Strategies to Increase App Engagement and Measure Success

Your app engagement is no longer just about the download numbers. It is about keeping your user base intact and engaged. Once your users see the value that your app adds, they slowly become loyal users who provide further engagement by exploring your new features. 

In this blog, we will look into the various app engagement strategies and metrics by which you can measure your app’s success.

Before going into the strategies, let's clearly understand app engagement and its metrics. 

What is App Engagement, and What are Its Key Metrics?

App engagement refers to the frequency with which users interact with your app over time. Engagement goes beyond downloads to analyzing the features explored, user behaviors, and completed actions such as purchases.

If your app shows high engagement, it indicates that users value it. This will lead to increased user retention and long-term loyalty. Furthermore, all these numbers translate into growth in revenue and user satisfaction.

Key Metrics for Engagement Measurement

The success of your app depends on its performance across specific metrics. However, each metric should be prioritized based on their industry. While a gaming app must focus on its daily active users (DAU), a booking app needs to look into its retention rates.

Here are the essential metrics that track your app engagement:

• Daily Active Users (DAU): A key indicator of how your app retains your user’s interest daily. This metric represents the number of unique active users interacting with your app daily.  
• Monthly Active Users (MAU): A metric that works similarly to DAU, monthly active users show the number of active users engaging with your app over a month. This makes MAU an indicator of your app’s stickiness and user retention efficiency.
• Weekly Active Users (WAU): By providing a weekly insight into the number of active users, WAU provides a mid-term view of engagement. By filling in the gap between DAU and MAU, weekly insights can help you understand the areas you need to improve for consistent usage.
• Session Length: A metric that refers to the time users spend using your app per visit. The longer the session lengths, the more engaging and valuable your app's user experience.
• Retention Rate: This indicates the percentage of users who have used your app over a specific period, such as a week, a month, or any period after the initial download. Higher retention rates indicate that your users find your app's services valuable.

Strategies to Increase App Engagement

Now that we’re clear about what app engagement is, let’s check out some of the most effective strategies employed to increase engagement:

1. Deliver a Seamless Onboarding Experience

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Ensuring a seamless onboarding experience is the first step to engaging your customers. A well-designed onboarding process using in-app elements, such as personalized nudges, can help users find value in your app immediately.

Take Google Pay's onboarding experience as an example. In-app elements such as tooltips can introduce the app features to users. PiP tutorials and progress indicators can reduce the chances of users feeling overwhelmed, thereby encouraging retention.

2. Implement Gamification Techniques

Fintech platforms like Revolut provide “streak” rewards that encourage users to interact further with the app. By adding gamified elements like achievement badges, the app encourages users to consistently make transactions and explore new features. 

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Gamification adds not just fun to the entire app experience, but also promotes regular interactions. This strategy, therefore, aims to tap into the user's competitive instinct and grow the app further.

3. Regularly Update the App and Add New Features

Lastly, keeping your app fresh is important to sustain user interests. By consistently adding new features, such as curated widgets with relevant recommendations, in-app stories with educational content, and addressing user feedback, the app can be optimized to the user's satisfaction.

However, it is critical to keep the app updates equally efficient across all operating platforms and devices. This can show your commitment to meeting user expectations and, therefore, bringing in value.

Plotline lets you add engaging ux elements to your app without engineering effort or app releases. Start our free trial to optimize your app experience. 

4. Use Personalized Push Notifications Effectively

Personalized push notifications are another way to encourage users to return to your app. However, you should design the notifications based on user preferences, behavior, and app activity.

Measuring the Success of App Engagement Strategies

Just like implementing a strategy, it is equally important to assess its success regularly. By doing so, you can save your resources from being wastefully allocated and focus more on your pain points. Here are a few ways to measure your strategy’s success:

1. Use of KPI Tracking to Assess Strategy Effectiveness

As the name suggests, key performance indicators (KPI) show the success of your app engagement strategies. You can clearly understand how your users interact with your app by considering metrics like DAU, MAU, and retention rates.

2. Continuous Process of Strategy Optimization Using Data Insights

Data can significantly indicate where your app needs to be optimized. By constantly analyzing user behavior and feedback, you can refine your app to fit the latest trends.

These insights can also pinpoint your app's pain points and help you in making the slightest tweaks such as button placement, modifying length of content, and iterative strategies like this help you evolve your app to user needs and expectations.

Wrapping Up

Increasing your app engagement is a constant process that requires regular reviews and adjustments. Your users' preferences are not constant; they can change from time to time. Therefore, it is essential to understand your app’s pain points and strengths based on user feedback and data to stay relevant.

Also, consider your broader goals while designing your app engagement strategies. Combining user satisfaction with your long-term app goals can achieve sustained growth.

With our expert mobile features adoption elements, such as nudges and widgets, you can create the ideal entry point for your app and then implement engagement strategies like gamification, leading to user stickiness and retention.

Book a demo to learn more about how we can support you in engaging users and driving app growth.