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What is the Aha moment?
In SaaS, the Aha moment is the situation when the user experiences the product or feature value for the first time.
The Aha moment is often used interchangeably with user activation, but the two are slightly different. Activation happens when the user starts using the product or feature in real life to derive value, not just experience it.
Why is the Aha moment important?
The Aha moment is an essential stage of user activation. When the user realizes how the product can solve their problem or satisfy their need, they are ready to put it to use in a meaningful way.
It doesn’t stop there.
User activation has an impact on the rest of the customer lifecycle:
If users don’t understand how the product can satisfy their needs, it’s difficult to retain them. They may enjoy interacting with it if the UI/UX is particularly good, but the novelty soon wears off, and they churn.
Without activation, there is no product adoption, either—what’s the point of using a product regularly if it doesn’t serve any particular purpose?
It goes without saying that you can also forget about upgrades to a paid or higher plan if they can’t see any value. They’re very unlikely to promote your product at their workplace either, so there won’t be any WOM referrals or bottom-up growth.
Types of Aha moments for SaaS companies
Although the Aha moment is used mostly in the context of the initial user activation, it often appears in reference to other stages of the user journey.
In fact, there are different types of the Aha moment:
- Retention Aha moment – when the user realizes it’s a good idea to stick around and give the product a good try, or in other words, what keeps users coming back.
- Virality Aha moment – when the user feels the need to share the product with their mates.
- Conversion Aha moment – when the user experiences the urge to upgrade to a paid or higher plan, like hitting the paywall or using a premium feature.
How to identify your product’s Aha moment?
What constitutes an Aha moment depends on your product and its different use cases. This is likely to be different for different user personas.
That’s why identifying the exact moment when users experience the core value requires analyzing user data and experimentation.
1. Analyze user behavior at different user journey stages
Finding the Aha moment requires a deep understanding of user behavior and interactions with your product.
To be more specific, when looking for the Aha moment, you want to identify user actions that lead to an activation or conversion event. To do so, conduct path analysis.
As you conduct the analysis, focus on one user segment at a time.
Analyze the paths of different user personas separately. Break them down further to see how the behavior of the successful users differs from the churned ones.
2. Collect user feedback from different segments
User analytics don’t always provide a complete picture of user behavior: they tell you what happened but not always why.
For a 360 view, complement the analytics data with user feedback.
Just like with analytics, segmentation is the name of the game when collecting user feedback.
Power users
Feedback from your power users can help you pinpoint the exact moment when they experienced value. After all, they’re the most successful and loyal users, so they should be able to explain what made them stick around.
An in-app survey is the best way to reach them as they engage with the product actively.
The simplest option is to create a multiple-choice survey listing the major events and ask users to choose the one when they experienced value for the first time.
If you do so, give users the option to add an ‘Other’ option in case you’ve missed an event.
Alternatively, you can create a survey with an open-ended question, like ‘At which moment did you first experience the value of [product X]?’ However, be ready for lower response rates as such questions take longer to answer, and users may not always be able to give a valid response without a prompt.
Churned users
Churned users can offer valuable insights too, so make sure to embed a survey in the cancellation flow.
In the survey, ask them if there was a feature they found was lacking or disappointing in your product.
What if the users have already churned, for example, during the free trial?
You won’t be able to reach them with an in-app survey, so send an email survey instead. While you may not be able to win them back, they may provide valuable data on how to retain future customers.
You can also try to arrange interviews with the churned users.
Develop multiple Aha moments
The odds are that the insights from analytics and feedback data will point to multiple user actions as potential Aha moments.
Your task now is to evaluate them from the user’s perspective and narrow the list down to 2-3 for each journey stage.
Here are some questions to help you decide:
- Does it happen at the right time? Is it too late/early for an Aha moment?
- Does it showcase the feature/product value?
- Does it illustrate how the product works?
- Is the event easy to complete for most users?
- Does it lead to user retention/conversion?
Test your Aha moment in the user onboarding flow
Having narrowed down the list of potential Aha moments, design an onboarding flow around them. Keep the flows simple and try to lead users to value in the most direct way.
Next, test each of the flows to identify the ones linked to the most conversions.
The quickest way to do it is by running A/B or multivariate tests. In this way, you test the effectiveness of the flows simultaneously with similar user samples.
Aha moment examples from SaaS companies
To give you an idea of what an Aha moment could be, let’s have a look at a few examples from products you’ve most likely used at some point in your career.
Slack
Slack is a popular messaging platform that has changed how teams communicate and share resources.
In addition to group chat, its features include direct messaging, voice and video calls, and file sharing. Thanks to its integrations, Slack is easy to embed into existing tool stacks to optimize workflows.
Thanks to its capabilities, Slack allows companies to reduce the time spent in meetings and the number of emails.
To fully appreciate the platform value, the team needs to send 2,000 messages – that’s the Slack Aha moment.
Loom
Loom is a video messaging platform, which like Slack, has revolutionized business communication.
The application allows you to create screen, voice, and video recordings, which makes it a perfect tool for creating demos or tutorials.
The best part is how easy it is to share the video with people, both inside and outside your network.
When does the Aha moment happen?
For many users, it’s before they even sign up for the product. When they first receive a link to a Loom video, they experience the benefits of the product firsthand. That’s the first conversion Aha moment.
For those who have signed up, it’s sharing their video. That’s what makes them decide to keep using the product.
Canva
Canva is a graphic design tool that allows users without any design background to create professionally-looking visuals, like presentation decks, social media graphics, or posters.
The Aha moment for Canva users is creating their first design.
Zoom
Zoom is a well-known video conferencing platform that experienced rapid growth during the COVID-19 pandemic.
Most users experience the initial value of the platform when they click on the link in the invite and join their first video call. That’s how most users decide to sign up for the product, and we can consider it the conversion Aha moment.
Zoom’s main selling point is that it’s simple to arrange and manage video calls, and to experience this, users need to schedule and launch their first call. That’s the retention Aha moment.
Grammarly
Grammarly is an AI-powered writing assistant and proofreading tool. Thanks to its browser extensions, you can quickly spot and correct spelling and grammar errors in your content, no matter what tool you use to create it.
Grammarly also offers a web app. When you first log into it, you’re presented with a demo text riddled with mistakes. The app encourages you to correct the errors and that’s how you realize how quick and easy the tool is to use. That’s the Grammarly Aha moment.
How to guide new users to experience the Aha moment?
Now that you know what the Aha moment may look like for different applications and how to identify it, it’s time to help your users experience it in your product.
Create personalized onboarding experiences for different user segments
As mentioned before, different user personas may have different Aha moments. This means that how they discover value also varies.
And as you want your users to experience value as quickly as possible, you need to design personalized onboarding flows for them.
Use a welcome survey to segment your users based on their use cases and trigger a relevant flow.
Use interactive walkthroughs to guide users toward the exact moment of value
One way to lead users to the Aha moment is with interactive walkthroughs.
Interactive walkthroughs are step-by-step guides made up of tooltips that show users how to use features to achieve a goal.
Walkthroughs not only show users what to do but also prompt them to complete the actions, which increases the chance that they reach the Aha moment.
This makes them great for introducing and activating new features.
Showcase core features to first-time users
Signing up for a new product, especially a complex one, may be overwhelming. That’s why it’s good practice to show your users around when they first log in.
You can do it by designing a product tour that shows users the main features and UI elements and explains their benefits.
You can trigger it from a welcome survey or a personalized welcome screen to make sure that users start the onboarding process as quickly as possible.
Remove friction from the entire customer journey
One thing that can slow users down or even prevent them from reaching the Aha moment is friction.
Friction manifests itself in different ways, for example, a lengthy welcome survey or poor UI design common causes.
To find the friction points in the customer journey, use product analytics.
Start with funnel analysis to find the main area and analyze user interactions in more depth to find the exact cause.
Next, implement changes to tackle the issue and test their impact to see if the churned users start sticking around.
Provide support to your user base to turn them into successful customers
One way to remove friction from the customer journey is by supporting users proactively.
This includes both high-touch support, like a dedicated customer success manager, and low-touch self-service resources, like a knowledge base or video tutorials.
The latter are particularly valuable because they allow users to access help on-demand, whenever they need it, and at their own pace. This is important early on in the journey when their loyalty is still weak and they may not have the patience to wait for the customer support team to get back to them.
How to get your product’s eureka moment with Userpilot?
Userpilot is a product adoption platform, so you can say it was designed to lead users to the Aha moment and beyond.
Its engagement layer allows you to create personalized interactive onboarding experiences that reduce the time to value. Its features include:
- Onboarding UI patterns – tooltips, slideouts, banners, hotspots, modals, and driven actions.
- Onboarding checklists.
- Interactive walkthroughs.
- Resource center.
- AI writing assistant for creating in-app microcopy.
- Automatic localization.
Userpilot also supports A/B and multivariate testing for your flows.
In addition, you can use Userpilot to collect feedback through in-app surveys and thanks to integrations with CRMs and webhooks – via email.
And let’s not forget about the state-of-the-art analytics which are essential to make informed decisions when designing the onboarding experiences. These include:
- User segmentation.
- Custom event tracking.
- Funnel reports.
- Path analytics.
- Trend analysis.
- User retention analysis.
- Flow analytics.
Conclusion
Your product’s success depends on how easily users can reach the Aha moment. If they can experience the product or feature value quickly, they’re likely to hang around, adopt the product, and convert to paying customers. If the value is difficult to find, they’ll churn.
To see how Userpilot can help you identify the Aha moments for your product and design onboarding experiences to lead users to them, book the demo!
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