4 Effective Strategies to Increase App User Engagement

For an accounting app, an effective participating user should log in every day to add his new income or expenses; for an operator app, an effective participating user may log in once a month to recharge his phone bill or order additional data packages, etc. Therefore, there is no unified and quantifiable definition standard for user engagement, but it is possible to form a standard for vertical industries; for banks, an average of 1.7 user activations per month is a more reasonable value. User engagement is not as easy to measure as indicators such as page views (PV), visitors (UV), returning users or conversion rates. No data statistical analysis tool can directly and instantly reflect the user engagement of a product. However, ignoring user engagement is extremely dangerous.

Why is user engagement important?

Download volume is often used in the market to measure the performance of an app. But empirical data shows that more than 20% of these downloads were only opened once by users. It can be seen from this that APP operators get a large number of registered users, but they cannot effectively convert all of them into "customers". Therefore, how to keep users engaged is the most important issue that APP operators should solve.

Here we give the following 4 methods and strategies to improve user engagement:

1. Leave a strong first impression on users

Every day, potential target users learn about our products from various channels , download the APP, and see the APP product interface for the first time. The first interface that users see should include the following three functions: explaining the product function, motivating users to start using it, and letting users know how to get help. If any of the above features are missing from an app design, users are likely to log out of the app and never come back. When users open a mobile app for the first time, they should see a beautiful welcome page, and they should be informed of the main functions and features of the product before they use it. The first impression will greatly affect the subsequent product experience.

Simply communicating with users is a great way to encourage them to ask questions. Keep trying new approaches and keep doing it. Through communication, the product manager of the APP can find out what functions the product is missing, or what opinions or dissatisfaction the users have; the product manager can better understand user needs, better design and operate products, thereby helping mobile applications gain higher user satisfaction and more customers.

2. Gradually expose product depth

Any valuable product has some subtle but useful features. These features include email notifications and reminders, third-party integrations, export capabilities, and more. Often, these deeper, carefully designed features are not immediately discoverable and usable by users.

It is recommended that APP operators create a message push schedule based on user behavior analysis data and gradually improve certain functions based on user usage. When we have a deep understanding of the user base, we can know which minor features in the product make the user experience better and in what scenarios they are useful to them.

3. Release features and improve them within the app

When users are using the product, they are very concerned about whether the product has been continuously improved or whether new features have been developed. What we need to do is to continuously optimize the product and release new features in a timely manner to attract users and increase user engagement.

When it comes to engaging users, in-app push notifications are 1000 times better than email. This push message should include an overview of the feature, as well as a tutorial for beginners. Users can test it out using actions such as tapping and swiping, and get relevant responses. It’s hard to imagine an email achieving a similar effect.

4. Involve target users in product testing

During a period of public beta testing, we found that there are two types of users: one is those who learned about the product on social platforms or other channels. These people may choose to download and register; but they do not have the pain points that the product addresses, they are just curious and want to quickly browse the solution here; these people are unlikely to become customers, nor will they provide valuable feedback on the product.

Another type of registered user is someone who is genuinely interested in the product, but they need a nudge to become a customer. If we are not sure what each user’s usage goals are, we can directly ask them about their thoughts when using the product through surveys. This may seem difficult, but in-app messaging can help us do this.

We should manage the life cycle of users and products in a reasonable manner, from "understanding users" to "improving user experience" to "precision marketing ". In this process, it is very necessary to establish a reasonable user engagement measurement indicator system.