8 Ways to Increase Mobile App Engagement & Retain Users

As the behaviour of the audience continues to change, businesses need to ensure they tweak their strategies to address this. The increased use of smartphones requires companies to focus on this medium and guarantee an improved outreach to their audience. Various brands are innovatively using mobile apps as their means of engaging their customers and retaining them.

Research shows around 2.87 million apps on the Google Play Store and 1.96 million apps on the Apple App Store. (Source: Buildfire) The mobile apps can help brands in several ways, including improving brand awareness and boosting RoI for their solutions portfolios. The apps can also be used to enhance engagement and ensure more satisfied customers. This article will discuss some of the ways to increase mobile app engagement and retain users.

Benefits of Using Mobile Apps

Enhanced Customer Value

If you are wondering how to increase interaction with your customers, you can develop a mobile app. It can improve customer interaction and lead to more mindshare among them. The level of accessibility increases, and you can seamlessly connect with your customers. As your business interacts more with the customer, you can introduce loyalty plans to motivate them to buy more from your company. 

Increases Brand Value

As your brand interacts with customers continuously, it gushes a sense of trust. It will draw more users towards doing further transactions with your business. The app can easily show why the users should trust your business and be loyal customers. You can top it off with various loyalty schemes and new releases targeted to the mobile app users that can additionally act as a hook.

A Constant Reminder of your Business

Your audience uses their smartphones several times during the day. Even unknowingly, they can interact with your business by downloading the mobile app on their handheld devices. The apps can increase your brand's visibility and offer a faster mode of communication than any web browser. They can also provide the best experience about your brand and enhance conversions through in-app purchases.

Few Tips to Increase Mobile App Engagement

Have a Smooth Onboarding Process

How would you feel if you faced an elaborate registration process after downloading an app? Similarly, your customers prefer a smooth onboarding procedure. Always request only the relevant information while registering the customer. You can start by only providing the key features that the customer was expecting.

The UX experts must keep in mind that a complex app can drive away users. Therefore, create single guides that can help the customer to navigate through the app. Moreover, you can use screenshots to depict the workflows in the app but do not mention the apparent icons. 

Use Personalised Messages

Like in other customer touchpoints, you must use personalisation as a critical mobile app engagement strategy. While mobile apps rarely use personalised messages, the ones that use this attribute only send product suggestions. Personalised welcome and landing page can boost user experience. You can use client information but be transparent about how you will use it.

Once you collect relevant data about the mobile app users, you can send in-app messages. However, send the messages optimally, as overdoing it can lead to poor user experience. Businesses can use mobile session recordings or touch heatmaps to gather information about exit points and other user information.

Push Notifications

Use push notifications as an effective mobile app engagement strategy. It can help users to announce app features or to share needed guides. These notifications can readily increase app engagement with the users. While users may find it irritating, businesses can overcome this by making customised interactions.

Personalised notifications can help in enhancing app retention between 3 – 10 times. (Source: MoEngage) The messages can be improved using clickable CTA buttons. You can utilise custom actions or create local notifications. Address the users by their names, and segment them based on their various attributes. 

Use Gamification

Gamification can be another mobile app user retention strategy that you can consider. It urges the app users to complete simple tasks and compete on the leaderboard. They find it encouraging to compete against their friends or other global users. You can add various challenges, achievements that work together for the various incentives on the leaderboard.

When selecting the activities on the app, always consider the objectives of the app. Set specific goals for the users that they can achieve over particular periods. Divide the bigger goals into smaller goals that can be easier to achieve. You can also combine the scoring system with various discounts, freebies, and coupons to make it more interesting for users.

Use Quick Actions on the Home Screen

Businesses can use the home screen of the mobile app as the primary means to retain users. The users can easily navigate through the app using the various tabs on the Quick Actions section on the home screen. Users can browse through the messages without having to tap on the relevant section.

UX developers must consider this feature as one of the means to enhance mobile app user retention. It is essential to have in-depth knowledge about UX design, including Quick Actions and Deep Linking. You can deploy the services of experienced UX designers to implement this feature.

Using Emails Knowledgeably

Emails can be another means to improve mobile app user retention. A welcome email can explain to the new users the first steps they must take. These emails can create the ideal opening to build relationships with new users. Send out emails to introduce app upgrades and the latest discounts.

You can track user behaviour and then send emails introducing the new features of the app. Use behavioural data to gauge the users who are at risk to churn. You can send relevant emails and extend better offers or alleviate their issues. For a B2B app, always remember the user's role before sending out the emails.

Upgrade the UI Regularly

The mobile app must evolve with time, and it requires exhaustive work on the UX/ UI areas. Your users may get bored over time while using the same UI over time. You can increase mobile app engagement by upgrading the UI/ UX> based on your user’s requirements.

You can undertake user surveys to provide the necessary feedback on the changes they wish to see in the app design or the workflows. Your team can undertake A/B testing and check which strategies and workflows work best for your app. App analytics tools can help you gather user interaction information about your app.

Multi-Channel Engagement

Do you feel that only interacting with the users through the app can help in improving retention rates? Why don't you utilise several channels before you engage with the users? For example, use various online media that are cheaper and interact with the audience altogether. It can also help by bringing in newer users for your app.

You can use the mobile site and present the app journey through a deep link into the corresponding mobile app page that the user would view. You can also use deep links from various social media channels in your app. It can reduce your ad cost while improving engagement rates.

Conclusion

More brands are using mobile apps as a specialised means to reach out to their audience. Studies also show that mobile apps can help to improve brand recall and mindshare among the audience. But it is also necessary to take necessary steps to increase app engagement too.

As users are bombarded with several mobile apps, you must do more to ensure that the users are loyal to your brand and return to using the app. You can take several steps as part of your overall mobile app engagement strategy. In addition, we can discuss various other means to help you increase app engagement. Our experts can help you in your endeavour.