Strategies To Increase Your App’s Engagement Rate

Engagement is defined by how long the users stay inside your app, and how many times a day they open it. And how do you keep the user engaged? By extracting the right data you can determine the best path to take, but if you don’t have that data yet, there are some strategies that will surely make a difference:

Welcome New Users

You don’t get second first impressions, so it’s important to make it count. When a new user first opens your app it’s important that you teach them how it works, where they can start, and what to do if they need help. This is why onboarding is so important, and the ideal place for you to do that.

Present The Benefits Through Onboarding

Explaining the features you have is good, but telling the user the benefits he will get is even better. Focus more on the value each feature provides instead of simply describing them because if the user doesn’t understand the benefits he won’t use it. Example: What do all those features allow the user to do? Be healthier, save time, be more productive.

Provide Real-Time Support

Most of the apps and online services are starting to implement strategies to attend to the user’s needs in real-time. This can be for example bots or live chats. Providing customer support will improve general engagement, since any questions or doubts that were stopping the user from proceeding, can be answered right away. Of course, not all of your users drop because of questions or doubts, but having this aid at hand will only be beneficial.

Offer New Content

Updating your app regularly is good to keep users engaged because what’s new and interesting will stop being so after a while. Be careful with the updates since they should be meaningful and provide value to the end-user, instead of just being something new but that they would never use. Make users want to stick around by making them see that you are dedicated to improving their experience and providing new content and value.

Use Push Notifications

Before you start thinking about the content of the notifications, you need to make the user more eager to allow them first. Before the permission is displayed you could display your screen, where you state all the benefits the user will get if he chooses to allow them. Create a view with curated illustrations for example, and take this chance to speak to your users more personally.

If they do allow push notifications you can take this chance to re-engage them in case they spent very little time on your app, and didn’t get the chance to try your most valuable features that could’ve probably made them stay. It’s important that you separate your users into different cohorts (groups) and target your messages specifically for each one of those groups.

Personalize your notification’s content according to each of those group’s needs, for example, based on their last activity inside your app, their age, demographics, etc. In case your app offers a subscription, you can use the notifications to present the users with a limited-time offer that would catch their attention. Don’t forget to focus on the benefits that subscribing to your app would bring them. Another good strategy is telling your users about new updates you have been working on that will again, provide them real value.

Build A Community

A great lot of the apps and games most people use are now shifting towards building this community with their users. It could be an online forum where people interact with each other, or it could be a place where they speak to you about improvements and general feedback. This interaction could prevent them from leaving negative reviews on the app store because they would come to this forum to speak to you first. But it doesn’t always have to be an interacting community where people talk to one another or with you, it could be something like displaying the users that are online using your app right. People would still get this feeling of being part of a community but without the need to speak.

Wrap-Up

Investing in acquiring new users is not enough if you see them drop after the first day. You must tackle your app’s engagement and retention rates to really make that investment count. Check out my article about the Steps Of Improving User Retention, and my colleague Carmine Acierno’s Guide To Increase Retention Rate if you want to know more about the subject. I hope you enjoyed it, thank you!