How to Increase Your App Engagement? 4 Simple Steps to User Retention

Summary: There are more than 4 billion active users on the internet, and the number is increasing every year. With such an increase, brands too have to be on their toes to bring innovations in their solution to maintain the engagement ratio of the app. From Zomato to Uber, every giant needs a strategy to retain an audience on their platform. This blog is a guide on how to increase app engagement on your platform needless of whether you are a startup or an entrepreneur. 

The burning question that runs through every online entrepreneur’s mind is how to get users on the app. Or how to increase user engagement? It surely is a difficult task.

It’s all about putting the user’s requirements first when it comes to app engagement. Increasing engagement and retention will lead to a loyal following online. Before actually getting into the app engagement strategy, let’s just know about the best metrics for measuring user engagement.

Metrics to Measure User App Engagement Rate

For maintaining a high user engagement, you need to identify and measure the correct metrics for better optimization of online solutions. Following are the metrics for measuring customer engagement:-

#1 Active Users

These users are generally divided into three categories daily, weekly, or monthly. The daily active users, as the name says it all, they are the ones visiting your application every day. The weekly users are those that are engaged in the app over the week. Monthly users are the ones that help in identifying your user engagement. Do a comparison of all three and get an idea about your client’s satisfaction, and interaction with the software.

DAU = the number of users who opened your app in a single day 

MAU = the number of users who opened your app in a month-long period

#2 Retention Rate

This is a very useful metric among all the others. It lets you know the exact percentage of users coming back to the app. On the contrary, it also shows how many users you are letting go of. The period of comparison remains flexible i.e. you can compare today’s user engagement with the previous year’s or previous month’s. 

Retention rate = the number of users that use your app within a set time/ the number of users in the same group that uses your app in a previous time.

#3 Churn Rate

It identifies the users that are lost, the ones that you are not able to establish an engagement with.

Churn rate= 1- your app’s retention rate

#4 Session Length

This metric is an excellent one, it allows you to learn about how much time a user spends in your app every time he opens it. This is an important way to know how useful your app is to your target audience. 

Session length = time opened the app – time closed the app

Now, before doing any further due, let’s dive into the strategies. These are made by our experienced app developers which will help boost app engagement and retention rate. It will automatically result in better ROI from your investment in app development.

5 Efficient Ways of Increasing Your App Engagement & User Retention 

1. On-Boarding Process Should be Seamless

The onboarding process is the crux of your app development. A user should get to know the solution before it is used. It should be value-imparting and must have engaging fine-tunes that link the essence of the app all together at the very beginning. 

An average app loses 77% of its users within 3 days after installation. The figure also rises by 90% within 30 days. 

The onboarding process bridges the gap between the app and its potential audience. When executed right, such a process increases your retention rate and online goodwill with time. 

It should be:

• Simple, quick, & clear
• Give an overall understanding of your app
• Show the value that the app will provide
• A step-by-step guide to the app

Avoid bugs during this process, otherwise, you might lose your audience forever. Prioritize reliability at this stage. 

2. Add New Features & Personalization

“Creating and maintaining” interest in-app has a very thin line. Creating a new feature helps your application to get notified every

In this competitive and edgy app world, an app owner or innovator has to continuously bring something interesting to their application. Maintaining that particular feature without any bugs is a whole other scenario. Creating & maintaining are two faces of the same coin, they do go hand-in-hand to engage and retain the audience in real-time. 

Adding new features and personalization to the application regularly re-engages the audience and also helps in brand recall. For instance, will you like to engage in a food app that does not provide:-

• New food recipes
• Food suggestions in the form of notifications
• Food offers or discounts
• New restaurants or food opening information
• Food-related videos with famous chefs

The answer is definitely NO. 

Use your push notifications wisely with your fresh content creation for application engagement. New personalized content with apt technological integration like AI or ML will help gain loyal customers. 

We at WebMobTech have created a great example of engaging users in our app. Primally Nourished– a health and wellness app that has many in-app engagement features. The app consists of recipes, menu plans, shopping lists, food facts, culinary crafts, & more. All these functionalities are well-updated by the owner to keep the application up and running in the market among its users. 

3. Monitor Your App Micro-Moment

Micro-moment monitoring will help you notice your user pattern and give you valuable information about their online behavior. These insights will help you go beyond your app engagement.

For instance, if a user is landing on the application after pushing your notification, then where does he ends up to is helpful information? This will help dedicated app developers working on your project create new UX. It also helps in tracking user location and engaging a particular target audience with a better idea of the app. It also helps in the decision-making process.

4. Location-Based Insights

Data insights in app development are a boon for every business. Every online business owner or a team of developers hired to increase app engagement should track location-based insights. Such data helps in targeting a particular niche and attracting them to your digital venture. 

It is a win-win situation for the development team, the owner, and the users. One can integrate the best practices into the application in real time according to their audience. Everything is made accessible and one is unlikely to fail in understanding their users and respective behaviors through this tactic. 

5. Offer and Incentivization Program

Reward and loyalty programs are very attractive opportunities for engaging users in the app. These in-app goodies help in notifying users, that they are significantly important to the brand. Time-sensitive discounts or a freemium app model are incentivizing tactics for users with usage-based rewards instead of monetary discounts.

Conclusion

The very first move for you is to think about metrics. Which app engagement metrics will you opt for? This will clearly define aspects of your user’s in-app engagement. Provide value to your users and personalize your approach in the best in-app micro-moment. 

App engagement is a data-centric approach, and if you are aiming to re-engage the audience then it is the most effective way to earn app revenue. Approach an experienced app development company like us & witness the change for yourself.