User engagement is the primary condition for the success of a mobile app, and without it, an app just cannot survive as a viable business even. But with so many apps competing for the user attention across all niches and with the attention span of the users are increasingly getting lower due to overexposure, mobile apps often find themselves in clueless position in respect of user engagement.
But learning from the leading apps which just made it happen, we can only say that a single strategy is not enough to engage your users consistently. You have to make several things right to ensure a positive outcome. Here we explain 5 of these time tested ways to boost user engagement for your mobile apps.
Deliver a great onboarding experience
As soon as a user lands on your app for the first time the initial few minutes of their experience will play a crucial role. Widely dubbed as mobile onboarding experience or in more precise terms, First Time User Experience (FTUE) is now an irreplaceable building block for any mobile app. The latest trend to boost this onboarding experience is to deliver a guided tour introducing the app along with its features and benefits.
Onboarding can be a lot easier for the user when the app has a simple and intuitive design. By offering an overlay describing the features, menus and required actions in several steps an app can make a better understanding of the app.
For first time users, some steps like login and registration can be derogatory for the user experience as a whole if these steps are not kept to be minimalistic and simple. Social media login and guest login options are two discrete ways to let users easily settle without requiring them to go through the annoying login and registration process.
Using multiple channels to message
When you want to boost user engagement by telling them what's going on inside the app or what's coming next or what's really waiting for the user, you can send him messages over multiple channels. Using several channels to target and re-target users you can actually engage them more easily. Some of the key ways you should connect your users include the following.
● In-App messages: When a user is actively using your app you can notify him with messages. Such messages delivering right benefits at the right time can actually make the user experience better. So, delivering the in-app messages in the right context and time is crucial for ensuring traction. These messages normally come in the in-app inbox or shown as banners on top or just arrive with a short-timed popup.
Game players often come across in-app messages telling them about some new offers and opportunities or the arrival of new game assets. While using mobile commerce or retail apps, you can come across in-app messages for offers, new arrivals, etc. Some in-app messages only remind first time users about some features or benefits that they are unlikely to come across.
● Push Notifications: While the role of in-app messages is limited to notifying users while they are actively using the app, push notifications to keep reminding them and help to keep users engaged on a regular basis. Showing the number of unread notifications with the app icon, it helps to catch the attention of the users.
Push notifications are effective to engage users and statistics show strong support in favour of it. With push notifications enabled, 65% of the users come back to the apps within 30 days.
● Email: For apps to retarget users who stopped using the app altogether, emails can play a major role. By sending emails to customers whenever a new product range is launched, or a new feature is introduced, we can give them more reasons to re-engage.
Giving incentives for engagement
With so many apps fighting among themselves for a slice of the user's attention there, just a great user experience is not enough to make them use your app frequently. To boost user engagement further beyond the regular frequency you need to offer them something more, and that is where the role of incentives become prominent.
People often feel drawn to an app just due to lucrative incentives. When a game app announces rewards with a push message players of that game app are more likely to make a comeback for another round of play. Incentives can also work great to retarget your lost users and boost download numbers.
Give a touch of personalisation
There is no better way to make them feel better aligned with an app than with personalisation. Personalisation is something that directly corresponds to the individual user needs, preferences, constraints and dislikes. Does your app UX is designed to address individual user preferences? Remember, with a touch of personalisation in various app elements you can just create a sense of belongingness which in turn boosts engagement.
There are many ways you can incorporate personalisation in your app. For instance, you can allow users are choosing contents relevant to them by changing the preference settings. You can also bring to them contents based on their previous history of use. You can always display user's name on the screen and in all messages.
On design front, you can allow them choosing different colour schemes for assets of an app, and it is a common thing across many game apps. Lastly, deliver push messages based on the user interests as such personalised messages enjoy 54% rate of conversion against only 15% conversion with “one size fits all” kind of notifications.
Make use of deep linking
The digital universe is an intricately connected one with every interface offering several diversions and bifurcations. We travel from one interface to another mainly through links. It is now an established and time tested strategy for marketers to help users reach your app through deep links contained across other channels and interfaces. With these deep links pointing towards your app from various sources, you can easily boost engagement.
If you want to boost the organic and sustained engagement of users help them discover your app across several channels including email, text messages, social media and Messanger apps, websites, forums, link sharing platforms, etc. As for boosting your app engagement with a deep linking strategy, you can just take professional help from an app development company in Florida which is equipped to take care of your app store marketing and promotion as well.
The final word of advice for boosting engagement would often be iterating with valuable app updates. Updates and value addition will always give users reasons to have a fresh look at your app. For a mobile app development company in Florida or elsewhere in the US with a global clientele it's extremely important to beat the stiffening competition with continuous value addition and who don't know keeps that only value addition keeps users engaged and expectant in the long run? Yes, we do know.
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