Adoption – or the process of getting someone to start (and continue) using your product – is one of the pillars of product success. The subject of many pre-launch conversations, companies launching a new thing out in the world are (usually, and hopefully) keenly aware of the challenge of getting people to start using what they’ve created.

This is especially prevalent on the web, where switching costs are so low. For users, it’s so easy to hit the back button and go to a competitor, that getting people in the door and attached is a key part of grabbing some market share. Seems like common sense, huh?

Well, you’d think. Unfortunately, a majority of products on the web don’t do a great job at getting users in the door easily. Instead, they present users with arcane signup forms, difficult setup flows, and generally a whole bunch of pain. This generates much griping among the team, who start reading articles about conversion rates and tweaking the colors of buttons in a desperate attempt to lure more people through the elusive conversion funnel. Generally, this misses the point grossly, dooming the innocent product to a life of anemic adoption, and potentially, complete failure.

So, what’s going wrong?

It has to do with something I call the “Incline of Death”. The Incline of Death is a moment in a product adoption lifecycle where pain overcomes perceived trust and value, causing the user to bail out – too little trust, too much pain.

Illustrated, it looks something like this:

This sketch shows the problem. As a user progresses through time, experiencing your product for the first time, they’re balancing two different emotional states: trust/value and pain.

As they get to know your product, and they start to perceive real value from using your stuff, their trust rises along what I call the “Curve of Value”. This curve has awesome staying power – make it high enough (by providing a whole bunch of value), and people will be much more likely to stay around.

In the dashed box, you can see the danger zone. This is the Incline of Death. The Incline of Death occurs when the amount of pain experienced by a user rises before the Curve of Value kicks in. Trust is low, pain is high – people bail out (unless they’re forced to use it, as with company expense reporting software and about any government product).

The Incline of Death claims many lives on its silent and insidious quest to sink new products. Many companies don’t even realize it exists, until they interview potential users and hear the string of curse words attached to their brand name. Ouch.

So, we know the Incline of Death is out there. What can you do about it?

You can beat the Incline of Death in two ways:

• Move the Curve of Value up in time
• Flatten the Incline

Moving the Curve of Value up in time means demonstrating value and establishing trust before requiring much work on the user’s part. Comprehensive demos, easy trials and no-account-setup strategies are ways move the Curve. With all of these, it means somehow engineering a way for the user to derive real value before having to experience setup or commitment pain. And no,  a page of screenshots labeled “Tour our Product” doesn’t count – you need to provide real and lasting value to really move the Curve.

Another technique commonly used to help move the Curve of Value up is gradual engagement. Gradual engagement allows a user to begin using your product with the smallest possible commitment up front, for example, by removing sign up forms and letting users jump in immediately (with signup coming later, after value has been demonstrated).

In short, find a way to demonstrate value quicker. Even if you can’t flatten the Incline of Death, moving the Curve of Value up can give users the will to fight through the pain.

Flattening the Incline of Death means redesigning setup to reduce the total amount of pain. Removing form fields, delaying the collection of certain types of data and completely removing setup altogether are some ways to flatten the Incline. Often, flattening the Incline is much more difficult than moving the Curve of Value up. Stakeholder positions and business culture can sometimes demand certain amounts of setup complexity, and in some instances, the product itself requires a certain degree of setup to work at all. In those instances, stretching the Incline out (basically flattening it by stretching it) by breaking setup into steps (with value-based feedback and encouragement) or moving advanced setup into interior areas of the product can help. For instance, if a user is signing up for an email account, let them choose a username and get started. Delay advanced setup – adding friends, contacts, etc. – until later in the product lifecycle (or at least offer it, and let a user skip).

The fact is, sometimes you simply can’t make setup less complex. As Tesler’s Law of Conservation of Complexity states, there’s an inherent amount of complexity in interactive systems. The only option is to either move complexity from the user’s perspective to the system’s (by automating tasks, using intelligence, etc.) or by stretching complex task flows out over time, reducing the shock users experience at any given step.

When it comes down to it, flattening the Incline of Death is mostly about restraint – what pain can you delay, until after the user has already experienced enough value to put up with it?

The Curve of Value and Incline of Death are critical pieces for product adoption. We’re more likely to forgive something for causing us pain when we trust it. Master this, and you’ll massively increase your chances that people start using your product.