Best Ways to Increase App Engagement & User Retention

Use these methods to acquire loyal users for your app.

The mobile app industry has gone beyond our expectations with the benefits of the small platform and most of the sectors have shifted their approach to the mobile-centric market. With the increasing growth of the mobile app industry, every business is moving towards smartphones for success.

However, with this revolution, the industry also brought fierce competition. In the crowd of mobile apps, you need to make sure that your app doesn't get lost in the endless lists of app stores where no one cares about it. My point is that you need to make sure about your app’s success, and it depends upon the user acquisition.

How many users are engaged with your app reflects your app’s popularity and success eventually. However, the number of users isn't the only metric responsible for success. It further divided into user retention and app engagement. The job is not done when you acquire a large number of users for your app.

The real struggle is to make sure that they keep using the app and come back to interact on a regular basis. User retention and app engagement are the most important metrics that define any app’s success.

What is App Engagement?

This tells how much the users are active on your app, after installing it how many of them are using it frequently. According to Localytics, the highly active user has 10+ sessions with the app in a month.  If the user isn't using your app or opening it regularly, then there is no benefit of getting it installed in the first place.

What is User Retention?

This metric is a bit subjective and measures how many users have returned to the app within three months of their first session. Every brand and business has its own standards and benchmark for user retention. The increment in user retention shows that the users are turning into loyal users.

Both app engagement and user retention combined work as the key factor for the app’s growth and revenue generation. The average for engagement and retention is known as the stickiness, which shows how loyal and regular your users are.

Why User Retention and Engagement is Essential?

In today's competitive market the developers are against a tough situation where users have many choices. If your app is not engaging and lacks in convincing the user for opening it, again and again, there is very little chance that it will be going to sustain on the smartphone for a long time.

The user abandonment rate, which means the user deleted the app after one use is 23% right now. Moreover, if the user hasn't opened your app once in 7 days of installing it then the uninstallation chances are 60%. This is all because the users don't have to compromise as they will get everything you lack in some other app.

There are almost 3.8 million apps in the Google app store and 2 million iOS apps in the Apple App Store, so the competition is more stringent than ever.

What Increased User Retention and Engagement Brings?

• Increased number of sessions with users
• Reduced chances for the app to get uninstall
• Increased overall usage
• Growth in revenue and monetizations
• Turns ordinary users into loyal customers
• Exponential growth of the brand

What Affects User Retention and Engagement?

There could be a number of factors that lead the user to abandon your app. Maybe the user interface is not that friendly, or your app takes too much time to function, or perhaps it has too many ads.  60% of the users said that the app’s functionality, features, and design tells about brand loyalty.

Another reason could be that your users aren't feeling special with your app where your rivals are offering them unique benefits. The most common reason for abandoning the app after the first session is either the complexity of the app or not offering precisely what it promised.

Methods to Increase App Engagement and User Retention of App

1. Straightforward Sign-up or onboarding

The onboarding process holds the most influential role in the app’s success and future interaction. The complicated and challenging sign-up process will nothing more than frustrating elements for the user. Try to make the initial steps as simple as possible with minimum steps required to get started.

Most of the users judge the app with their first impression, and they decided to uninstall it right away. So, to make sure that your app stays on the user’s smartphone you need to assure that the sign-up process is simple. Make sure that the app’s user interface at the onboarding is simple and easy to understand.

Try to include steps as minimum as possible at the beginning for the users, make login and account creation within 2-3 steps. Don't ask for much information and try to fold in within minimum tabs. You can also ask the user to sign-up using social media accounts which is the most convenient method for the users.

Don't tell everything about the app’s functionality to the user from the beginning, let the user explore them and teach accordingly.

Instead of text use figures, images or gestures to make the user understand the features of the app.

2. Personalization is the Key

Personalization or mobile personalization has become the key factor of a winning app that keeps its users happy. With the help of a personalized environment in the app, you can win the user’s loyalty. There are many ways to personalize the app, targeted push notifications for users individually. You can add the user’s name on the screen with a greeting message so it will make a warm welcome for the user.

Giving an environment to the user that shows the elements or offerings based on the user interest increases user engagement. You can take help from the previous search and actions taken by the users on your app. Track the user behavior to know the interest and the other things that the user might like.

This will give the impression that your app care’s about the user. Moreover, personalized push notifications tend to provide more conversion rate compared to the broadcasting messages. According to a report, the personalized message provides a 50% conversion rate compared to a broadcasting message that only provides a 15% conversion rate.

3. Reward System

The most effective way of generating more impressions and increasing engagement is incentivization. Giving users reward points frequently can benefit the app in the long run and it will help in acquiring more users as well. In the competitive market of mobile apps, users always look for an app that offers more incentives.

You can give rewards in many forms that will allure the users to open the app again and again. However, the bonuses and incentives depend upon the nature of the app. In case you own a shopping app you can offer specific discount coupons or hold a sale on specific days with low prices for the products.

You can take the inspiration from Starbucks that offers discounts on the products by paying through its app. With this, the customers are more likely to use the Starbuck payment gateway to make the transaction.

4. Updating the App Regularly

One of the most common reasons for a user to leave an app after some time is getting bored with it. This makes most of the apps victim of being the same and not improving its functionality. Regularly updating the app makes the user more excited about using the app and eventually helps in raising the user retention and engagement numbers.

Even the most popular social media platforms like WhatsApp and Instagram regularly adds new features to their app. This is the most compelling method to keep the user engaged with your app.

In order to know what you can improve in your app, you need to take care of a few things. You need to regularly catch up with the feedbacks, user behavior, and monitor the analytics to know what app requires to keep the user's intact.

With regular updates and bug fixes, you can show them shows the users that you are working hard for them. Another thing you need to start doing is studying your competitors and spot what they are offering. Compare your current services with theirs so you can know what they are missing and start offering your users that feature.

5. Push Notifications

In most cases, today users forget about the app they have downloaded a week after installing it and never opens them. This could be avoided with the use of push notifications for the users. Moreover, the push notification not only reminds the user about your app but also increases the app engagement.

According to statistics the push notifications helps the app in improving user retention from 56% to 86%. Besides, the users opting the push notification have show 88% improved engagement compared to the users with no push notification.

The push notification is a very successful technique to get more users’ attention. You need to make sure that the push notifications are more personalized for the users instead of using it as a broadcasting message. With the use of this feature, you can notify the user about the exciting content or product that will allure the user to open your app.

You can use the user behavior and previous activities to know the things in which the user might be interested. However, you need to make sure that you don't turn the push notifications into an irrelevant messaging machine that could annoy the user.

So, you need to be very careful with the personalized push notifications and how many times a day or week you are using them. Shooting too many push notifications could lead to the uninstallation of the app.

Wrapping Up

The mobile industry is competitive than ever, and the users are getting more demanding with time, this makes the work of app owners more difficult. In order to make sure that your app has a higher user engagement rate and increasing user retention, you need to take the above steps. With the help of these 5 methods, you will be able to acquire users’ more time and will be able to earn their loyalty.