How to increase portal user adoption through design, testing and strategy.
You determined that your brand needed a mobile portal in order to boost the performance of employees, assist customers or both. You then created your portal, refined it through testing and launched it. But the amount of people using your mobile portal and the frequency of its usage throughout the average day are lower than you had hoped.
What can you do to increase mobile portal user adoption and make the most of the technology you have developed? The following 10 actions can help encourage adoption of a mobile portal and overcome issues like skepticism and frustration in order to boost portal adoption and regular usage.
1. Use Metrics to Understand Trends
While surveys can help collect feedback from your users, the use of in-depth metrics concerning how users interact with your portal will help you truly understand how and why your portal is being used. Doing so will aid in the following steps. According to Portal Solutions, two key metrics when determining portal adoption are how much the portal is being used, including how many pages are being viewed and how often various features are used, and the number of unique users of the portal, which can show what percent of the organization is using the portal and how frequently. By better understanding these numbers, you can see the successes and shortcomings of your portal in order to improve your adoption strategy.
2. Simplify Registration and Use
The lower the barrier to entry, the more likely that your target users will be to sign up for the portal. While that may seem like a simple solution to a complex issue, users have been shown to abandon the registration process if they deem it to be too complex to be worthwhile. While portals will need crucial information in order to provide the correct access to users, such as job roles and everyday responsibilities, try to minimize the amount of work needed to get the portal running in order to prevent frustrations and the prevention of registration. Some of this information can be provided after registration or become automatically assigned based on profile in order to make a mobile portal as quickly viable as possible.
3. Make the Portal a Mainstay in Communication
A great portal can make communication and coordination far easier than other channels, so it is important that you emphasize this by making your portal a cornerstone of your communication. As discussed by Patient Engagement HIT, regularly conducting normal business matters through your portal will help employees realize that it is in their best interest to use the portal, as well.
4. Leverage the Power of Mobile
Mobile platforms provide several unique benefits compared to desktop portals, such as providing easy access to crucial work information while on the go and the ability to connect users more quickly. It is in your best interest to take advantage of these when attempting to convince your audience to install a mobile portal. After all, why would someone install a portal on their mobile device if the desktop version is just as good?
5. Improve User Experience
Find your biggest customer pain points through in-depth analysis that utilizes your team members, feedback and a thorough walkthrough of how the portal can be used. The easier it is to use and the more diverse of an audience it can reach, then the likelier it will be that users adopt the portal. Great user experiences on mobile portals free of major pain points allow users to get to the tools they need in as little time as possible.
6. Determine and Communicate Unique Benefits
You’ve designed your portal to help your target audience, but do they know how it will truly help them? Your development and use of metrics, such as the most frequently used tools, will help you determine the clear benefits of the portal, which should be effectively spelled out to your target audience. Consider how you most effectively communicate with your audience. Is it in face-to-face interactions? Via email? Through your website? Use these touchpoints to provide helpful information to communicate the benefits of the portals in means that are easy to understand and effective in their arguments.
7. Educate and Train Your Audience
The idea of suddenly incorporating a portal into everyday life and work can be intimidating to your audience, especially if they are meant to simply start using it in as little time as possible. Provide opportunities to receive training regarding the portal in order to give your audience the skills and insights needed to make the most of the software. In doing so, your audience will feel cared for and better equipped to make the portal part of their daily lives.
8. Allow Personalization
If your audience is allowed to personalize their portal in order to meet their needs as efficiently as possible, adoption can increase because it is far more likely that the individuals who make up your target audience will be able to meet their unique needs via the portal. For example, Mount Sinai was able to create a mobile portal that adapted to user needs based on their unique profiles and synchronized with all stages of the healthcare cycle.
9. Create Governance Solutions
During initial development and beyond, your organization will need strong management solutions that will help implement what is needed to respond appropriately to what your user base wants from your portal, which can come in the form of effective portal governance. This governance helps connect solutions to needs and outlines a clear path for growth in order to ensure your portal stays relevant.
10. Solicit Feedback
Encouraging feedback from your audience for as long as your portal is in use is not only a great resource in the continued refinement of your portal, but is also a great way to strengthen user attachment. If your user base feels as though they are an important part in the usage and future growth of a portal that will help them, they are more likely to not only feel cared for, but also invested in the portal. In addition, incentives like gift cards can help further encourage useful workforce feedback in a timely manner.
The Benefits of Increasing Mobile Portal Adoption
By increasing mobile portal adoption rates, you can increase maximize the positive impact of the tool on your company and create more useful analytics through the use of a larger user base. Through the effective leveraging of your mobile portal, you can empower your target audience for years to come.