Keep Mobile Users Engaged In and Out of Your App
How do I encourage people to keep using my app after they install it?
How can I improve user experience and onboarding?
How can I use online ads and push notifications to engage people?
Imagine Harold is launching the mobile app BonBonBust, a fun puzzle game.
Harold wants BonBonBust to be challenging right off the bat, so he doesn’t include instructions. That way people will have to figure out how to use the app and start the game on their own.
He spreads the word to his friends and contacts at the right media outlets, and gets a huge PR push. Because of this, he has an avalanche of downloads right away.
But after those first downloads, people stop using his app. A month later, BonBonBust has become BonBonByeBye.
Let’s look at his app’s opening screen and see what Harold could have done differently.
Here’s a fact about mobile apps: The average app loses over 95% of its daily active users within 90 days and 20% of mobile apps are only used once.
This means your app has to work pretty hard to keep people interested and coming back – and just having a great app idea and good content aren’t enough.
The 2 “make it or break it” things you should pay attention to are user experience (UX) and onboarding.
UX covers every interaction people have with your app – including how well it runs, if it’s simple to figure out, and whether every element works as it’s supposed to.
Bad UX will make people unhappy, and unhappy people tend to give bad reviews and uninstall apps. So whatever they’re using your app to do – shop, get info, be social, or play games – make sure your UX helps them do it easily.
To stay on top of UX issues, pay attention to things like people’s feedback, bugs, and crash reports. You should also respond to people’s complaints and fix problems quickly.
Good UX also plans for interruptions. Think about all the ways people could get distracted: text messages, another app’s notifications, or just life in general. How can you make it easy for them to come in and out of your app?
Design your app so people don’t have to start everything all over again, whether that’s making a purchase, reaching a new level in a game, or adding in their info.
You should also consider what type of first impression you’re giving people when they open your app. That’s where onboarding comes in.
Keep your onboarding simple. The best apps are so intuitive that people only need a little (or no) guidance to get started. So all you need to do is give people a very short, friendly guided tour to learn the basics.
Here are some other onboarding tips.
MAKE IT INTERACTIVE
Instead of describing an interaction, guide people through doing it.
OFFER EASY LOGIN
Let people use their social media to sign in and/or their emails to login.
MARK PEOPLE’S PROGRESS
Show people how close they are to completing the onboarding.
LISTEN UP
Improving your app’s UX and onboarding is just the tip of the mobile engagement iceberg.
We’ll show you a few different ways you can reach out to people even when they’re not using your app.
You can use push notifications, which is like your app sending text messages to people who’ve downloaded it, encouraging them to come back.
Push notifications can be a pretty effective engagement tool...but you have to handle them in the right way so you don’t accidentally end up annoying your fanbase.
When people open your app for the first time, you can ask if they want to receive push notifications. This is your chance to say why it’s valuable to opt into your notifications and what information people will miss without them.
As for the notifications themselves, you want them to feel like short texts from an old friend, not a barrage of desperate messages asking why they never called again after the first date.
You can probably figure out how to send good push notifications just by thinking about what you like and dislike when you’re using a mobile app.
Along with push notifications, you can use mobile ads to run out-of-app outreach. All the info you need is conveniently in your app.
Your app’s user history information can help you customize ads that will target certain groups of people who already have your app installed.
For example, you can see who’s taken an in-app action of your choice (made a purchase, reached a game level, etc.). Then, while they’re using other apps, you can show ads that encourage them to take another action in your app.
You can also create ads that target lapsed app users – people who haven’t opened your app in a month, who abandoned their app shopping carts, who have unread messages, and so forth.
To tap into your app’s history data, you can talk to your developer or programmer. Or if you’re the developer or programmer, great, you can talk to yourself.
Email is also a great outreach option if you asked for people’s email addresses when they logged into or registered with your app.
While push notifications should be urgent and timely and mobile ads need in-app data, emails let you send less pressing updates using the contact information people already offered you.
That means you can engage people who have opted in by emailing them newsletters and updates on new features or offers – while making sure you don’t overwhelm their inbox with too many messages too often.
Better yet, email’s larger format lets you do more indepth and vivid updates by adding images and using longer, more descriptive text.
DO THIS NOW
Just like you’d clean up your house before guests come over, make sure your app is ready to engage people as soon as they open it.
If you’re participating in the course, go to the next section to access your self assessment.
KEY TAKEAWAYS
Good UX helps people come in and out of your app seamlessly, and can keep users happy.
Simple onboarding can prevent people from getting frustrated and uninstalling your app.
You can reach your users with push notifications, mobile ads, and emails.