Strategies for increasing user adoption/usage of a web application?

CLKeenan

Banned
Jun 24, 2006
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Boston, MA
So I've been tasked with increasing the adoption/usage of a web application. The web application provides hospitals with performance dashboards and data visualization tools. Data is refreshed on a monthly basis.

Obviously, is very cyclical and spikes around the data refreshes. Looking for ways to increase the usage throughout the month. Increasing the frequency of data refreshes to 2 weeks is in the roadmap already. Need other ways of increasing usage between refreshes.

Ideas I've come up with so far:
--Analysis of the week, potentially tied to a current healthcare related news story.
--Reminder emails if a person hasn't logged in within one week of a data refresh telling them that they have new data to look at.
--Call out unexplored features/functionality/content in an email. Idea being that for someone to actually explore all of the data visualizations and dashboards, it would take many hours to do so.

Any other ideas you can think of? It's kind of hard to ask someone to read the same 'book' more than once a month.

Thanks,
-Chris
 


why don't you refresh the data more frequently?

Also what is the benefit of the application for them? Maybe the problem is since your only updating it once a month you should focus on something else that updates more frequently. Sounds like your trying to put a square box into a round hole.
 
Obviously, make sure it's actually useful to the people using it. Assuming that...

Weekly webinars with Q&A periods?
Open communication, encourage suggestions, thank people for every suggestion received, and implement the ones deserving of it.
Make sure the account managers follow-up, and try to begin the dialogue, instead of just waiting for the questions to come in.
Tell the account managers to build relationships, not just a customer base.
 
Some of the metrics we calculate require manual touch points so it would be very difficult to handle those refreshing faster until we automate them further. At the same time though, some of these metrics are for long term strategy decisions and the hospitals don't look at those on a daily basis anyway.
 
I can understand trying to increase the adoption rate (a.k.a customer growth), but why are you so concerned with increasing the usage rate?

If a user is satisfied checking the stats once a month, then why does increasing their usage matter?

Unless you are monetizing usage, I don't see why it's your focus, instead of solely growing customers.
 
I can understand trying to increase the adoption rate (a.k.a customer growth), but why are you so concerned with increasing the usage rate?

If a user is satisfied checking the stats once a month, then why does increasing their usage matter?

Unless you are monetizing usage, I don't see why it's your focus, instead of solely growing customers.

Growing customers is someone elses job. Growing usage is to keep our current customers when it comes time for them to renew.
 
Yep, what others said.

If I only get data once a month, what is the point (for me) in using it more frequently?

Maybe check which data users request the most (statistics or talking to them) and see if you can display that on a daily basis.

A lesson learned the hard way in the past:
Look at what data users do NOT need at all (or don't like) and remove it. We sped up an application 6793764.32% that way.

There might also be a hurdle (technical, too complicated or other) in entering data, so users dread it and push it to the last possible point in time.

::emp::
 
In short, I agree. Increasing the frequency of data refreshes will probably be the biggest driver of increased usage of the web app. All of the points that have been made here are very valid and are in line with our thinking as we plan the scaling side of our operations.

I'm trying to work with what I've got and come up with some outside the box ideas for increasing usage. Adding boobs is a bit too far outside the box.
 
In short, I agree. Increasing the frequency of data refreshes will probably be the biggest driver of increased usage of the web app. All of the points that have been made here are very valid and are in line with our thinking as we plan the scaling side of our operations.

I'm trying to work with what I've got and come up with some outside the box ideas for increasing usage. Adding boobs is a bit too far outside the box.

if they are satisfied w/ viewing it once a month then i'd leave it at that. it's an infrequent thing they need to look at. i don't know if adding any bells or whistles is going to change anything except annoy them.

have you thought about putting it on an iPad?