For businesses, this growth in digital adoption provides opportunities to open up new channels through which they can engage customers. Developments in mobile computing, artificial intelligence (AI), and connectivity are even adding to the fast and convenient ways we now interact with computing devices.

However, making new products and services usable for ordinary users remains a key challenge. Consumers may be excited to try out new things but they can also easily lose interest if applications are clunky and complicated.

The dismal retention rates of mobile applications underscore this issue. According to a study worked on by investor Andrew Chen, 90 percent of users stop using an application within 30 days of installation on the average. Many of these users do so because they fail to realise value of these applications.

Businesses must exert effort to educate users concerning these details and help them overcome these barriers to adoption. Fortunately, there are several measures businesses and developers can implement to effectively teach and guide their users on how to realise the potential of digital adoption.

Onboard new users

Despite the advances in user interface (UI) design, developers and designers still struggle to come up with fully intuitive interfaces that users of any level of competence would find satisfying. To be fair, users have unique preferences and may have different purposes for adopting a particular application so it’s hard to craft a one-size-fits-all experience. Knowing this, you have to inform your users what your application can do and how they can use it.

This can be achieved through an onboarding process. Among the common practices for mobile applications is to have introductory sliders that discuss the core features and functionalities. More complex applications may need more elaborate onboarding mechanisms.

According to mobile engagement platform Localytics, good onboarding could improve user retention by as much as 50 percent.

Create a knowledgebase

You also can’t expect users to always get things right even after their first few tries. What’s important is to provide users the ability to quickly get support or revisit the information provided during onboarding.

One way this can be addressed is through self-service support and knowledgebases. Support pages now popularly feature frequently asked questions (FAQs) organised based on use cases. This way, users can easily find guides on how to accomplish what they need to get done. Automated help desk systems even use AI and chatbots to effectively triage customer concerns and direct users to the information they need.

Support platform Zendesk, for example, has a smart knowledgebase system called Guide which features content curation capabilities that allows you to easily build your own collection of how-tos and guides that users can consult. It even has an AI-powered recommendations engine that identifies the most relevant information that addresses a user’s specific concern.

Provide feedback and insights

Many UIs also neglect to provide helpful feedback concerning user progress. Effective interfaces should show users how they’re progressing. If there are errors, feedback should be informative and must explain what the problem is, what possibly caused it, and what specific action should be taken to remedy it.

Aside from these basic mechanisms, it would also be useful to provide users with more meaningful information. By incorporating analytics and intelligence into your applications, you could provide reports that show users how much their ways of working are improving. Sharing insights about the areas where they could perform better could also help them better maximise the use of your application.

Analytics would also enable you to verify if they are using your product or service as intended. In case you observe they aren’t, you can intervene by providing more material or training. Such data should also help you improve your application. If you find that there’s a considerable gap between your design and your users’ actual use, you should consider pivoting or changing your approach to solving their concerns.

Focus on value

Users are complicated creatures. They can’t be expected to read the manual but expect your application to work without a hitch. As such, you must take an active role in educating them about the use of your products and services. This way, they will be able to use your solutions effectively.

Try to develop in them an understanding of the value you bring by communicating your unique proposition and matching your application’s features with their needs. At the end of the day, users embark on digital adoption because they want to perform tasks and accomplish goals efficiently and conveniently.

By making sure that they are comprehensively informed about what you offer, you can eliminate the friction points and roadblocks that prevent successful digital adoption. Users will ultimately be able to appreciate the value that your solution brings.