4 Effective Strategies to Increase App User Engagement

The definition of user engagement varies from product to product

For example, for an accounting app, an effective participating user should log in every day to add his new income or expenses; while for a carrier 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 of user engagement, but it is possible to form standards for vertical industries; for example, for banks, an average of 1.7 monthly user activations is a more reasonable value (this value comes from Cobub's long-term observations).

User engagement is not as easy to measure as page views (PV), visitors (UV), returning users or conversion rates. No data statistical analysis tool can directly reflect the user engagement of a product instantly. However, ignoring user engagement is extremely dangerous.

Although user engagement is difficult to measure and set a unified standard, we can obtain the following indicators from the mobile app analysis platform:

1. Average number of starts
2. Average usage time
3. APP usage interval
4. Number of pages visited
5. Retention rate
6. Response rate to customer touchpoints

And use the following radar chart to characterize user engagement:

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. By the way: distinguishing between "users" and "customers" is an important part of Internet product operations , especially for non-tool applications; it is also important to note that "users" may be converted into "customers", and it is wrong to simply favor one over the other.

As you can see from the above figure, user engagement is just one piece of the puzzle, but it’s often overlooked. So here are four ways and strategies to increase 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. But one thing is often forgotten among mobile app design teams: the first interface that users see should include the following three features:

1. Explain product features
2. Motivate users to start using
3. Let 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. Currently, there are many great ways to welcome new signups and showcase the results of our hard work to them.

For example, a new welcome page, product tutorials, user guides, or relevant data about the product. 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.

There are many user touchpoints, such as SMS, push, email, etc. APP operators can use SMS or email to greet newly registered users or push marketing activities ; but data shows that messages within the app are more likely to be read, clicked and responded to. You can add a button to open the app on the last page of the guide, which is very useful for entering the main page of the app. You can also tell users where to seek help through messages within the app. Leave a reply box at the bottom of the help information page to facilitate user contact, improve user experience and increase conversion rate. The messages sent by APP operators are the first step to establish a connection with users, so don’t ignore them.

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.

Just like before using the data, who would care about the export of data? Or who would think of using keyboard shortcuts before using the unique features of the product? Therefore, most product operators tend to disclose these product features through occasional push notifications, emails, documents or FAQs. But in fact these methods are not very effective.

When these messages are sent at the wrong time, they are more likely to annoy users than to interest them, which can backfire. The user will most likely respond by throwing the message into their spam folder and stopping receiving all future messages. If you use FAQs or help modules to tell users what features your product has improved, the only chance that this information will be discovered is when the user encounters a problem while using the product. But this is not the right time to learn about new product features because the purpose of their trip is to solve existing problems rather than discover new horizons.

Define a message schedule

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. Once this work is done, all that remains is a matter of timely communication. We can send a series of emails, SMS push messages and automatic in-app messages to individual users based on their behavior for refined operations. In marketing campaigns, every message we publish can drive users toward a common goal. Every message should let users know that they can come to us if they have any questions during use. This is key to getting user feedback, which can help us adjust our marketing strategies and increase user engagement.

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

Startup products generally fall into two categories: those that solve people’s pain points, or the problems they encounter, and those that people are happy to own or use. These two categories are like painkillers and vitamins. If the product is a painkiller, then we can learn a lot from test users.

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.

summary

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. Perhaps the situations of each APP are different, but APP operators must establish such indicators. This article provides an example for reference and some experience summary.