SaaS Activation
What is activation
Activation is a user successfully interacting with your application in a way that generates value. In a way activation also plays into account increased churn as a customer that has not generated value for themselves is more likely to cancel early. This early cancellation has a negative impact on both LTV and CAC. Some typical examples of a customer being activated:
- For a CRM it could be creating a new customer record.
- For an email marketing platform like Mailchimp or Sendgrid it could be sending out their first email to a customer they uploaded
- For a budgeting app like YNAB it could be adding their first bank account balance or purchase.
All of these things show that a customer is using the app, and when a custom is using your app there is less of a chance of them cancelling. To see why churn is so bad you can try out my simple Churn Calculator.
What leads to a lack of activation?
If a user creates an account and logs into your app you need to be able to very quickly get them to do something productive. If you need onboarding flows and guided tours you may be hurting your first impression with many users. Many people including myself just want access to the app and to be able to click around and find the specific feature I was looking for. It could be one specific thing a user wants to get out of your app and showing them a multi step tour of everything you offer can be both a bit overwhelming and frustrating.
How do I combat a lack of activation
The good thing about lack of activation is we have a lot of control over it. Activation is mostly a UX issue in how we onboard and present the initial windows of an App. You can also think of activation like a funnel and there can be multiple checkpoints in the process that you can track. The first thing you want to think about is how can I get the user to a small win so they can understand the value they are getting. Today's apps are getting more and more complex which means we need a simple UI. The more things you add to an onboarding flow the more clicks away the user is from getting any type of value.
Take a CRM system for example. Many of them have some type of Clients, Accounts, Items, Quotes, and Opportunity records. Someone using your tool for the first time has more than likely had some experience with a CRM so they don't need a full tour, and if it is a person using a CRM for the first time they won't know what half of the records are for before testing it out themselves.
Each high level page should be as simple as possible only have a single call to action. Complexity should be slightly hidden behind specific actions in the app and treated as more of secondary actions. With a CRM, the only thing you need to do is drop them on a Clients page and make sure some type of Create button is visible. You can also have some type of zero state view that has a call to action saying to Create your first Client.
Now there is a case where a person may try and create an Opportunity record first without any clients present. If they land on a zero state opportunity page you have a couple options:
- The quick and dirty option is to check if any customers are made and in the zero state send them to the customers page.
- The best UX experience would be to allow them to create an opportunity, and have a modal/sidebar to create a new customer if they can't find an existing one to link.
By finding ways to direct the customer to the correct location in the app, you can simplify your onboarding flow dramatically and get rid of guided tours because its not possible for a customer to make a wrong decision. Cutting out this complexity makes the app feel polished and well thought out because it just works no matter the situation.