How to Increase User Engagement in Your Mobile App?.

User engagement is the Holy Grail of app marketing, that holds paramount importance for any company’s bottom line.

But, it’s tough to engage users.

Here’s why..

While the Apple store has 1.96 million applications available for download, Google Playstore has whooping 2.87 million apps, that can be downloaded at this moment.

And, in 2023, around 260 billion apps were downloaded by 6.84 billion users, across the world.

On average, a typical smartphone user has 80 apps installed on their device, but they are able to use only 9 apps on an average, per day, and around 30 apps in a month.

Add to this, the non-stop onslaught of push notifications: On average, a typical smartphone user in the US receives around 46 notifications per day!

Besides, around 67 SMSes are sent and received by an average user, every 24 hours.

Amidst this cacophony of messages, notifications, and signals, it’s extremely hard to ensure high engagement among your users. They are already daunted, and overwhelmed with marketing and personal messages, and it’s a non-stop phenomenon that can significantly impact the top mobile app development company mobile app development cost.

According to Statista, 59% of all internet traffic globally now comes from mobile devices.

Mobile App Website Traffic Worldwide (Source: Statista)

While it’s extremely tough to engage users on a mobile app, it’s critical for a brand to engage its users, or else, they will leave.

How to solve this riddle of user engagement, and personalization, while maintaining the brand voice?

This blog has the answers you are seeking!

What is Mobile App Engagement?

Mobile app engagement measures how users interact with your app and its features. By tracking metrics like time spent on the app, action taken, and daily uninstalls, you can make better marketing decisions. These engagement metrics help you understand user behavior and improve your app accordingly.

What Does Mobile App Engagement Strategy Mean For Your Business?

User engagement is the main factor when a mobile app is developed. It includes everything users do, like clicking, viewing, and interacting. The more users engage, the more they benefit from your mobile app and it makes it a sign of success.

Here‘s why user engagement matters:

• 8 out of 10 people will pay more for a better experience.
• Engaged users are 63% less likely to stop using your app.
• The top 10% of engaged users spend three times more.
• 82% of engaged users will recommend your app to others.

Challenges a Business Faces While Boosting Their App Engagement Strategy

Boosting app engagement is a key goal for development companies and businesses. But it comes with various challenges. Successfully navigating these challenges is crucial for maintaining and increasing user interaction.

Here are the primary challenges and considerations in boosting app engagement strategy.

Saturated Market and User Attention

The app market is crowded, with millions of apps competing for user attention. Developing an effective app engagement strategy to stand out in this crowded is a significant challenge.

Balancing Monetizing and User Experience

Most apps need to make money, but integrating monetization without harming the user experience is tricky. An app engagement strategy must carefully balance ads, in-app purchases, or subscriptions to avoid driving users away.

Maintaining Continuous Engagement

It is one thing to get users engaged initially, keeping them engaged over time is harder. An evolving app engagement strategy is essential as users’ interests and needs change, to keep the app relevant and indispensable.

User Retention

Acquiring new users is often easier than retaining them. Many apps see a drop in engagement after the initial download. An innovative mobile app’s user engagement strategy is needed to keep users interested and engaged on longer terms.

User Expectations

The fast pace of technology means apps must continually adapt. An app engagement strategy should include constant innovation to integrate new platforms, devices, and features like AI or AR/VR app development.

Measuring Engagement Effectively

Identifying the right metrics is crucial for an engagement strategy. Misinterpreting data or focusing on the wrong metrics can lead to ineffective strategies that don’t boost engagement.

Creating a Seamless User Experience

An intuitive, easy-to-navigate app free from technical issues is fundamental. An effective engagement strategy includes ensuring a smooth user experience to prevent users from being deterred by glitches or poor design.

Responding to Every Feedback

Continuously gathering and acting on user feedback is key for relevance. An engagement strategy should include sifting through feedback and market trends to decide which suggestions to implement.

Key App Engagement Strategy Components for Your Mobile App Development

The app engagement strategy is not an easy task. With new competitors and rising user expectations, staying updated with the latest technologies and regularly updating your app’s UI is essential for a modern experience.

Create an Easy Onboarding Process

If new users can’t easily understand how to use your mobile app to reach their goals, they won’t return. Create a smooth and intuitive onboarding process to make a great first impression and make it easier for users to engage with your mobile app and enjoy its benefits.

To simplify the onboarding experience, reduce the steps needed to create an account, introduce features gradually as users navigate the mobile app, and teach through actions to help users learn the main gestures for using the app.

Use Push Notifications Wisely

Push notifications help in sharing information, and updates, and stay in users’ minds, even if they are not using the app. Personalized push notifications can reduce the abandonment rate from 25% to 19%.

In addition, push notifications for app engagement, to create a personalized experience for updates and new content. Promotes deals on products users recently viewed, offers birthday discounts, re-engages inactive users, encourages loyalty program sign-ups, or drives traffic to nearby stores.

Encourage Features Exploration

Users might not explore all of your app’s features right away. To encourage app engagement, highlight key features in your app store description, welcome screens, and during onboarding.

Use in-app messaging to give short, helpful tips that guide users through different functions. This can encourage them to take specific actions or try features they haven’t used yet, without cluttering the interface with too much text.

Send Personalized In-App Messages

Personalized in-app messages and marketing campaigns, tailored to individual users based on their profile or behavior, achieve a retention rate of 61% to 74% within 28 days, compared to 49% with generic messaging.

The personalized in-app messages create app engagement because if your user interacts with your app that means your actions are finally paying off. It will provide relevant product recommendations based on the user’s search history. This app engagement strategy will increase your business.

Gamify the Experience

To boost your app engagement you can add competitive elements where users compete with themselves, their friends, and other app users. Adding gamification in your mobile app helps users stay motivated with activities like saving money or learning. Because when they see the results, they are more enthusiastic to return and share their success.

By creating a visual scoreboard with graphs and charts showcasing their progress and recent achievements. It encourages users to explore more features and share their accomplishments on social media when they complete challenges or reach goals.

A Two-Way Communication

In-app messaging lets you offer real-time help exactly when and where users need it. This app engagement strategy includes troubleshooting issues, answering questions, addressing concerns, and completing transactions. These timely interactions can reduce frustration and keep users coming back to your app.

You can also use in-app chat proactively to build relationships through one-on-one conversations, guide users to relevant features or content, and gather feedback for developing new features.

Drive Engagement With Emails and Social Media

Email and social media retargeting are great ways to engage users outside your app. You can send onboarding emails to encourage users to try your top features and engage them on social media to stay on their minds.

Use data analytics to spot users likely to leave and send them targeted content and offers to re-engage them. Highlight specific features in emails based on user profiles and behaviors.

Include a call-to-action (CTA) in your emails and use deep links to take users directly to the most relevant section of the app, reducing friction in their journey.

Add Social Components

Social interactions are crucial for keeping users engaged with your app. An in-app community can boost user retention by 2.7 times. That’s why social features are becoming so popular in areas like gaming, finance, and payments.

Add a section in your app where users can chat with friends or interact with the larger community. Include chat, voice, and video functions to enhance the experience, and ensure content moderation to keep the space safe and on-brand.

Offer an Omnichannel Experience

Omnichannel marketing ensures a consistent customer experience across all channels and touchpoints. The goal is to build complete user engagement by offering support, products, and services through websites, mobile apps, SMS, social media, email, live chat, and physical locations like kiosks and stores.

Consistency and timeliness across channels are key to building trust. All channels must work together seamlessly to deliver a consistent brand voice and personalized support. To achieve this, understand your customers’ journey and identify their preferred channels at each stage.

Set KPIs to measure user engagement both within and across channels. Ensure your team knows these KPIs and allocates resources based on which channels are most effective for your app engagement strategy.

Emphasize Your Value Proposition Early

You only get one chance to make a first impression.

Your value proposition is the first users see when they encounter your brand. It’s crucial to grab their attention by showing how your app can solve a problem, save time, or improve their lives.

Your app engagement strategy starts with your value position. Make it clear and straightforward, and ensure your installation and onboarding process reinforces this message at every step.

Provide tangible value by addressing your customers’ greatest needs with the right solution. For example, app development like Netflix, one popular and fastest-growing streamlining platform, needed a way to engage with their customers and enable them to interact during virtual events. You can partner with a mobile app development company to provide seamless real-time interactions, delighting their users and supporting rapid business growth.

Plan for Retention Before Launch

You wouldn’t start a business without a plan, and app engagement is no different. Without a plan, you won’t know how to increase users in your app. Develop an app engagement strategy to attract, convert, engage, and retain customers before your launch.

Start by identifying your customer personas and mapping out user journeys. These journeys will help you pinpoint the right go-to marketing channels, customer touchpoints, and potential obstacles. Use this information to design and refine your marketing and engagement tactics to maximize long-term customer retention.

Users Feedback

One of the best ways to boost app engagement and re-engagement is to ask users what they like and dislike, and what improvements or bug fixes they want. Building a socially engaged community where users can interact with you and each other is a great way to gather feedback.

You can also collect feedback by adding surveys to your customer support process to measure satisfaction. AI customer support and AI chatbots are useful for users to ask questions or raise concerns.

Gathering feedback is only half the battle. It is important to act on it by responding to users, regularly updating your app with new features or bug fixes, and being active in social communities. This is an essential part of a successful app engagement strategy.

What Are Some Important App Engagement Metrics

User Retention Rate

This metric measures the percentage of users who continue to use your app over a given period. High retention rates indicate that users find value in your app and are consistently coming back.

Daily And Monthly Active Users

These metrics show how many unique users interact with your app daily or monthly. A higher active users ratio suggests strong user app engagement.

Session Length

This metric tracks how much time users spend in your app per session. Longer sessions often mean higher engagement and satisfaction with your app’s content or features.

Churn Rate

The churn rate measures the percentage of users who stop using your app within a specific timeframe. Lower churn rates indicate better user retention and engagement.

In-App Purchase Behavior

This metric tracks how often users make purchases within your app. Higher purchase rates can signify a successful monetization strategy and an engaged user base.

Choosing The Right App Engagement Platform To Track Metrics

Choosing the right engagement platform is crucial for effectively tracking and analyzing these metrics. Here are some examples of top engagement platforms.

Google Analytics

Google Analytics offers robust features for tracking user interactions, understanding user behavior, and analyzing traffic sources. It’s widely used due to its integration capabilities with other Google services and its comprehensive reporting features.

Mixpanel

Mixpanel focuses on tracking user actions and behaviors in real time, allowing you to see how users interact with your app’s features. It offers advanced analytics and segmentation tools to help you understand your user base better.

Flurry

Flurry provides in-depth app analytics, including user demographics, usage patterns, and retention rates. It’s a popular choice for mobile app developers looking to gain insights into user behavior and app performance.

Amplitude

Amplitude specializes in product analytics, helping you understand how users interact with your app and identify opportunities for improvement. It offers powerful cohort analysis, funnel tracking, and user journey insights.

These platforms provide detailed insights into user behavior, allowing you to make data-driven decisions to enhance app engagement. They offer user-friendly dashboards, comprehensive analytics, and integration capabilities with other tools, making them ideal for tracking and optimizing your app’s performance.

Final Thoughts

Market conditions change rapidly, so your app engagement strategies need to keep up with new consumer expectations by prioritizing your customers.

Gathering user feedback and analyzing behavioral data and KPIs can provide valuable insights to guide app development, enhance the app experience, deliver relevant content, and foster meaningful interactions.

Adding a social component to your app is a proven strategy for retaining users and boosting engagement. Features like native in-app chat and messaging with an intuitive UI and community elements are highly effective and scalable for driving engagement.

With TechAhead, you can easily integrate features into your app from the start of your project. Sign up for our free consultation to see how we can help you increase user engagement.

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