"Now, our users can choose to learn about new features when they want to, when they're not feeling stressed or pressed for time. We've seen some really awesome engagement with it."
Experience
There's no easy button for product adoption, right? Well, Aweber's Chief Product Officer, Chris Vaquez, found the closest thing to one.
Enter: Aweber's "Whats New" button.
This one button has generated tens of thousands of interactions and has been a gold mine of useful product insights for Chris and his team.
Here's how it works:
Chris was looking to surface new functionality in a contextually appropriate way. (And there's no better time to promote a new feature than when someone's actually using it.)
That's how his team landed on the "What's New" button.
The "What's New" button in AWeber's email editor allows users to learn about new features and provide product feedback in a non-intrusive way.
There's lots to love about this little button, but here are some of our biggest takeaways that you can integrate into your own product experience now:
🙋♀️ Give users control over product updates
Users who log in to your product usually have a specific task to accomplish. Hitting them with an unexpected interruption may temporarily boost feature awareness, but, ultimately, you're frustrating them and training them to dismiss notifications.
A better strategy is to let your customers decide when to check out new features. That's exactly what AWeber's "What's New" button does, letting users engage and explore at their own pace.
“We've experimented with interruptive modals that trigger things when people enter the message editor,” says Chris Vasquez, Chief Product Officer at AWeber. “But oftentimes, people are doing time-sensitive things when they come into the message builder itself. So they frequently just dismiss it because they're like, I don't have time for this.”
🤨 Ask for feedback while users are engaged
Quality product feedback can be hard to come by, so grabbing it when it's top of mind for users is invaluable.
AWeber built this tactic right into their “What’s New” flow using integrated surveys. After unveiling new feature upgrades, they prompt customers for feedback to collect real-time reactions, bugs, and requests.
This user input has helped AWeber shape their product improvements because it comes from engaged customers responding while they're actually using the feature.
"I think, in many cases, <users give feedback> because they encounter something that they wanna see improved. They're like, oh, okay I like this feature. I can see the benefit of it, but it doesn't work for me for these reasons."
✏️ Use feedback to speak your customers' language
You can use your product feedback to improve more than just your product—it's also an opportunity to learn how your customers speak. One thing Chris and his team did was study the language of their customers' feedback to use in their product messaging.
"We always want to market using our own customer's words, and <in-app feature surveys> have been a great testimonial generator for us."
Chris was gracious enough to walk us through how his What's New button works, what's surprised him, and more in this short interview. It's well worth the 10 minutes!