Adoption: How many users are going to benefit from this feature?
Part II: Estimate your adoption rate
Assumed audience: People who want to measure their feature adoption.
How many users are going to benefit from this feature?
Is the next important question when estimating the adoption rate for your feature.
A feature like Instagram Story is being used widely by Instagram users. Because we expect a lot of users will benefit from it. But a security feature like two-factor authentication? The number of users who use that feature is less than Instagram Story. Maybe 30%?
So, how many users are going to benefit from your feature? 50%? 20%? 80%?
You need to define this target size. Here are the steps to define the target size:
1 - What is the total active user of your product? Using an Instagram example, let's say the total number of active users who use Instagram is 2 billion. This will serve as the baseline.
2 - How severe is the user problem? Or in another word, how annoying is this problem for our users? If we're trying to solve high severity problem, then we want 60-80% of the active users in the product to adopt our feature. If the problem has a medium level of severity, then we can aim for 50-60%. If the problem has a low level of severity, then we can aim for 30-40%
3 - Estimate your target size. The last step is easy. Use your judgment to assess the severity of the user problem, then pick an estimation. Let's say you're the PM in an Instagram team. You're trying to solve a core problem and you assume 60% of the active users on Instagram will benefit from your feature. Meaning that you're aiming for a 60% adoption rate. You can consider it a success when about 1,200,000,000 users (2 billion x 60%) adopted this feature.
The formula is:
Adoption % = target size of your feature / total active users in product
Example:
60% = 1,200,000,000 / 2,000,000,000
Of course, adoption is only an early signal.
After measuring adoption, you then ask: Are these users keep using the feature? Which leads you to measure the adoption.
Drop questions if you have any.
P.S. Crafters Cohort 2
If you’re PM or Designer based in Indonesia and is looking to level up, check out Crafters Cohort 2. It’s a cohort-based course to improve your product execution. You will learn together with people who want to grow.
This program is focusing on the product fundamental skill—(A) Problem Discovery: how can we identify the customer pain points that will drive impact, (B) Solution Discovery: how to prepare the team to brainstorm and find the right solutions, (C) Feature Development: How to identify risk and breakdown milestones to build iteratively, and (D) Feature launch and iteration: How to prepare EPD (Engineer, Product, Design) team to coordinate with operation teams and create an iteration plan.
Here's what the experience looks like for the learner in this program:
Each Monday, you will get a learning material—filled with actionable frameworks and worksheets. After consuming that, you will get the prompt—it's like an action plan. To trigger students to apply the learning back to their work. On Tuesday, you will submit the learning to the forum. You can see other students' exercises too.
On Wednesday and Thursday, this cycle repeats. On Friday, we will regroup and discuss. Sometimes, I will share some case studies if it's relevant.
If you’re interested, I hope you apply to Crafters Cohort 2 and join our community.
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