By gbolade on Friday, October 5th, 2018 in General. No Comments
We all have that personal experience of using the same app regardless of other apps offering the same service? It is because we keep seeing value in using that app. Once the value stops, we will jump ship as well. With the increasing growth of the mobile application industry, every business or brand is targeting the smartphone market for success. This increased growth means that there is increased competition as well. On the different phone play stores, there are so many redundant apps that have been downloaded a handful of times. This is where user engagement and retention come in.
As a business owner, there are two important questions you must ask yourself about your mobile app. They are as follows:
- Why should people keep using your app?
- What are you offering that your rivals are not?
The answer to these questions will determine whether people will keep using your app and come back to interact on a regular basis. This article highlights six methods or techniques of keeping users on your app. Let’s go.
App Engagement and User Retention: Definition and Importance
App engagement simply tells you how much users are active on your app. It allows you to know how many of them are using it frequently. According to Localytics, a highly active user will use your app at least 20 times a month.
User retention can be defined as the metric that shows you how many users have returned to use an app within a specified period of time. This is quite subjective, as different businesses and brands have their own standard and benchmark.
Understanding these terms are very essential. They give information on how popular an app is and also helps you project your revenue based on how many active users you have. You can have a marketing campaign in place because you know the average number of people that use your app. User abandonment according to researchers is currently at 23%. This is referred to as a percentage of people that don’t bother to use an app after the first time.
User engagement and retention can be affected by a number of factors. Issues such as the app not being mobile-friendly, taking too much time to load, and having too many ads increase user abandonment. Another reason may be that your rivals are offering them unique benefits that you are not doing. It may also be caused by the complexity of the app or the fact that the app doesn’t offer precisely what is promised.
That said, let us see the benefits of increased app engagement and user retention.
- Increased overall usage
- Growth in revenue and income.
- Increased number of sessions with users.
- Reduced chances for the app to get uninstalled.
- Exponential growth of the brand.
- Turns ordinary users into loyal customers.
6 Methods for increasing user engagement and retention
Below are six easy ways to increase your app engagement and user retention
Very easy onboarding
One very good and easy way of reducing app abandonment is by providing a seamless onboarding experience. Onboarding means the process of registering users to your app. Users are more likely to abandon an app when there are too many information fields and complex features. First impressions are very important, and you must tap into it.
According to Kahuna, effective onboarding has been shown to increase user lifetime value by up to 500%. Your app onboarding can be made seamless through the following processes:
- Make logins and account creation easy
- Don’t overload users with too much information from the get-go: You can allow them onboard, and then allow them to answer your required questions with intermittent reminders.
Use push notifications in the right way
Many users forget about an app they have downloaded about a week after installing and then never remember to open it. One way of avoiding this is by the use of push notifications. A push notification does three things:
- It helps remind users that they’ve downloaded your app.
- It also encourages usage through targeting messages based on behavioral data and preferences.
- It helps user engagement by providing them with a compelling reason to return for apps that serve very specific functions and aren’t likely to drive daily usage.
Push notifications are also useful in capturing a user’s attention at the right moment to send them to your app to perform a specific action.
Personalization is very important
With the help of a personalized environment in the app, you can win the user’s loyalty. It is a key factor that keeps its user happy. Mobile Personalization help to provide a more unique, relevant experience for the user. They are more likely to continue to use the application if they are more aligned with their needs and preferences.
You must personalize the user experience by using know data to display relevant content and material in the all. Messaging is an easy way to personalize the experience. There is a 54% conversion rate versus 15% from broadcast, generic messages. You must make the user feel very relevant.
Offer an incentive-based program
One way of increasing user engagement and retention is to offer users incentives for using the app. You must offer mobile-specific rewards, specialized content access, coupons, special promotions, and other reward programs. Giving users reward points frequently can help in acquiring more users and keeping the existing users on the platform.
It is imperative to note however that a reward system is dependent on the nature of the app. You can use a time-sensitive monetization model for apps that use an in-app purchasing system. Offer discounts based on usage and referrals. For freemium apps, you can use usage-based rewards.
Update the app regularly
A user can get bored of an app once the app is not improving in design or functionality. You can make the user more excited about using the app by updating it regularly. New updates should have a better user experience, new features, feedback implementation, and a better & improved user interface. Regular updates and bug fixes show that you are studying your competitors and spotting what they are offering. Updates help you start offering your users the same thing on the other apps they might have been tempted to start using.
Encourage two-way communication
When users know that their input is being considered, it helps drive user retention. By answering questions or concerns from users, you boost your engagement and retention rates, encourage positive results and build long-term loyalty.
Closing Thoughts…..
The competition in the mobile industry is more intense than ever and users are more demanding with time. This makes the work of app owners more difficult to be able to thrive in that saturated space, you need to make sure that your app has a higher user engagement and increasing user retention.
By implementing the aforementioned techniques, you will be able to acquire users’ time and thus will be able to earn their loyalty. Converting users to loyal long-term customers will generate more revenue for your app and also increase average lifetime value.
If you liked this article and wish to comment, you can do so in the comments box below. You can also read our earlier articles on various subjects. Connect with us on different social media platforms @MactavisDigital and get in touch with us for your web design and development, mobile app development Search Engine Optimization, content writing, and other digital services. You will be glad you did.
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