How to increase app engagement & improve user retention?

An app is only successful if it can retain its user's attention for a long time. In fact, user engagement and its retention are two major concerns of every business owner before developing a mobile or web app. But, it can be a challenging task in this competitive digital arena.

App engagement determines how many active users are on the application. According to Localytics, users who have 10+ sessions per month are considered as the highly engaged users. On the other hand, user retention is fairly a subjective term that determines the rate at which app's users return to the app within 3 months of their first session. In fact, an app's stickiness is determined by taking the average of these two combined terms.

Furthermore, user abandonment is another important factor which affects the overall app engagement and its retention. It generally means that the apps are installed, used once and deleted them permanently.

As per the stats, 23% of users account for user abandonment which is a serious concern. This is happening because there are a large number of apps available on the market so users have a lot of choices. That's why it is mandated to use best methods in order to increase app engagement & improve user retention.

In this blog, we have listed out some of the best methods which can help businesses to increase app engagement & improve user retention for better business growth.

Check out the following list of such methods:

1) Do Personalization

It is one of the most important aspects of a compelling application. When you personalize the user experience, then it gives you unique and more relevant experience. Its main focus is on the user's needs and preferences. If you make the app according to user's experience then only it is going to be used by them for a long time.

However, different apps deliver non-uniform experiences. That's why personalization becomes important through which known data is used to display relevant content and material in the app. Also, it is true fact that a customized content delivers value to its users.

Personalization involves to include user's name on screens and in messaging. As per a survey, it is found that push messages as per user interests have a 54% conversion rate. But is they are improperly implemented and send users irrelevant notifications making them annoying will negatively affect your business app. Thus, an app's engagement will go down soon.  

2) Effective onboarding process

Since the first impression is the last impression, your app's onboarding experience can be a major reason for reducing abandonment rates. After installing an app, there could a number of steps viz. do sign up, the presence of many information fields, optional fields, confusing functions etc. which ultimately let the users abandon the app. That's why effective onboarding is required which also increase the lifetime value of up to 500%. However, we have mentioned following steps to achieve a smooth app onboarding process:

- Do make easy account's login

- Do not offer multiple registration options and sign up options

- Provide users with functionality education so that they can get to those features

- Attach small tutorial sessions to expose gestures/actions needed in the app experience

3) Deploy Push messaging

A push notification is that action which is taken at the right moment to get user's attention for the fulfillment of a specific purpose.It serves important and specific functions. Once you downloaded the app, you might forget to use it regularly. But push notifications to help you by reminding you all the time and thus increase user retention.

As per the stats, Users who opted for push notifications exhibit 88% higher app engagement as compared to those who haven't opted it yet. If it is effectively implemented, it can further help in the growth of usage of the app via targeting messages.

Additionally, there are many apps available in the play store which serve only specific functions and are not meant for daily usage. Push notifications can help with these apps by notifying its users of important information and thus increases the user engagement.  

4) Listen to feedback

By listening to your users, you can attain a better product road mapping and can determine those updates that are most compelling and valuable to them. In fact, a famous and well-established app can lose its user engagement if it does not work upon regular updates. So, regular updating the app with new features and customer-centric content can help retaining user's engagement.

By regularly monitoring analytics, tracking user behavior and listening to their feedback help in finding what features of the app drive usage.

5) Provide incentives to users

By providing incentives to users, you can more drive engagement and retention. This way your app will go long in terms of app usage. Incentivization actually involves coupons, app referrals, specific rewards, specialized content access and other special offers that will help encourage engagement and drive conversions.

Moreover, the nature of your app decides how to incentivize your users. Freemium apps incentivize its users with usage-based rewards while in-app purchasing apps incentivize its users with time-sensitive discounts.

Conclusion:

So far we have seen some of the top methods/strategies to make your application highly impactful in this competitive app landscape. This would surely help businesses to convert their users into long-term and loyal customers that will help them in generating more revenue for their apps by increasing average lifetime value of the app.

Moreover, a sticky app is considered successful app today. To get stick app development, you can contact to AppZure, a leading mobile app development company in India. Feel free to consult with our mobile app experts!