4 Effective Strategies to Improve the Engagement of APP Users

The definition of user engagement varies from product to product

For example, for a bookkeeping app, an effective user should be logged in every day to add his new income or spending. For an operator’s app, an effective user may be logging in once a month, charging a fee, or ordering additional traffic packets. Therefore, user engagement has no uniform quantifiable definition standard, but it is possible to form the standard of vertical industry. For Banks, for example, start times the average of 1.7 times the user is a reasonable value (the value come from Cobub’s long-term observations, Cobub is a domestic open source mobile application of statistical analysis tools).
Engagement is not like page views (PV), visitors (UV), users pay or conversion rate these indicators as easy to measure, not a data statistical analysis tools to directly reflect product user engagement. However, ignoring user engagement is very dangerous.
Although user engagement is more difficult to measure and establish a unified standard, we can obtain the following indicators from the mobile application analysis platform:
1. Average startup times
2. Average length of use
3. APP interval
4. Number of visits
5. Retention rates
6. Response scale to customer contacts
Using the following radar map to represent user engagement.

Why is user engagement important?

The market is often used to measure the performance of an application. But more than 20% of these downloads have only been turned on once, according to empirical data. As a result, APP operators are getting a lot of registered users, but they can’t all turn into “customers” effectively. So how to keep users engaged continuously is the most important problem that APP operators should solve.
By the way, distinguishing between “user” and “customer” is an important link in Internet product operation, especially for non-tool applications. It is also important to note that “users” can be turned into “customers”, and simple and simple is wrong.

As can be seen from the above: user engagement is one of the difficult problems, but it is often overlooked, so there are four strategies to improve user engagement:

1. Make a deep first impression

Every day, potential target users learn about our products, download apps from various sources, and see the product interface for the first time. However, in the design team of mobile application, it is often forgotten that the interface that users first see should include the following three functions:
A. Explain the function of the product
B. Motivate the user to start using
C. Let users know how to get help

If one APP lacks any of these features, users will be able to write off the APP and never look back.
There are many good ways to welcome newly registered users and show them our hard work results. For example, new welcome page, product use tutorial, novice guide or related data related to the product. When users first open their mobile applications, they should see a nice welcome page and inform the main features and features of the product before they use it. The first impression will greatly affect the subsequent product use experience.

There are many kinds of user contacts, such as SMS, push, email, etc. APP operators can use SMS or email to greet newly registered users or push marketing activities. But the data suggest that messages within the application are more likely to be read, clicked, and responded. You can add a button to the application on the last page of the boot page, which is very useful for entering the app home page. You can also tell users where to ask for help by in-app messages. Keep a reply box at the bottom of the help page to facilitate user connections and improve user experience to improve conversion rates. The message sent by the APP operator is the first step to establishing a connection with the user, so don’t ignore it.

Simple communication with users is a great way to encourage them to ask questions, and you need to try new ways and stick to them. Through communication, the APP’s product manager can find out what the product lacks, or what the user’s opinion or dissatisfaction is. Product managers can better understand user needs, better design, and operate products to help mobile apps win higher user satisfaction and more customers.

2. Gradually expose the product depth

Any valuable product has some less obvious but useful features. These features include mail notifications and reminders, third-party integration, and export functions.
Often, these more elaborate designs are not immediately discovered and used by users. Just like before using data, who CARES about exporting the data? Or who would consider using keyboard shortcuts before using the unique features of a product? As a result, operators of most products tend to expose these product features through untimed tweets, emails, documents, or frequently asked questions. But these methods are not very effective.
When these messages are not available and are more likely to disturb the user than to interest them, the result is counterproductive. The user’s response is likely to be to throw information into a spam mailbox and stop receiving all the information sent later.
If the common issues or help module to prompt the user product promoted which features, also means that the information was found to be the only chance is: users in the use of products encountered a problem. But it’s not an appropriate time to learn about new features, because the purpose of their trip is to solve existing problems instead of discovering new lands.

Define a timeline for a message

It is recommended that APP operators create a news feed schedule based on user behavior analysis data, and gradually improve some functions according to the user’s usage. When you have a deep understanding of the user base, we can see which of the more secondary features in the product makes the user experience better, and in what scenarios it is useful to them. Once you have done this work, the rest will be timely communication. Can according to the behavior of the individual users send him a series of E-mail, SMS push and application in automatic message, to carry on the fine operation, marketing activities, each of us a message will prompt the user working towards a common goal. Every piece of information will let users know that they can come to us with any questions during their use. This is the key to getting user feedback, which can help us adjust our marketing strategy and increase user engagement.

3. Release function and improve within the application

Users in the process of using the products, they are very concerned about the product to have continuous improvement, or have developed a new function, we need to do is to continuously optimize product and timely release new features, to attract users, increase user engagement.

When it comes to attracting users, in-app messaging is a hundred times better than E-mail. This push message should include an overview of the feature, as well as a novice user tutorial that allows users to test it with the click, swipe, and so on, and get the relevant response. It’s hard to imagine a similar effect in an email.

4. Let the target user participate in product testing

The products of startups generally fall into two categories: those that address the pain points, the problems they encounter, and the ones that people are happy to have or use. These two categories are like pain killers and vitamins. If products are painkillers, then we can learn a lot from test users.
During a period of public testing, we will find that there are two types of users: one is to know the product on social platforms or other channels, and these people may choose to download the product. But they don’t have a pain point for the product, just curious to see a quick solution here. These people can’t become customers or generate valuable feedback on the product.
Another type of registered user is someone who is genuinely interested in the product, but they need to be promoted to become a customer. If we’re not sure what the user’s target is, we can look directly at some of the ideas that come from using the product. This may seem difficult, but in-app messages can help us do this.

Summary

We should manage the user and product life cycle in a reasonable way, from “understanding the user” to “enhancing the user experience” to “precision marketing”. In this process, it is necessary to establish a reasonable index system for user engagement. There may be different situations in each APP, but the APP operators must set up such indicators. This paper gives an example and some experience summary.