Five crucial in-app engagement strategies for unfettered app growth

Regular engagement is the primary barometer for judging an app’s long term viability.

Many tech companies start out with no revenue model  but a phenomenal strategy to maintain high user engagement. Platforms like Facebook and YouTube are some examples of the same.

Racking up good engagement numbers is a big challenge considering the overwhelming odds stacked against any new app in the market.

However, it is not easy to increase app engagement numbers. Most companies with a new app in the market are more motivated to get app downloads rather than increase daily active users. This is despite rising customer acquisition costs and the inherent profitability of user retention.

It is important to highlight the importance of in-app engagement before jumping into various top strategies for the same. The following section provides some reasons why you should have a real strategy to optimize app engagement.

Why is user engagement important?

It is difficult for a new startup to grasp the importance of engagement on its app. This is partly because it doesn’t have a large enough user base to speak of. A low number of users tend to drive new companies towards targeting app downloads and not engagement.

Let’s paint a scenario. Which app is more likely to be successful - an app with 800 app users and high engagement or another app with 8000 users and low engagement?

The former may have a small base of users, but there is enough in the app to keep users interested. Meanwhile, a higher user base is largely pointless without engagement.

29% of users abandon an app after their first or second use if they don’t find any value in it. High app downloads and low engagement implies that a lot of users found the app useless after a while.

Regular engagement is the best way to ensure growth. Even a small user base with high engagement is a promising prospect because these users find the app valuable.

This brings us to the crux of this piece - how can entrepreneurs increase app engagement to ensure overall growth? The following sections provide insights on the same.

#1 - Gamification

One of the major trends in the app development arena right now is gamification. Borrowing from the success of gaming apps, companies are trying making their app environment similar to a mobile game.

Why is gamification so popular? Gamifying common app tasks makes some of the more tedious processes in an app engaging for a user.

Hence, the goal is engagement. Companies essentially try to emulate highly-engaging mobile games to enhance their own app engagement.

Rewarding app users with ribbons and awards on completing a task is one way of going about gamification. There are various gamification strategies you can use.

The one thing you must remember is aligning the gamification strategy with the overall goals of the app. Gamification should ideally contribute to valuable app engagement.

#2 - Introduce customer success mechanisms

There are certain user actions that benefit your app. Buying a product, adding a product review, or referring the app to a friend, these are some amongst many valuable user actions.

You have a greater chance of making users perform these actions if they too derive some form of success from it.

Let’s consider payment apps. A new developing trend in this segment is the novel addition of scratch cards. Essentially, users who complete a payment using such apps get a scratch card. The scratch card offers a range of rewards, from discounts to cashback.

The chance to get a reward naturally makes the process much more rewarding for a customer.

#3 - Reward engagement

There are many ways users can engage with your app. However, the best engagement generally contributes towards the growth of the app. For example, if you turn your WordPress website into an Android app, high blog readership is typically the most useful app engagement for you.

Driving people towards useful engagement is possible if you reward users who move in the same direction.

Let’s assume you have an ecommerce app. Your app has a very few product reviews. To improve this situation, you decide to reward a certain percentage in cashback if app users review at least three products.

This will encourage users to write reviews for the purchases they’ve already made and buy more products to add reviews.

Aligning your need for engagement with the desire of general users for rewards creates a positive sum game.

#4 - Act upon feedback

Acting on user feedback is the fastest way of achieving rapid app growth.

Why?

User feedback provides companies with a direct window into improving their app. Any kind of bugs, performance issues, or even useful ideas come from feedback.

In essence, you can democratize the process of improving your app to increase engagement.

Using user feedback is not just useful from a UX standpoint. Users tend to engage with apps that respond to user feedback regularly and act upon it.

#5 - Do the basics right

You can institute all kinds of mechanisms to enhance app engagement. However, it is all likely to fall flat unless your app performs at a certain expected level.

What are the basics? Having an optimal app loading speed is a good start. Other factors like mobile navigation and app design are important as well.

Make sure the primary function of your app is fully optimized and bulletproof. For instance, if you have an ecommerce app created from a WooCommerce to app builder without coding, you need to optimize the purchase and checkout process. If you have a blogging app, make sure people have a seamless reading experience.

Doing the basics right will ensure any other engagement strategy you introduce runs on a smooth engine. It is also wise for you to use mobile app analytics tools to map your app performance. This will ensure you get good insights on improving your app.

In conclusion

No app ever made it with bad engagement numbers. It is the purest metric that represents the value people see in your app.

This piece provides five popular strategies to enhance in-app engagement and ensure app growth. The five tactics discussed here are not the only ones companies can use. However, a serious effort towards deploying the aforementioned strategies can drastically improve user engagement.