Top Tips to Keep Your App Users Engaged and Happy
Even as we speak, your app is losing users, much in the same way a leaky facet is slowly draining water. While app attrition is perfectly normal, a rate that’s too high can be catastrophic. A report by WifiTalents indicates that the average app loses 8 out of 10 users every day. This is quite alarming and begs the question, how can you keep users from leaving? That’s exactly what you’ll find out today as we tear down intro critical app engagement and retention strategies.
Why users leave to never return
Hold your horses. Before we can get into the specifics of what can fix the problem, let’s take a moment to understand what caused it in the first place. With only 3 out of 4 app users downloading an app once, never to return, the situation is clearly dire.
That said, here are some key reasons why app users often bail for good:
- Poor first impressions
- Your app wasn’t memorable enough
- Poor update frequency
- The UX was too complex
- Slow performance
To really understand what users want, it’s important to get into the mind of your potential user. If you think about it, we use applications to make life easier.
If you wanted to use a tool to make grocery shopping easier, you’d certainly want a solution that’s very helpful. Possibly one that can help you locate items on shelves more easily, calculate costs and solve other key problems when you need to. If an app doesn’t do all these things, you’d probably switch to a different solution.
This essentially means that, whatever your niche, your app needs to deliver immense and practical value. It should be so helpful to users that they can’t imagine their lives without them. Moreover, it’s benefits should be recurring and long-term so it’s not a one-time hit.
Strategies to attract users like a moth to a flame
Diagnosis is the first stage in solving any problem. With that out of the way, we can now move on to solutions. Here are some powerful app and user engagement tactics to ensure users can’t get enough of your app.
1) Answer the Why
Why is this person using my app? Answering this question is the first person to increase retention. As developers, we tend to get carried away by technicalities and app features and forget the basics which is addressing an actual user need or problem. If you keep this at the cornerstone of your strategies, you’ll always keep sight of what users want and meet their expectations.
2) Provide Real Value
The marketing is great, and your messaging is even better. But why do they keep leaving? Possible because users aren’t really achieving the goals. Be it a taxi finder app, a dinner suggestion app, or whatever else, your app needs to provide real value. It should make things much easier compared to alternative solutions like looking this up online.
3) Rectify Performance Issues
No one likes a slow and buggy app. If it’s sluggish or crushes too frequently, users will seek greener pastures. So you want to regularly test drive your app to identify and rectify issues. Collecting customer feedback is also key to keeping your app firing on all cylinders.
4) Deliver world-class UX
Reduce redundant actions, make navigation simple and ensure intuitive button and feature placements. This, in addition to giving your app a logical flow, reduces the strain on mental resources. In other words, it makes your app more effortless to use and this is key to keeping users coming back for more.
Struggling to Boost User Engagement on Your Platform?
Explore effective strategies and expert advice to boost user engagement and elevate your platform’s success with Dot Com Infoway.
5) Personalize Experiences
One popular saying goes that people forget what you say but remember how you made them feel. Does your app make users feel special and unique? This is key to making your app more memorable and competitive.
To tailor-make user experiences, you may need to collect first-party data about:
- Time of use
- Past behavior
- Age
- Gender and so on
With this data, you can segment audiences and create data-driven strategies geared toward appealing to these specific sets of users.
6) Be Smart about Push Notifications
Push notifications are a great way to jolt users into action, given that studies show they can increase user retention by 20%. You can send out notifications based on a time that users are most likely to user your app. Alternatively, you can also create behavior-based notifications that prompt users to give your app another look in the heat of the moment.
7) Use the Carrot Approach
What’s in it for users? What do they get in return for coming back to your app day and again? Providing rewards is a great way to encourage loyalty and keep users coming back. If you look at apps like Duo Lingo, you get rewards based on maintaining a daily streak. Once you’ve amassed a long enough streak, you get elevated into exclusive leads with exclusive rewards.
Other apps like Candy Crush, for instance, offer previously purchasable boosters for free if you log into the app consistently. Such reward strategies are vital for keeping users motivated, active and loyal as well.
More Retention means more revenue
At the end of the day, your mobile application is a numbers game. The more users you can hold to, the more revenue you stand to make, right? But to hold onto users, you need to continuously elevate user experiences and provide value. This is where these important app engagement and retention strategies come in so be sure to put them to work today. Like metal to a magnet, these tips, when you implement them properly, are sure to give app users more reasons to stay than leave. So put them into practice right away.
