Ways To Increase Mobile App Engagement And Give Users Personalized Experience

Updated 10 Aug 2023

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Faithful users mean a lot for your app, it is an established truth. So you should do your best to attract as many users as possible. To implement it, you should elaborate a strategy that will help you acquire new users and make your app popular among them. First, of course, you need to request for high-quality mobile development services. And then your main goal is to build the right mobile app engagement strategy.

Let's check it out what mobile app engagement is and what important issues you should consider.

What is mobile app engagement?

User engagement means a wish of the user to stay in the app and interact with it. Engagement is an indicator that is calculated according to the following formula usually:

engagement rate = comments + likes + shares * number of visitors.

This formula makes it possible to measure in-app engagement. So this is the main way to understand how popular your mobile app is. Engagement is the process when you start building relationships and interaction with users/customers, capture their attention, increase the loyalty of customers and the number of downloads. Also, if you lost a specific number of users, you should perform so-called re-engagement, i.e. you must make changes in your app that will make lost or passive users start using your app again.

A piece of statistics

But app's number of downloads cannot be the main factor of user engagement. Even if it is downloaded for many times, it cannot be a guarantee that a customer will keep on using the app, make purchases and so on. According to mobile app engagement statistics from Localytics agency, 23% of users stop using an app and remove it after only one use! And 62% rarely use an app more than 12 times.

See why native app development is better than a hybrid one. Read Native vs. hybrid app development: which approach to choose in 2023.

The following question may arise: why should you think about retention of old users? Maybe, is there any sense in the engagement of new users if you already have them? Well, statistics suggests otherwise. According to Forbes, acquiring of new users will cost you 7-8 times more than retention of existing users. So, statistics speaks for itself. Mobile app user engagement is a long and hard process that requires many efforts from you. But retained users mean a lot for your app. So we will give you main recommendations on how you should engage users and make them your loyal customers.

How to increase mobile app engagement or main strategies to follow

Here we will provide you with main tips and app engagement strategies on how you can attract more users to your mobile app and what your app should have if you want to increase customers' loyalty towards your product.

how to increase app engagement

Steps you should undertake to increase user engagement

Make a comfortable onboarding process

The onboarding process is the process of user adaptation in your mobile app. Simply put, it is the first impression of users towards an app. So it is very important to let people feel comfortable when they adapt to your app, it will decrease abandonment rate in a few times and mobile user engagement will be performed successfully. Thus, if the use of your app requires too many complicated steps from users, they won't waste their time puzzling out how your app works.

Effective onboarding process should include a few important steps to make your audience grow:

  • Steps for sign up or registration should be as easy as possible. Don't overload people with multiple steps, just make it simple;
  • Your app features should have a short explanation of their functionality, too much information is not recommended. Users want to use your app but not to read tons of manuals;
  • UI should be attractive and simple as well. Because an effective onboarding process is impossible without good and intuitive UI and UX design.

Sliding Tutorial by Cleveroad

We have an open source Sliding tutorial library that allows anybody to create tutorial for any kind of apps for Android operating system. Pay your attention to the detailed development process and find a link to our GitHub profile below. 

Sliding Tutorial

Sliding Tutorial - made by Cleveroad

Push notifications are essential

Everybody knows what push notification is. Many apps use it and it is quite natural because push notifications are very important for app user engagement. As a rule, such notifications can increase user retention significantly. If users receive notifications on a regular basis, their application engagement into app remains much higher.

Why is push notification important for your app? First, it's main purpose is to remind users about important events and changes in your app, and that your app is active. If you customize push notifications, you will be able to send them to each user considering their preferences and interests. Also, if you want to return users, you can send them notification indicating that there is a new discount or some serious improvements. It will help you find the right way on how to increase engagement of app users.

Not everybody reacts to push notification, but, as a rule, notification can catch the attention of a user and make him/her visit your app to find out what's new out there.

Successful example

Netflix service has improved the level of mobile app user engagement due to simple reminders about new series or movies on the basis of each user's viewing history. Thus, each user receives push notification only about the content that is interesting specifically to him or her. 

Give users personalized experience

Personalization is a considerable way to give users a new level of experience where users can get interesting news according to their preferences. Each user will be oriented to his/her own preferences with your app, so mobile personalization is one of the most important factors to consider. If users see that your app considers their interest, there is a higher probability that they will keep on using your app and they will recommend it.

Discover useful tools for a personalized experience. Read 5 mobile app personalization tools to take user engagement to the next level

It is necessary to have the main information like location and preferences about each user, and here necessary metrics will help you. As for metrics, we will speak about it below. So, when you know the preferences of a user, customized content will be displayed on the screen of his/her app. The conversion rate will grow in a half since all people like personalized messages.

However, don't overload users with too many messages, and monitor properly everything you send. Otherwise, it will lead to failures and growth of abandonment rates.

Motivate your users

If you want to increase app user engagement, you should give specific incentives to your customers. Rewards, premium coupons, discounts and so on will motivate people to use your app and be your faithful users. Everybody wants to receive interesting bonuses that will let them save on and get their benefit. Many mobile app engagement campaigns keep up with this simple rule.

You just need to create thematic offers based on your app's nature, and they will be different in each app, so keep it in mind. But there are common bonuses that you can provide users with from time to time. For example, one day of free premium features for all customers that use a free version of your app. Perhaps, it will motivate people to buy a premium version and use it. Profit for both parties!

Successful example

Amazon retail company is the one that can boast about many loyalty programs. For example, Amazon suggested all buyers to join Prime membership for 99$ per year. In turn, this program provides users with free shipping, free additional storage for photos and video, live streaming music and movies etc. Thus, users can save on much more than $99 and Prime membership gives obvious benefits to all members. 

Don't ignore feedbacks!

If you constantly ask your users to give their feedbacks concerning your app, it's features, whether it be negative or positive comments, it makes people have more trust towards your app. They will see that their opinion is important to you, you want to interact with customers, and they will appreciate it.

Moreover, it is a better way to receive a negative feedback than users will leave bad comments in app stores - it may have a rather negative influence on your app's popularity, agree? That is why interaction with users means a lot. It will have a direct positive impact on mobile app user engagement, and you will get a double profit.

Mobile app engagement metrics

So, now you know how to increase app engagement, how to attract more users to your app, what strategies you should keep in mind. But we noted also about important metrics that you should monitor to understand the popularity of your app and so on. So here are mobile engagement metrics and analytics you should take into account.

app engagement metrics

Main metrics to track how mobile engagement is performed

Number of downloads

It is the first metric you should know. When you know how many times your app was downloaded, you will be able to see the whole picture of app user engagement. It will also show how effective your marketing campaign and how your strategies work. Play Store and App Store reports are at your disposal.

Number of users

Of course, you should always know how many users downloaded your app, and it will let you arrange a high-quality engagement process. You can monitor Daily Active Users (DAU) or Monthly Active Users (MAU), and then filter information by age, device type, gender and so on, if you need this information. When you know this, you will be able to create a right model for your app development.

Active users

You should know how many app users are active. Not everybody who downloaded your app is actively using it. You need to understand how many users are actively taking part in your app promotion, and, of course, the more active users you have, the better it is for your app. Along with this factor, you can track stickiness - any details of your app that attract users and make them remain in your app longer. So you can see what is more interesting for them, or what you'd better remove. It is one of the most important app engagement metrics.

Session intervals

How often do users open your app? Well, it is highly necessary to know the interval between new and last session. This way you will measure the level of interest of users to your app, how much time was spent before they started using your app again. It will also let you improve your app if necessary. Google Analytics is a good tool to track this metric.

Session length

As it is clear from it's name, here you can track the length of users' visit to your app, how much time it took for them from opening your app to closing it. Of course, the longer a customer stays in the app, the better it is for you, it means that user has more engagement in your app. You can monitor people who have short sessions to provide them with a useful information and make their engagement longer in the result.

Retention rate

This rate means the number of users that returned to your again, so this metric is also very and very important. Not so many people return to your app again, that is why it very important to enhance app user engagement and make users return to your app again and again. Statistics has it, that about 40% of users return to a mobile app once per month starting from the day of an app download. Your main task is to track retention rate per week and per month to understand the whole situation with your users. It will help you build right marketing campaigns, deal with all issues that lower retention rate.

Learn more about the right technology stack for your mobile app. Read How to choose an appropriate mobile app technology stack for your project

Feedback rate

As we noted above, you simply cannot ignore feedbacks. So in-app feedback means a lot for your mobile engagement analytics. Using special tools, you can provide people with a feedback form that pop up on the screen when they use your app. So people can leave their comment without logging out. Then you can track all feedbacks, read them, calculate, and make your conclusions. Don't overload people with a large number of questions, all information should be laconic and clear. That is why you should pay more attention to it.

Rating in app stores

As all reviews in app stores have a direct impact on app rating, it is very important to make people leave a good comment and make them be pleased with an app. Unfortunately, not so many users leave good reviews, as a rule, only those who are unsatisfied with an app write bad comments. Your task is to remind people to write a good review and rate your app if it is possible for them. Keep in mind that majority of users that come across an app first read a few reviews only and then they make a decision - whether they download your app or not. So monitor all reviews and stay always in touch with customers.

Mobile app engagement platforms

So, we provided you with the main information you need to know about strategies and metrics to increase mobile app engagement and make their experience efficient. And, in the end, we would like to list the most popular tools and mobile engagement platforms that will let you simplify app user engagement and automate some processes. Mind to read it!

Urban Airship

It is one of the leading US-based companies in mobile marketing and user engagement. It's main product is targeted at push notifications and other related products like tools for user segmentation, digital wallet integration, and user behavior analytics.

app engagement tools

Urban Airship tool for app promotion

The company was founded in 2009, and it became one of the most popular companies in the world of mobile marketing in a few years. Today many famous apps use Urban Airship to promote their mobile products and create effective marketing campaigns and mobile engagement strategy.

Leanplum

Leanplum is a San Francisco-based company that was founded in 2012. Leanplum offices located in Europe, Asia, North America. It is a platform for optimization of crucial metrics of your mobile app. The company simplifies A/B-tests conduction and it provides users with instant results.

mobile customer engagement platform

Leanplum tool

Using Leanplum, you can create multi-channel marketing campaigns just from one platform. It is targeted at mobile app user engagement and it is considered to be one of the leaders in this niche.

Localytics

This platform was also founded in 2009 in Boston. It is a complex marketing tool that is oriented towards interaction with end users of mobile devices. The platform makes it possible for you to perform real-time analytics for web and mobile apps. Localytics allows you to segment users based on their activity in apps and understand how he/she came across your app and what they do.

mobile application engagement

Localytics platform

Apart from this, the platform supports messaging in apps, funnels, push notifications, A/B testing and some other necessary features.

Based on this, you can choose the platform that is preferable for you to increase app user engagement. In combination with right steps and strategies we mentioned, your mobile app can become a really viral one in Google Play or App Store (or in both). Just remember that your app idea should be really captivating and interesting since people don't need to download a clone of an existing app.

You should know how to avoid risks when you outsource IT project. Read our article about outsourcing programming services

As for the development process, Cleveroad company is at your disposal, so contact us and we will help you! Our developers are highly experienced in mobile app development. Also, subscribe to our blog to read more interesting tips and recommendations your future app may need.

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About author

Evgeniy Altynpara is a CTO and member of the Forbes Councils’ community of tech professionals. He is an expert in software development and technological entrepreneurship and has 10+years of experience in digital transformation consulting in Healthcare, FinTech, Supply Chain and Logistics

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