Mobile App Development: Your Key to Engaging Customers and Driving Growth

• By Abhishek Sinha
• 04-08-2023
• Mobile App Development

Just Imagine the impact of mobile apps on the routine lives of normal people across the globe. Mobile apps are performing things that were once thought to be impossible by humans. Hence businesses have understood the importance of developing mobile apps for their product or service. Mobile app development is not just a technical element now but engaging the customers in the best possible manner. They should know business values and expertise to create a user-friendly output. The strategies involved in development and marketing must be focused on customer engagement with a prime focus on driving growth.

Why is customer engagement important?

Customer engagement for a mobile app is about having a smooth and constant interaction between the app and its customer. A satisfied user will love to spend more time with the app by interacting with content across various screens. A smooth customer engagement is directly proportional to time spent on the app leading to buying mode for your products and services. Moreover, modern users demand a customized app experience across all modules of the product. Hence adapting a user-oriented method by collecting and analyzing user data helps in delivering a personalized experience for users. Customer engagement involves many aspects right from the beginning of the app idea to make the product reach customers through the app stores.

Key steps to engage customers and drive growth to the mobile app:

• The clarity in your app’s motives and vision:

Regardless of the app niche, it should never be launched without a clear motive and vision concerning the goals. Even with rich features and functionalities, users will be left confused if the app fails to make them understand its purpose. If you want to enhance user engagement, then establishing the vision of your app has to be on top of the priorities. Users generally stick to products that are simple in innovatively solving their problems. Studies have shown that the majority of customers are loyal to brands that match their thought processes and expectations. Maintain the same standard across all crucial places of the app and its content on various platforms. Describe the vision of the app, the inspiration behind the app idea, and the purpose of the app with futuristic motives. These aspects will make you closer to customers who know the value of your brand.

• Efficient app onboarding flow:

Imagine a new user entering the app to get solutions to their problems, but failing to understand the navigations. It's rightly said that first impressions impact strongly, making users take nasty steps of leaving your app. To begin with, smoothly design the onboarding process negating the impact of any roadblocks that hinder the user experience. Do not fill everything related to features or functionalities in one flow that could confuse the customers when they begin the journey. Simplify the user onboarding by keeping the steps to a minimum while slowly introducing the functionalities in the flow. This becomes much necessary if the app consists of complex features in a significant number. Educate the users with action items that help to explore the app themselves while understanding the process. Onboarding is a crucial element to give the users a flavour of their long-term connection with the app. A personalized experience with a simple approach will stimulate them to stay connected with the brand for long periods.

• Push Notifications:

Push notifications are one of the key aspects that can do wonders in engaging customers. Usually, they are employed to regularly notify the customers about the latest developments about new updates, marketing, etc. It has shown positive abilities to enhance the interactions to create a buzz with the brand when customers show interest in purchase. But since the online era is of offering customized experiences, app development must be focussed on creating those experiences. This could be done through detailed data accumulation and analysis to understand the purchase behaviour and likes of customers. A push notification will be effective to engage the customers if it can create the instinct to purchase with your brand. Further, as per studies push notifications have a great success factor when it is implemented smartly.

• Employ in-app messaging:

Push notifications stimulate users through the home screen but the in-app messages interact inside the app. They have a chance of enhancing user engagement if implemented effectively. But some teams may be confused about whether to implement them in full force since they would already trust the push notifications. But studies have shown that there is an increased rate of retention with in-app messages. Analytics show that messages for a precise action inside the app have an exclusive effect than the ones with notifications. The team should be cautious to ensure that the use of the in-app messaging feature should be inclusive of the app actions but not just a promotion. The onboarding process is one such area where in-app messaging will play a good part to explain the users about the descriptive steps. Further, you can update the users about any new functionalities with encouragement to use it completely. Consequently, you will get the chance to understand customer behavior and purchase patterns through data analysis. Use this information to send timely in-app messages with attractive offers. Customer segmentation plays a major part in sending messages to the right group of customers based on their preferences.

• Concentrate on your Marketing Strategy:

Regardless of the advanced features and functionalities in your app, it will most probably not reach expected success levels if it is not marketed in the best way. Concentrate on reaching the users in an exciting way to engage them with maximum effort. Start by developing a sense of buzz before the release so that there is already some room for expectations in the customers. Studies have shown that the reason for the failure of the majority of apps is their inability to have an effective marketing plan. Since every app has its own set of target users and niches, you need to have exclusive plans for reaching them. A one formula fits all approach will not potentially work in Favor of business. Design your marketing strategy based on important factors like potential customers, offerings, and your niche. Once you can crack the deal, there will possibly be an impact on customer engagement. The extended use of in-app messaging is in-app marketing that can help to keep the users hooked to the brand. The combination of in-app messaging and notifications could be employed together for driving your customer engagement plans. Further, employ user tips for working as message communicators, tutorials, drive-to-action, etc. In-app marketing notifications are also one of the successful ways to notify users about your latest updates.

• App Search Optimization: (ASO)

Like Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) for a website, a key element for enhancing the reach of the mobile app is to increase its visibility on app stores. For this purpose, App Search Optimization (ASO) is the method used to optimize the app for featuring in top rankings on the app store search lists. Double benefits include getting good exposure to related search phrases and an excellent chance of leading to conversions. The search keywords should be analysed carefully since the search ranks are majorly dependent on them. A combination of smooth app development outcomes with smart ASO will stimulate users to install the app on their smartphones.

• Include the App Stories:

App stories count as an innovative approach to engaging tech-savvy users. Use app stories to enhance the user experience with interactive measures from a combination of creative design and exclusive messaging. The catch here is to craft app stories that relate to users based on their exclusive preferences. There are various ways in which app stories add benefit to your engagement approach. Analysing the user data to give precise product suggestions closer to user interests with a call-to-action button will be one of the best options. The use of surveys and polls specific to any feature launch will engage the users to stay connected with the developments. In this competitive market, your efforts should be concentrated on developing content that makes you stand unique from your counterparts.

• Use emails and social media:

The traditional way of user engagement like emails will still stand amongst the list of engagement methods even in the current era. You could send emails for various things in focus starting from onboarding or even updating about new features or products. Further, social media is one such platform that has taken the world by storm as people tend to stay connected with them every day. Hence businesses can make the best use of social media to market their products while staying connected with the target users. Employ data analytics to know customer behaviour and target them with specific content. Both emails and social media can take this information to send messages according to customer segmentation. Take the users to engage sections of social media posts or stories through emails via call-to-action links.

• Smooth customer support:

Smooth customer support is an essential thing to make users feel effortless in connecting to the app queries. Getting to know about the pain point of users will help the customers and also give you crucial information to optimize the app. Again, in-app messaging can be employed to let the customers send their queries. Chatbots are another way to offer automated responses to prefilled queries or FAQs for your app. For further actions, you can connect them to a customer service representative who can resolve the issue in a detailed manner. In the competitive era, these aspects will differentiate you in the market.
Offer user-Exclusive Rewards

Offering exclusive offers to your target customers is an encouraging point for users to stay connected with your app. It can be either discounts, promo codes, offers, etc, or rewards that are not available on other competitor apps. Teams can employ popular online platforms like social media to advertise these rewards and offers. But you need to customize these rewards as per the behavior and purchase patterns of customers. Engagement can be increased by notifying the users about the specific offers that may interest them to interact with the app. This could lead to conversions provided you have smartly sent the offers with segmentation. When users find the deal to be interesting, they will not go in search of alternatives in the competitive market.

• Get the user feedback:

A final but key one is to collect feedback from users about their likes and what are the pain points that they want to be eradicated from the product including any fix of defects. Collecting feedback from customers can be done in multiple ways. Surveys are one of the widely used methods to collect feedback to know the level of customer satisfaction. Even chatbots and in-app messaging are good ways to interact with the user while also accumulating user feedback. But the modern era is of social media platforms where every business wants to have its presence. Hence creating a community in social media to engage the customers with the brand and their peers is one of the advanced ways to accumulate feedback. Use genuine ones to integrate them into the product to develop a sense of engagement in the customers.

Final-thoughts:

Mobile development is not just focussing on the technical aspects but finding the best approach to engage the customers to push business growth. When executed smartly, mobile apps are proven to be ideal ways to engage customers for a long time. But with a huge number of apps entering the market every day across every possible niche, customers are looking for the best in the business. Users expect brands to offer them an exclusive experience, without which they will get bored soon. Engaging customers by adapting the best approaches for your mobile product is not just an option but a necessity. Associate with an expert mobile app development company that can adapt innovative strategies to deliver the highest returns by engaging your customers.