Maximize User Interaction: Keys To App Engagement

• By Jason Taylor
• 10-05-2024
• Mobile Apps

By making user interaction seamless, you will be able to keep your users engaged with your app. And 90% of mobile users who engage with an app at least once a week are more likely to become regular app users.

This number is sufficient to understand the importance of user interaction and app engagement. In this blog post, we will discuss the impact of engagement on brands and users and the keys to app engagement.

But first, let’s understand:

Why Is User Interaction Important For App Engagement?

User interactions are mission-critical for boosting app engagement, even more so than user acquisition. Why? This is because the primary goal of every app is to generate revenue, even if it's non-profit. User interaction sits at the heart of revenue generation.

Moreover, an app relies on engagement to generate revenue and drive value from time spent on it. Interaction involves users performing actions on the app, viewing advertising, and even opting for in-app purchases.

Let’s understand user interactions better with two examples.

For instance, if you have a music streaming app that offers both free and paid plans,. Although the free plan fulfills all the necessary features to use the app, the premium plan offers an ad-free experience and higher sound quality, which elevates the user experience to the next level. These high-end features compel users to level up and upgrade to the premium plan. But in order for the users to reach that level of commitment, you need to ensure that they get familiar with all the app’s functionality, making them feel like they should not miss out on its premium features.

Similarly, the primary goal of mobile games is to entertain the users. There are two major revenue generation methods app developers can utilize: in-app purchases and display ads. In-app purchases allow a user to buy an extra life, a bigger weapon, or even level up. On the other hand, there are some advertising models that app developers use where the users need to spend more time on the app and probably view and interact with the ads.

The main objective of app owners is user acquisition. They come up with new and innovative features and functionalities that level up the user experience. Some even hire professional mobile app development services to achieve that goal.

There are various ways in which users utilize social media apps. Some use it for entertainment, some for digital socialization, while others leverage it in their social media marketing strategy. In any case, boosting user interactions is through social shares. Social media apps use advertising, partnerships, collaboration, and sponsorships to generate revenue.

Use data analytics tools to keep an eye on user behavior to identify what makes your users take the desired action. Remember, delivering exceptional user experiences is the key to generating revenue.

You also need to work on increasing app usage, re-engaging inactive users, and making a positive impact on your target users to boost satisfaction. Create a mobile engagement strategy to better understand your users and help you identify what makes them tick.
Once you have started increasing user interactions, you will be able to create user segmentation based on their interests, behavior, demographics, needs, and preferences. This will further help you send personalized promotion messages and analyze your marketing efforts with more precision.

App engagement leads make a powerful impact on revenue generation, user segmentation, and everything in between.

Impact on Brand and User Experience

Brand Impact

Users are generally not brand-conscious when researching an app. On the other hand, reputable brands with established brand identities should stand out from the rest to make an impact and deliver a unique user experience.

When creating an app engagement strategy, ensure to invest in building brand awareness. To be more specific, there are certain music apps that come to mind when considering music streaming apps. An app developer should first introduce their brand to a specific audience.

The app should offer relevant features and functionalities to serve the needs of its target audience. Invest in building brand reputation by developing such an app; it will ultimately build trust and confidence in the minds of the users.

User Experience Impact

user experience is highly dependent on the proficiency of UI/UX designers. A flawless user experience will lead to better user interaction. The better the user experience, the more easily an app will be remembered in the minds of the users.
Whenever there is a need to use the app again, the users will most likely impulsively come back to it if it made a positive impact the first time.

Most designers mostly rely on their experience and expertise to design UI and UX of the app. However, they should consider user feedback and user experience principles to make a design that stands out.

10 Keys To App Engagement

It’s a no-brainer that increasing user engagement is quite challenging. You may find yourself competing with your rivals on a daily basis to deliver better user satisfaction, meeting ever-growing user demands. One tip is to keep yourself updated with the latest trends to deliver a better modern app experience.

1. Design A Seamless App Onboarding Process

A seamless user onboarding process should be essential to getting new users to utilize your app to resolve their problems. A good practice is to ensure a highly intuitive design to deliver a positive first impression that makes the user onboarding process frictionless.
Another practice you need to adopt is to eliminate the unnecessary steps to creating an account. You can incorporate Single-Sign-On (SSO) to ensure seamless user onboarding journey. Once the users signed up, introduce the features step-by-step to educate them on how to optimally utilize your app. You can also hire mobile app development services to help you achieve your goals.

2. Use Push Notifications

Push notification is a great marketing tactic to send personalized messages to your users that make sure that your app stays at the top of their’ minds. One of the advantages of using push notifications is that they lowers the abandonment rate from 25% to 19%.

When sending personalized messages, ensure to include promotional deals and seasonal discounts on your products. You can even send special birthday offers, which will deliver a hyper-personalized user experience, increasing the likelihood of converting potential customers into buying customers.

3. Encourage Users To Try Your Features

Your app probably has a lot of features that most of your users haven’t tried out yet. As humans, we love to try new things. So, it’s a good practice to highlight some of the unused features in your app store description, the welcome screens, and the onboarding process as a walkthrough for the users. You can use in-app messaging and bite-sized information on the user interface to provide guidance in order to encourage them to take specific actions. You can also educate them on how it will benefit them in achieving their goals. In this way, your app users would at least know what a particular feature does, even if they don’t use it.

4. Send Personalized In-App Messages

Strategically sending in-app personalized marketing messages to your app works wonders for your app engagement. As a matter of fact, personalized messages based on user data experience an app retention rate of 61% to 74% within 28 days, compared to 49% retention rates using marketing messages using no data.

Personalized messages allow you to deliver a better user experience by providing relevant information and satisfying their users' needs. For instance, an eCommerce store can send product recommendations based on the users’ buying behavior and browsing history.

5. Use Gamification

Let’s face it: everyone loves playing games. So, it’s a great strategy to incorporate gamification into your app. It will encourage your app to compete against themselves and other app users. Incorporating the element of gamification will make users consistently engaged with your app, whether it’s fitness, interactive learning, or saving money. Upon achieving their desired goals, your app users will most definitely come back for more and even their victories with their connections and spread word of mouth.
To incorporate gamification features, create a visually appealing scorecard with graphs and charts showcasing their progress through the use of the app. Create milestones, and when they achieve them, encourage them to share them with their friends.

6. Build Two-Way Communication

To keep your app users engaged, again utilize in-app messaging. It helps establish two-way communication between you and your users. It enables you to provide real-time assistance whenever your users need it. You can answer their queries and help them get through when they are in a bind. For instance, if you have an eCommerce app, in-app messaging will help you minimize their frustrations and make their buying journey seamless. As a result, it will increase your sales and improve your bottom line.
One way to build two-way communication is to implement an in-app chat where your users can directly reach out to you, ask for answers, and provide valuable feedback. This allows you to deliver a better user experience and boost app engagement.

7. Use Emails And Social Media Channels

Emails and social media are two of the most effective marketing channels to target and retarget your users. For instance, you can send personalized emails to encourage them to try out your latest features. You can also use social media to stay on top of their minds.
Leverage data analytics tools to identify your users who are on the brink of churning. You can devise both email and social media marketing campaigns in order to re-engage your inactive users.
Use deep linking in your campaigns that directly leads to the specific section of the app, making their journey frictionless.

8. Add A Social Component

Social interactions are crucial to ensuring app engagement. In fact, building an in-app community can help you increase user retention rates by 2.7 times. That’s one of the significant reasons why social media is making strides in the digital world through social gaming, finance, and more.

Build a section for your app users to interact with other community members. Incorporate a text, voice, or video function to level up the user experience. Also, ensure to impose specific guidelines for content moderation to foster a culture of fair discussions and interactions.

9. Leverage An Omnichannel Marketing Strategy

Omnichannel marketing is all about delivering a consistent user experience through all channels and customer touchpoints. The primary goal is to engage the user on all channels, including websites, social media, email, live chat, and even brick-and-mortar stores.
Delivering the right message using the right channel at the right time is the key to boosting user engagement. All channels must synergize to consistently deliver a unique brand voice and personalized messaging. The only way to do that is to make sure that you find the most appropriate channels to reach out to your users.

Set metrics to measure user engagement on all channels. Train and educate your team members to measure the performance of the metrics and identify opportunities for improvements to achieve your goals.

10. Give Your Unique Value Proposition A Top Priority

Making a powerful first impression is essential to boosting user engagement.

Your unique value proposition is mission-critical to making your app stand out. You need to attract and educate your users, explaining and demonstrating how your app resolves their problems, saves time, and ensures maximum user satisfaction.

In order to get users to maximize engagement, you need to ensure that your value proposition is at the center of your marketing strategy. Make it clear and straightforward. Also, ensure to make your installation and user onboarding smooth and frictionless by providing a step-by-step guide.

Final Thoughts

The user demands constant change. To maximize user interaction, you need to adapt to the latest trends and leverage a user-first approach to app design and development.

Leveraging in-app chat and building a community with an intuitive UI are some of the most effective strategies for app engagement.
Proactively ask for user feedback, leverage data analytics tools, and set KPIs to measure app performance. This will give you in-depth information on how to optimize your app experience, deliver content that resonates with your users, and create an impactful interaction.