Alexis Kestler
Hello friend! Digital adoption platforms (DAPs) have become essential tools for helping employees and customers truly master new software tools and technologies. As someone interested in providing a great user experience, I want to give you the complete guide to understanding DAPs and leveraging them successfully.
Let‘s start with the basics – what are DAPs and why are they valuable?
What is a Digital Adoption Platform?
A digital adoption platform is software that helps guide users through learning and actively using new programs and systems. As opposed to traditional training materials, DAPs provide in-app guidance, tutorials, and support content to enable hands-on learning in real workflows.
According to research by Gartner, only 13% of employees apply new skills learned in training on the job. DAPs help bridge this gap by teaching technology usage directly within the live applications.
Key capabilities offered by DAPs include:
- Interactive walkthroughs and guided tours
- In-context tooltips and help
- FAQs and knowledge bases
- Surveys and feedback collection
- Analytics on feature usage and adoption patterns
- Push messaging and change management
By providing the right support at the precise moment of need, DAPs enable users to learn faster and stay engaged. This leads to stronger technology adoption and proficiency across an organization.
Now that we‘ve covered the basics of what DAPs are, let‘s discuss why they‘re becoming essential:
The Growing Importance of Digital Adoption Solutions
DAPs have seen rapid growth recently. Global spending is expected to reach $1.2 billion by 2025, up from $230 million in 2018 as per Mordor Intelligence. There are several trends fueling the adoption of this technology:
Accelerated software releases – The pace of software updates continues to increase. Major apps now release new capabilities monthly or weekly. This makes staying current with features more challenging.
Remote/hybrid work – With more staff working remotely, providing decentralized training and support is difficult. DAPs solve this by delivering guidance in-app.
Expansion of SaaS – Growing use of cloud apps like Salesforce, Workday, and ServiceNow makes structured onboarding more crucial.
Consumerization expectations – Employees and customers expect consumer-grade self-service experiences as opposed to formal training. DAPs bridge this gap.
Measurable ROI – DAPs deliver proven returns through metrics like reduced case tickets (46%), accelerated time-to-proficiency (66%) and faster service adoption (40%).
Given these trends, every business needs a strategy for continuous digital adoption. Let‘s look at why DAPs are becoming the preferred path.
Benefits of Digital Adoption Platforms
DAPs offer numerous advantages over traditional training materials and methods:
Faster User Onboarding
DAPs enable new users to reach proficiency 50% faster on average. Step-by-step walkthroughs are far more effective than conventional manuals or videos. Guiding users directly in the live application ensures learning translates into application.
Increased Software Adoption
By driving awareness of new features, DAPs can increase application adoption rates to over 95%. This ensures companies maximize returns on existing technology investments. Change management messaging also minimizes resistance to upgrades.
Enhanced Employee Productivity
DAP assistance delivered in-workflow eliminates disruptive context switching. Studies show productivity can improve 15% or more by reducing time wasted searching for help.
Lower Training and Support Costs
DAP self-service capabilities significantly reduce demands on live training and help desk resources. Support tickets can be decreased by 35%. This frees staff for higher value initiatives.
Improved Customer Satisfaction
On-screen guidance creates more positive self-service experiences for customers. DAPs strengthen satisfaction through lower effort. Happy customers lead to higher retention and growth.
Optimized User Experience
DAP analytics provide UX teams visibility into adoption challenges. These insights enable continuous enhancements aligned with real user workflows.
Now that we‘ve looked at the benefits, let‘s explore the key capabilities DAP solutions provide.
DAP Capabilities and Features
Modern digital adoption platforms provide a range of features to support users throughout their software learning journey:
Interactive In-App Tutorials
In-app interactive walkthroughs are the core component of DAPs. These guide users through critical workflows and teach application navigation in a step-by-step manner:
Benefits of interactive tutorials include:
- Hands-on learning – Users practice real workflows not sample scenarios
- Reduced cognitive load – Directions are shown in-app vs. memorizing steps
- Personalization – Can tailor tours to user segments and roles
- Flexibility – Walkthroughs work on all devices and platforms
Contextual Assistance
Help content like tooltips and popovers can provide quick guidance in the moment of need without interrupting workflows:
Tooltips enhance intuitiveness and allow users to learn in under 3 minutes vs. traditional help docs. Guidance can be configured to appear automatically or on-demand.
Knowledge Base and Documentation
Curated knowledge bases give users access to help articles, FAQs, troubleshooting guides and best practices. This content keeps users informed without support tickets.
Surveys and Feedback Loops
Pulses surveys and feedback forms allow admins to gather input on end user experiences. This allows issues causing friction to be identified proactively.
Adoption Analytics and Reporting
DAP solutions collect usage metrics on features, workflows, and help content consumption. Dashboards visualize trends and insights to guide optimization.
Notifications and Change Management
In-app messaging informs users of new capabilities, upgrades, or required actions. Push notifications minimize disruption from technology change.
Onboarding Checklists
Structured onboarding checklists guide new users through required setup tasks to activate accounts. Checklists prevent critical steps from being missed.
With these robust features, DAPs can handle every phase of digital adoption from initial onboarding to ongoing mastery. But with many options available, how do you select the right one? Let‘s explore top solutions on the market.
Leading Digital Adoption Platform Vendors
There are over 100+ DAP solutions available from both startups and established players. I‘ll summarize the most popular options below:
1. Pendo
Pendo is a leader in digital adoption solutions. Key capabilities include:
- Interactive onboarding tours with branching logic
- Broad app integration including Salesforce and Microsoft PowerBI
- Robust analytics on feature usage and workflows
- Customizable administrator consoles
Pendo is a great choice for general adoption use cases across both internal and customer-facing apps. Over 1,000 companies use Pendo including MetLife, Cardinal Health, and OpenTable.
2. Whatfix
Whatfix excels at advanced authoring of interactive tutorials and contextual help content. Notable features include:
- Drag-and-drop workshop for walkthrough creation
- Dynamic help delivery across web, mobile and desktop
- Library of pre-built help templates and widgets
- Powerful customization for advanced logic and personalization
Whatfix is ideal for complex scenarios requiring dynamic help delivery. Customers include Cardinal Health, Zendesk, and BMC Software.
3. WalkMe
WalkMe offers a full digital adoption suite with robust analytics for tracking adoption metrics. Key strengths:
- 35+ platform integrations including Salesforce, Oracle, Microsoft
- Enterprise-scale delivery across 100K+ global employees
- Advanced analytics into feature usage, workflows and help efficacy
- Maturity assessment models for benchmarking adoption progress
WalkMe is a top choice for large, complex technology environments due to its scalability and analytics. Customers include major brands like Adobe, LinkedIn, HP, and Citi.
4. Userlane
Userlane provides simplified creation of interactive walkthroughs tailored for internal system adoption. Benefits include:
- Easy drag-and-drop authoring of tours and tooltips
- Contextual help across web, desktop and mobile apps
- Workflow creation for mapping multi-stage processes
- Partial translation support for global organizations
- Free version available for small teams
Userlane is purpose-built for employee onboarding and training use cases. It‘s cost-effective for SMBs but scales to enterprises via paid plans.
5. Appcues
Appcues offers an easy-to-use DAP for product teams to accelerate user onboarding. Standout features:
- Drag-and-drop visual editor for flows and tours
- Robust targeting of campaigns by user attributes
- APIs for customization and integration
- Team collaboration capabilities built-in
Appcues prioritizes collaboration to empower product managers to optimize user experiences versus IT. Customers include Uber, Dollar Shave Club, and Thumbtack.
This covers five of the top digital adoption platforms available, but many excellent options exist. Choosing will depend on your specific use cases, target applications, and team skillsets.
Now that we‘ve covered DAP solutions, let‘s switch gears to implementation best practices.
How To Successfully Implement DAPs
While the capabilities are powerful, DAPs require planning and discipline to realize full impact. Here are 10 best practices to follow:
Start with your adoption goals – Set clear targets for proficiency, training costs, or other KPIs you want to improve. Align to overall business objectives.
Prioritize high-impact applications – Launch DAP on the 1 or 2 apps that will have greatest business benefit first. Don‘t try to boil the ocean early on.
Focus on pain points – Identify 2-3 key trouble areas or workflows causing support calls. Address these with interactive walkthroughs first.
Market the solution internally – Get the word out on expected benefits through emails, intranet, etc. Provide incentives to drive usage.
Involve stakeholders – Get buy-in from groups involved in change management, training, communications, and support.
Leverage existing content – Repurpose existing training materials into interactive walkthroughs and in-app help.
Start with out-of-the-box templates – Use vendor best practice templates to accelerate creation of tours, tooltips, and docs.
Gather user feedback – Survey early users and incorporate feedback into walkthrough improvements.
Refine continuously – Use DAP analytics to identify poorly performing tours and evolve content.
Expand usage – Once adoption matures for initial apps, roll out DAP systematically across all enterprise systems.
Following structured best practices is key to maximize the impact of your investment.
Let‘s Recap
We‘ve covered a lot of ground discussing digital adoption platforms. Let‘s recap the key takeaways:
- DAPs guide users through learning software with in-app walkthroughs and assistance
- Adoption solutions are becoming imperative with the expansion of SaaS and remote work
- DAPs deliver strong ROI through metrics like 35%+ reductions in support costs
- Top capabilities include interactive tutorials, tooltips, notifications, and robust analytics
- Leading solutions include Pendo, WalkMe, WhatFix, and Userlane based on use cases
- Following best practices around planning, content, and iteration is critical for success
The bottom line – every modern business needs a digital adoption strategy. DAPs have quickly become the most effective way to enable employees and customers to fully utilize technology investments.
I hope this guide has provided you a comprehensive introduction to maximizing digital adoption. Please reach out if you need any further assistance in getting started with DAPs or have additional questions!
