How to increase mobile engagement with science
Date: 18 May
Another great mobile meetup from Branch! They are really assembling great content at their events & helping their users network.
The other main sponsor for this meetup was Flurry Analytics, a Yahoo company, and we got to check out the Yahoo SF space- it was pretty cool, great location.
- Tasmin Singh presented (mobile developer evangelist): Based on their 800K tracked apps, they created an app loyalty matrix
- Lots of interesting stuff in that matrix- she highlighted that Health & Fitness apps have grown in stickiness from 2012–2016, moreso than almost any other category of app (Update 19 May: this week Google I/O released several updates to Android Wear with Strava so it’s clear lots of leaders have noticed this user behavior)
First speaker was Dina from Prolific Interactive, agency that builds Ecommerce apps
- Be together, not the same: Android campaign, friends furever — it’s always good to start with some cuddly animals!
- There are lots of similar factors that most/all humans follow, so when you are building apps, learn from these 2 tools: consumer psychology & behavioral economics
- Can go up or down the funnel
Dina described 4 main theorems -
1. Motivating users to keep going / complete a process
- Car wash loyalty card study: If you start punching the card for the user (must punch cards in front of them), they are motivated to keep going. Twice as likely to complete & were faster. Full description of this study
- How to apply this: Using progress bar, motivate user by showing real (or even artificial) in signup or submission process
2. To teach your users, know that people learn best if they have to make small leaps on their own
- The study was conducted at Tufts where users were tested to see which of 3 different sentences they remembered most often. It’s called asymmetric dominance & it introduces some useful friction to users!
- How to apply this: Give people options to choose from that are not as different to nudge them toward an option you want them to select
3. Attach your app to your users’ existing habits/cues
- 40% of what we do every day is driven by habit. Stored in a different place in our brains
- Habit loop: routine — -> reward — → cue — → routine, etc
4. Influence how your users think of you
- Peak end rule: People judge an experience based on the peak/most fun, or the end
- How to apply this: Think about how the end of your app experience exists — this is a little counter intuitive, but it will influence if your users recommend you to others
- example: Sephoracolorcorrect.com
- Had to educate users about using unexpected (purple, pink, yellow, blue) colors on face
- Made the users guess (based on their existing face issues) what would help solve the issues in a game — 3 tries — gave a hint
Panel speakers
Gina Gotthilf, VP Growth: Duolingo, education app for language learning
Andrea Slobodien, Lead PM: 8 tracks, music app
How do you use Dina’s first theory, Endowed progress?
- Duolingo: level based to unlock new capabilities as the user learns
- 8tracks: DJs create collections/ playlists; they started creating “platinum album” to encourage more effort by DJs
- Mistakes: don’t over reward through push notifications; they created “duo’s” to compete in learning the language because everyone suggested social features but this hurt engagement #s
Onboarding strategy tips
- Recommended book: The Design of Everyday Things
- Focus on simplicity during onboarding: ensure you have very clear copywriting
- Tool you can use: usertesting.com
- Give info that is *instantly* valuable at onboarding
What is the definition of “Activated customer” for you? Different teams at 8tracks consider this slightly differently: if a user has listened to 3 songs in a playlist, they are 75% more likely to return (predictive analytics); product team says if we know 1 data point of what type of music a user likes, we can at least recommend another playlist to keep you engaged
What are simple metrics an app can start with, to measure growth?
- Track the ONE thing your app is supposed to help the user do
- Start by following your most basic user flow and see what is happening there, good or bad. For example, Retention: from the people who come to your site, and then sign up/download app, but don’t return… what was the problem?
What recommendations do you have for A/B testing?
- Keep A/B testing EVERYTHING because you will get input that might be wrong
- Keep the tests really simple. 30 variations of an email was too much because they couldn’t analyze the results
- Conversion-based A/B test
Do you have examples of Notifications/Habits that you tap into?
- Clingy boyfriend: “Come back… we miss you… we can change!”
- Passive aggressive: “I guess you don’t want to hear from me. Fine, I’ll leave you alone for awhile”
- Duolingo “Streak” encourages users to visit every day (this is very relevant to their site because you need to practice a new language every day to actually learn & retain it). Users really want to keep the streak going and beg to get it back if they break it accidentally!
What is your most critical channel for growth?
- 8 tracks: Social is biggest growth so people can share playlists
- Duolingo: Push notifications
How to acquire first 1,000 users?
- PR: reaching out to press. The article *has* to have a link to your site or else it didn’t happen
- Exclusive beta
- Facebook ads
- Featured by the app store: find out the category manager & involve them in the development; use their most recently released features in your app
- Keywords in your app store description
Thanks to Will Lindemann for the great questions!
