
Free 4 Download:
https://www.gainsight.com/resource/mastering-product-experience-in-saas

43. APPENDIX

44. Actionable Real-time Analytics
Contextual in-app messaging

45. Guides
Group of dialogs, sliders, and tooltips
pointing to various features in a set
sequence. Guides are perfect for general
product tours for new users, or to introduce
them to and help them master a specific,
high-value workflow in order to get started
Sliders
Similar to dialogs, but are multiple pages
so allow for more content. Sliders can be
used to introduce and/or describe in detail
the value around core features for new
users
User Engagement.
Create engagements like...
Dialogs & Banners
Dialogs are floating boxes that command
the full attention of the user, while banners
sit at the top or bottom of a page. Dialogs
are great for welcome messages, alerts to
office hours, webinars, and more.
Onboarding
Adoption
Retention
Growth
Tip: Remember that you can tailor engagements to to show to a specific audience based on characteristics such as user role, past
usage of a feature(s), lifecycle stage, and more

46. Emails
Sometimes you need to reach new users
that are not yet in your product to welcome
them and get them activated, or to reach
those who have fallen off early. Email is a
great channel for that
User Engagement.
Create engagements like...
Knowledge Bots
Resource guide that often lives at the lower
right of your site on every page (but can be
placed anywhere); users can always
access it and search for relevant help
content like onboarding checklists, how-to
articles, or even submit feedback. You can
create and present different knowledge
bots depending on the user, as well as
integrate content from other knowledge
bases of tools you use.
Closed-loop Surveys
NPS or CES surveys that pop up after the
use of a feature or other type of in-app
engagement to collect feedback; can be
multiple choice, number scale, yes/no, free
text. In-app surveys are a great way to
“check in” with new users and get a pulse
on the onboarding process
Onboarding
Adoption
Retention
Growth
Tip: Remember that you can tailor engagements to to show to a specific audience based on characteristics such as user role, past
usage of a feature(s), lifecycle stage, and more

47. Relevancy, Nurturing & Throttling.
● Relevant delivery with historical usage filters
● Create nurturing campaigns with interval options to prevent
over-engagement
● Avoid user fatigue with engagement throttling (overall max/min)
● Leverage ‘hotspots’ as subtle notifications
● Apply guide length limits to adhere to UX best practices
Context matters.

48. NEAR-ZERO-CODING INSTRUMENTATION.
Using usage data, UI elements and pageviews
● Gainsight leverages usage data to map your
product modules/pages
● Allows you to map specific page actions, links
and buttons to features using css selectors and
other techniques
● Automatically tracks SPA/MPA