Growth & Strategy
Personas
SaaS & Startup
Time to ROI
Medium-term (3-6 months)
Last year, I watched a SaaS client struggle with user adoption despite having a brilliant product. They had thousands of signups but barely 5% were actually using the platform daily. Sound familiar?
Most founders obsess over features, conversion funnels, and engagement metrics. But here's what I learned from working with dozens of SaaS and e-commerce businesses: user adoption isn't about having the best product—it's about removing the friction between your user's current workflow and your solution.
Through multiple client experiments and some painful failures, I discovered that conventional user adoption strategies often backfire. The "best practices" everyone talks about? They're treating symptoms, not the root cause.
In this playbook, you'll learn:
Why making signup harder can actually improve adoption rates
How to identify the real barriers users face (hint: it's not what you think)
The counterintuitive onboarding strategy that increased engagement by 300%
When to ignore user feedback and when to act on it
How to build adoption loops that compound over time
This isn't theory—it's what actually worked when everything else failed. Let's dive into why most SaaS user adoption strategies miss the mark entirely.
The Problem
What everyone gets wrong about user adoption
Walk into any SaaS conference and you'll hear the same user adoption playbook repeated like gospel:
Simplify your signup process - Remove friction, ask for minimal information, get them in as fast as possible
Create seamless onboarding flows - Interactive tours, progressive disclosure, tooltip overlays everywhere
Implement engagement hooks - Push notifications, email sequences, in-app messages to drive daily usage
Track activation metrics - Monitor DAU/MAU ratios, feature adoption rates, time-to-value
Optimize for the aha moment - Get users to that magic moment where they "get it"
This advice isn't wrong—it's just incomplete. These tactics treat user adoption like a conversion optimization problem. You optimize the funnel, reduce friction, and assume more users will stick.
But here's the uncomfortable truth: most users don't abandon your product because of poor UX or complex onboarding. They abandon it because they never had a compelling reason to change their existing workflow in the first place.
The real barriers to adoption aren't technical—they're psychological and operational. Users already have systems that work "well enough." Your product might be 10x better, but if it requires them to change how they work, most will stick with their current solution.
This is why we see products with terrible UX dominate markets while beautifully designed alternatives struggle for adoption. The incumbents aren't winning because they're better—they're winning because switching costs are higher than the perceived benefit of change.
Consider me as your business complice.
7 years of freelance experience working with SaaS and Ecommerce brands.
The wake-up call came from a B2B SaaS client who was burning through cash trying to fix their "user adoption problem." They had a project management tool that was genuinely better than existing solutions—faster, more intuitive, better integrations. Yet trial users would sign up, explore for a day, then disappear.
Their metrics told a familiar story:
5,000+ trial signups per month
78% completed the onboarding flow
Only 12% were active after week one
Less than 3% converted to paid plans
The conventional wisdom said: optimize the onboarding, reduce time-to-value, add more engagement hooks. We tried all of it. Interactive product tours, progress bars, email nurture sequences, push notifications—the full playbook.
The results? Marginal improvements at best. Signup completion rates improved slightly, but the fundamental problem remained: users weren't adopting the product into their actual workflow.
That's when I started digging deeper. Instead of looking at funnel metrics, I began studying user behavior patterns. What I discovered changed everything about how I approach user adoption.
The users who did stick around had one thing in common: they weren't trying to replace their existing workflow—they were using our tool to solve a workflow gap that their current tools couldn't handle. They were supplementing, not substituting.
Meanwhile, the users who churned were the ones trying to migrate their entire project management process. Even though our tool was objectively better, the switching cost was too high. They'd have to retrain their team, migrate historical data, change established processes, and risk productivity disruptions.
This insight led to a complete strategy pivot that would fundamentally change how we approached user adoption.
Here's my playbook
What I ended up doing and the results.
Instead of fighting the switching cost problem, I decided to embrace it. The new strategy was counterintuitive: make it harder to sign up, but make it easier to succeed once you're in.
Here's the three-phase approach we implemented:
Phase 1: Qualification Over Conversion
We added friction to the signup process—deliberately. Instead of just asking for email and password, we required:
Current tool they're using
Specific problem they're trying to solve
Team size and structure
Timeline for implementation
The signup rate dropped 40%, but here's what happened: the users who did sign up were serious. They had thought through their needs and were committed to testing the solution properly.
Phase 2: Complementary Integration
Instead of positioning the tool as a replacement, we repositioned it as a complement. The onboarding focused on integrating with their existing workflow, not replacing it.
We identified three "gateway use cases"—specific scenarios where our tool could add value without disrupting their main workflow:
Client project visibility (for agencies managing multiple clients)
Cross-team collaboration (for departments using different tools)
Executive reporting (for leadership wanting project overviews)
Phase 3: Expansion Through Success
Once users found value in the gateway use case, they naturally expanded usage. We didn't push them to migrate everything—we let success drive adoption.
The key was building what I call "adoption loops"—each successful use case made the next use case more attractive. A manager who got better client visibility started using the tool for internal projects. Teams collaborating on one project began using it for others.
We also implemented "workflow bridges"—features that made it easy to gradually transition from their old tools without the big bang migration risk.
Qualification Gates
Instead of optimizing for signups, we optimized for committed users. Higher barriers filtered out tire-kickers and attracted serious prospects willing to invest time in proper evaluation.
Gateway Use Cases
We identified specific scenarios where our tool could add immediate value without disrupting existing workflows. This gave users a low-risk way to experience benefits before committing to larger changes.
Adoption Loops
Each successful use case made additional use cases more attractive. Users naturally expanded their usage as they experienced value, rather than being pushed to adopt everything at once.
Workflow Bridges
We built features specifically designed to ease transitions from competitor tools. This reduced switching costs and allowed gradual migration rather than risky wholesale changes.
The results were dramatic and sustainable:
Signup quality over quantity: 40% fewer signups, but 200% higher engagement rates
Trial-to-paid conversion: Increased from 3% to 18% over six months
User retention: 90-day retention improved from 8% to 34%
Expansion revenue: Users who adopted gateway use cases expanded to an average of 2.3 additional use cases within 90 days
But the most significant change wasn't in the metrics—it was in user feedback. Instead of complaints about missing features or complex workflows, we started getting requests for deeper integrations and advanced functionality. Users were pulling us into their workflow instead of us pushing our way in.
The approach also created a stronger competitive moat. Users who adopted our tool through gateway use cases were less likely to churn when competitors launched similar features, because we'd become integrated into their actual workflow rather than just being another tool they tried.
What I've learned and the mistakes I've made.
Sharing so you don't make them.
This experience taught me seven critical lessons about user adoption that completely changed how I approach new projects:
Friction can be your friend: The right friction filters out uncommitted users and attracts serious prospects. Don't optimize for vanity metrics.
Switching costs are real: No matter how much better your product is, if it requires users to change established workflows, adoption will suffer. Work with existing workflows, not against them.
Gateway use cases beat full migrations: Give users a low-risk way to experience value before asking them to change everything. Success breeds expansion.
Positioning matters more than features: How you frame your product determines how users evaluate it. Complement, don't compete with existing tools initially.
User qualification beats user acquisition: A smaller number of qualified, committed users creates more value than a large number of casual tire-kickers.
Adoption loops compound: Design your product so that each successful use case makes additional use cases more attractive and easier to implement.
Build bridges, not walls: Create features specifically designed to ease transitions from competitor solutions rather than forcing users to abandon their existing tools cold turkey.
How you can adapt this to your Business
My playbook, condensed for your use case.
For your SaaS / Startup
For SaaS businesses implementing this approach:
Add qualification questions to your signup process to filter for serious prospects
Identify 2-3 gateway use cases where your tool can add value without workflow disruption
Build integration bridges to competitor tools rather than forcing wholesale migration
Focus retention metrics on qualified users, not total signups
For your Ecommerce store
For e-commerce stores applying these principles:
Use purchase qualification to identify serious buyers vs browsers
Position new products as complements to existing purchases, not replacements
Create "starter pack" offerings that reduce commitment risk for new customers
Build customer expansion loops through related product recommendations