Steps to improve the user retention for your product

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Gaining a new user is relatively easy as compared to retaining the existing users. A product that is unable to retain a certain percentage of the new users for a longer period has still not found its product-market fit. A user can be onboarded to the platform by spending money on marketing and promotion. However, the reason the user stays on the platform is due to the value proposition the user derives from the product. Most of the time, user engagement are often a half-hearted experiments that do not really translate into the retained user. Various steps which can help in improving the retention of the users on the platform are as following :

1. Usability testing: Usability testing is a process to check where the users are facing difficulties in using the product. It is an essential tool to evaluate how the user is navigating across products for conversion. The user will face certain problems while navigating and it’s important for the organisation to take heed of these user pain points to improve their product. A better user experience will translate to better retention of the product.
2. Measure the retention across the cohort and segmentation: The cohort and segment characteristics are an important measure to check where the product fails in delivering the value to the customer. The only reason the users are leaving the platform is that the product does not offer any value to the user in the long term. By measuring retention across cohorts and segments, you will be able to narrow down the product issue to specific segments. Solving the issue for that specific segment will lead to an increase in retention.
3. Bounce rate: There might be a case that you are attracting the wrong kind of audience to the product. The marketing and promotion might lead to an increase in user base but if the product does not provide value to that user segment, they are bound to leave the platform. Track the bounce rate for various segments and access the characteristics of the users who do nothing and leave the website. Also, check the marketing channel and demography for the non retained user. It is essential to check the onboarding process i.e. whether the user was able to complete the intended actions for conversion to understand the value proposition of the product. Finally, based on all the feedback, makes changes in the product features as well as the marketing and promotion process to bring in the right customer to your product platform.
4. Look for the patterns common to the retained users: As an organisation, it is essential to know what makes your product tick with the target users. If there is any specific pattern that is common to the majority of the retained user, try to achieve the same with all the users. For example, if there’s a pattern that the retained users are the ones who have ordered at least 5 items from your website. As a product manager, I should think about how to motivate other users to buy at least 5 items from the website. By optimizing the initial experience of the new users on the basis of the derived patterns, we would be able to increase the retention percentage of the users.
5. Surveys and interviews: Get in touch with the users who were activated in the beginning and were regular visitors to your app or website before leaving it altogether. Try to get feedback on their experience of the product and the reasons why they decided to stop using the product. You can also ask them to propose changes in the product which would have stopped them from leaving. These users would be the best critique for your product and try to leverage their feedback in optimizing the product as per their needs. The continuous iteration based on the feedback from non retained customers would gradually increase the overall retention of the product.
6. Analyze the user product usage characteristics for the non retained users during their last few days of using the product: By identifying the usage characteristics, you would understand the qualitative reasons for leaving the product. Most of the time user is unable to articulate what made them leave the product. However, their usage characteristics would surely provide the answer to this conundrum. This exercise would also help you to identify the potential existing users who will leave the product in some time. Talk to these users and gain insight into their experience with the product. If they are unsatisfied, look for the elements that lead to the decrease in user psych. Change these elements to build a positive experience for the users and you would be able to retain the users for a longer time.