Understanding the STARS framework

Every feature in Bucket is evaluated with the STARS framework, displaying a diagram that will look like the following:

The STARS framework stands for Segment, Tried, Adopted, Retained, and Satisfied, and is used to evaluate how a company has interacted with a feature in Bucket. STARS is a funnel that measures the satisfaction of a feature. The framework is based on quantitative engagement data and qualitative satisfaction scoring.

Segment

The initial Segment is used to set the size of the funnel. As different features are only relevant to different users, practically every feature specification will begin by determining the specific segment of users that will be the target audience. This step is completed before a feature is released, and in Bucket the Segment value will always be 100%.

Tried

Tried represents the number of users from the targeted segment that have used the feature at least once. This is shown as a percentage of the total number of customers in the segment. If Tried is low, it indicates that users are either unaware of the new feature, or it is not yet appealing enough for them to use it.

Adopted

The next step, Adopted, shows how many users go beyond trying a feature to using it regularly. You can set the number of times needed for a company to move into Adopted in Bucket, but a good rule of thumb is that >5 uses counts as Adopted. The percentage figure displayed in Bucket for Adopted is a percentage of Tried users that have moved to Adopted.

However, some features will not have both Tried and Adopted statistics. This is because number of uses does not always make sense, as features may well be simple on/off buttons or similar. An integration with another piece of software will be activated once and then any further uses will occur elsewhere, for example. In these cases, only Adopted will be displayed.

Retained

This is the critical step of the funnel. It shows how many accounts from Adopted keep using the feature over time.

In SaaS products, most key features should likely be used at least once every subscription cycle, which typically means monthly.

However, some features aren’t meant to be used that frequently. Defining the right retention period per feature is critical to measuring Retained correctly.

Thus far, every user in the funnel has only moved onwards - you cannot untry a feature. However, users can move backwards from Retained if they do not continue using something. This is what we term Churn, and a user that churns from Retained will be moved back to Adopted.

Satisfied

In the Satisfied step, we ask the Retained accounts how satisfied they are with the feature. Collecting feature satisfaction is done with the scoring framework CSAT. With CSAT, the customer provides a score between 1-5. 1 being very dissatisfied and 5 being very satisfied.

Until a user provides feedback, the Satisfied metric will be empty. Once a user provides feedback, their rating will be stored permanently, even if they drop off from Retained. However, the Satisfied bar displayed at the top of the page will only count those currently in Retained.

Summary

Let's go over this one more time.

The target audience for a new feature is defined in the Segment metric.

Users from the chosen segment that use a feature at least once will be placed into the Tried group.

Users that continue to use a feature will be moved into Adopted. Where features are single use or similar, only the Adopted metric will display in Bucket.

With long-term usage, users will be moved from Adopted into Retained, illustrating that they have become committed users of the feature. However, users can still stop using a feature and drop off at this stage, causing them to be placed back into Adopted.

Once a user has been retained, it is possible to collect feedback from them regarding the feature. Users that provide positive feedback will be moved to Satisfied. If a satisfied user stops using a feature, they will be moved back to Adopted, though their feedback will continue to be stored separately.