In this deck we showcase some tips and tricks on how we increased adoption on our SaaS application muHive. We share everything from how we built instant gratification to how we leveraged email as a channel to bring users back to our application. Feel free to share this deck with anyone you think will benefit from it.

1. Adoption Zen
Increasing adoption and usage of SaaS applications

2. Problem
Visitors were signing up for our service,
but they were not
using the product everyday
returning to the product
trying new features

3. But why?

4. Product setup involved
a lot of sequential steps

5. For a new customer, our app
was hard to understand

6. The best features were
hidden or hard to get to

7. The experience did not compel
visitors to return to the app

8. How did we
fix this?

9. Account setup
There are two facets to a muHive account
Account
listening
Customers need to
integrate social media
and email accounts for
inbound conversations
Public data
listening
Customers need to specify
keywords, business
categories and geography to
fetch public conversations

10. Account setup
We added a setup wizard. Good!
But there was a problem. There were 8 steps. terrible!
Terms of use
Setup email accounts
Invite other users
Plan details
Setup social accounts
Thanks & Support
Setup Keywords
Setup trackers

11. Let us introduce the muHive
SaaS adoption Zen
(禪)
Tips to help increase adoption of your SaaS
application

12. “The path to completion
is only a FEW STEPS
away”
禪

13. Very few customers were
completing the wizard
Clearly 8 steps were too many!

14. Fixing account setup
We chopped it down to 3 steps!
But what about all the other inputs?

15. “Always DEFAULT to a
position of INTELLIGENCE”
禪

16. No customer liked adding too
much data
So we added defaults for
optional features with large
callouts

17. Onboarding
For a new customer, our app was hard to
understand.
We needed a way to urge and coax
our customers to come onboard the product

18. For our early customers,
we conducted personal/online
walkthroughs

19. We would follow this up with
onboarding guides post the
walkthrough.
But,
- It was difficult to scale once we started public signups
- Onboarding sessions packed too much information
Few customers would come back to the application even
after the session

20. Simplifying Onboarding
Started educating customers
about one feature a day,
gradually over 5 days, using email.
Day 1
Day 2
Day 3
#WIN: one of our customers saw our day 3 mail and tried signing up again!

21. Simplifying Onboarding
We also added a new product documentation
portal docs.muhive.com
Linked our app to this portal
to act as a quick guide
#WIN: Till date 160 customers have visited more than one article on this page

22. “You might capture a man
but can you capture his
attention?”
禪

23. Capturing interest
Onboarding mails helped create initial
customer interest but …
Customer visits would eventually decay.
We needed something more to keep their
interest alive for longer.

24. Daily digest emails
We started sending daily digest mails to our
customers about their activities.
It didn’t generate as
much interest as we
expected

25. Interesting digest emails
The trick? Change the email!
Dynamically altered the subject line based on the
state of the account on that day

26. “One must not simply
expect change.
CHANGE must be
DELIVERED”
禪

27. Let’s introduce our automation engine!
Our customers loved using this …
but wanted to consume information via email.

28. Forward as Email
We added a forward as email endpoint to the
automation
Which would notify the customer on a successful
result each time
Which brings us to ...

29. “Interest is like that …
blink and its gone”
禪

30. Why let the user go?
An auto-updating number in the title bar tells
customers how much new data they have (a la
Twitter)
#wIN The average visit duration on our app is 19 minutes

31. “a VIDEO is worth a
thousand images and a
million words”
禪

32. Dealing with complexity
muHive automation is THE feature.
But despite being designed as an intuitive drag-drop
workflow, none of our customers could use it

33. What, a video?
During our public
launch, an automation
we created in 30
seconds got massive
audience interest (in a
literal sense. We ran
an impromptu public
contest)
Clearly, there was a gap in how we used the automation and how
the customers tried to ...

34. Automation DIY series
We created (blog + video) demos of scenarios that
our automation engine could address
#wIN A customer from Italy was the first to create an automation rule by using these

35. Lastly ...
“An empty application
makes no noise”
禪

36. Avoiding empty screens
Remember these 3 mails that welcomed you to
Gmail?
If you don’t have data, show a
mock of how the data or
analysis might look in the
future
Do not show an empty first screen

37. muHive enbox
Upon finishing sign up muHive
would take customers to an
empty Enbox …
… we added default get
started messages for
people to experience the
Enbox right away!

38. That’s it!
We hope you will use all these tips in
your adoption initiatives

39. Share this deck with friends
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www.muhive.com

40. Team
Sagar Vibhute
Co-founder at muHive
Technology interests:
databases, information architecture
and evolving role of social tech
Twitter: @biggfoot
Ritesh M Nayak
Co-founder at muHive
Technology interests:
social software, information retrieval,
distributed systems and ICT4D
Twitter: @itsmeritesh

41. www.muhive.com
@muHive
/muHive
thank you

42. Photo credits
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Slide 1: Olgierd via Compfight cc
Slide 4: ian boyd – CC licensed
Slide 5: |Chris| via Compfight cc
Slide 6: maxgiani via Compfight cc
Slide 7: Photo-Fenix.com via Compfight cc
Slide 8: katerha via Compfight cc
Slide 18: tonyhall via Compfight cc