User engagement. This quote perfectly describes the situation of a new app in the App Store. Extensive marketing and advertising can finally lead to an app download, but then again, what matters is how long the app can enjoy the privilege of the top 10 apps that the users can't get rid of. So, what is the one key factor that qualifies the app to be a successful app? There might be a hundred reasons to fail, but if someone focuses exclusively on the only way to succeed, nothing else matters. Undoubtedly, “user engagement tips”!

Here are the ten exclusive tips on how to use user engagement to supercharge your app success:

Here are the ten exclusive user engagement tips to supercharge your app success:

1. Onboarding with care:

Creating a stellar first impression is hard but pays off more than anything else you possibly do in the later stages of the user journey. So make sure that you create such impressions while onboarding your users for the very first time.

Onboarding is not just about welcoming users with a push or an email. It is much more than that. Users need guided walkthroughs to figure out what the app has to offer. Businesses also need to facilitate users to figure out those “aha” moments at the earliest to serve the users at their best. That’s when guided tutorials, splash screen messaging, and screen tips are handy.

Also Read: Best welcome message templates to spice up User Onboarding rate

A carousel of images with deep links at each stage will also work wonders. Overall, the goal is to make sure the user understands the basic flow of the app, feature usage, and value realization during the first or the successive two sessions. If there is a lag in the process and users didn’t find a reason to keep the app, the amount of money spent is acquired, the user would probably go for a toss as the probability of the user churning off is high.

2. No sign-up hurdles:

These days we rarely see an app without a social login. It is the quickest way to onboard a user by collecting the necessary information to collect from the user in the later stages of the user journey. Users feel intimated if a brand tries to collect a hell of a lot of information without telling them how the brands purposefully use it. The friction is too high for brands that are new in the market.

So far, the best approach is to onboard the users the easiest way and help them understand the brand and its offerings. In later stages of their journey, brands can ask a few questions on user profiling like age, etc., explaining why brands need that data for personalization and product recommendations would be the right way.

3. Push notifications to trigger:

Push notifications are a very crucial in-app marketing space. Push triggers a conversation with the user whenever it’s needed. The best part of using push notifications is that it acts as an external trigger that routes to opening an app, promoting specific category products, and at times helps to boost conversion as well.

Also Read: Creative push notifications templates that work for any app

But excessive communications with irrelevant text messages don’t work at all. That’s when the personalization and user past behavior is considered to make the best out of the messaging.

4. In-app user engagement:

Once the user opens the app and uses it for a while, a personalized offer that the user could benefit from, in-app messaging, is the way out. The ready-to-customize templates ease the process of implementing the in-app messaging on the fly.

Also Read: 6 Customizable In-app Messaging Templates to Improve User Engagement

However, if the messaging disturbs the user journey rather than routing them for better conversion, such campaigning does more harm than good when it comes to user engagement. Hence, businesses always need to figure out the expected user flow based on the user flow and personalize the user content based on the products the user browses, add to a wishlist or cart, or previously purchased.

5. Surveys to optimize:

No matter what the data says about a user and their preferences, once in a while, it is good to know from the user themselves what interests them the most, how satisfied they are with the product and service, and above all, what they expect from the product. Thus surveys are the only way that businesses can collect such information.

Micro surveys are the advanced version of routine surveys, where the upcoming survey question is dependent on the user’s choice in the previous question. Thus the survey is conditional and depends on the user response. Micro surveys are way more powerful in aiding business decisions and campaign plans.

6. Automated journeys:

Most of the user journeys are predictable. Hence, automating the journey based on certain conditions is time-saving and easy for evaluating the success of collective campaigns being implemented as part of the journey.

Also, Journey reports from the visual perspective provide great clarity on how the users move with certain conditions and flow statements in place. Setting a business goal event by the end of the journey provides the conversion percentage of the users who entered that particular journey.

7. Analytics at scale:

Analytics is where user engagement is reflected as numbers, and measuring data analytics is often one of the most underrated user engagement tips. You often see a spike and dip here and there to respond to the everyday campaigns focused on engaging users to achieve specific business goals. But when the time frame is extended for about a quarter, actual trends start to depict.

Figuring out insights from the data and then running campaigns to reevaluate the change in metrics is the most important and effective way to study user behavior.

8. Deeplink to convert:

Most of the apps have hidden conversion events. A typical user who is just starting to use the app might not figure out the exact screen of the conversion value. So, businesses need to habituate the user to that particular feature adoption via deep linking the feature to various user engagement actions. For example, to reduce cart abandonment, rather than just reminding that there are items left in the cart - deep-linking is a step ahead of landing the user on that particular screen when the user clicks on the push.

Thus deep linking helps businesses to promote the key features and land their users on desired locations in the product.

9. Gamification for user engagement:

Gamification is the cherry on top of the user engagement tips. Without gamification, user engagement still exists. But with gamification, things start to seem attractive. Because gamification sets the game on, the game mechanics, when coupled with user engagement goals, campaigns will tend to stand out of the crowd.

For example, if user engagement is limited to push notifications for an LMS system, it may or may not drive user engagement toward course completion. But, if the course’s completion is rewarded with a badge and users were listed on a leaderboard, the course completion rates start to shoot up. This is all because game mechanics helps create a sense of competitiveness among the users to complete the courses or be on the leaderboards, provoking them to complete the course.

10. Mix and Match:

No single user engagement action can significantly change the user experience or behavior. There is a need for a perfect mix and match of these engagements that create a unique holistic user-centric engagement. Also, there should be a limit to the number of times these user engagements trigger a user on a particular day or for a specific app usage journey.

Suppose the frequency of engagements is too high. In that case, the chances are high that your brand communications are perceived as disturbing than engaging, no matter the level of personalization you opt-in for. Thus find the right mix of engagements and spread the campaign across a time range for better engagement and reach.

Wrapping up:

User engagement is not an option anymore. It is as important as the product itself. We often see great products with very little engagement go to sleep with time, while these mediocre products with excellent user engagement become unicorns of the nation. User engagement at scale is equally important.

That’s when personalization and recommendation engines replace human efforts of addressing users personally as per their needs. Today, every company is stressing enough about the importance of user engagement, and the wise ones choose to make it a part of their product.

About Upshot.ai:

Upshot.ai is an omnichannel, user engagement, and gamification platform that helps digital product owners and marketers improve their product adoption and conversions. Fortune 1000 companies such as GE, UHG, Puma, Sony, ITC, and Tenet Healthcare are using Upshot.ai and observed a massive increase in product adoption and YoY increment in revenues.

Book a demo of the most comprehensive user engagement and gamification platform to achieve your digital product goals. Join our communities for more insights, guides, and best practices that keep you updated with proven strategies and tips to supercharge your campaigns so that your user never uninstall your app.

10 user engagement tips to supercharge your app for success

Leave a Reply

Explore more insights from our expert team.