The behaviour of mobile users is difficult to gauge. They change their minds frequently and seek for different utilities from an app which makes it harder for the app owners to satisfy them. While most app developers will agree that it is challenging to pull users and withhold them longer, the key to foster user engagement in apps relies on the features that are explicitly embedded in them. Undeniably, user engagement is a primary determinant for app’s success as it develops a loyal user base for the app who regularly visit to avail the services offered by it.
Adhering to the significance of user acquisition and engagement for a successful app, this article pinpoints some features which are most fruitful in augmenting user activity within an app.
Out-and-out personalisation
This is the foremost feature for any app that prompts users to use it more. Apps can offer personalised functionalities in any way, that seems appropriate with the services they offer. For instance, an app can provide location-specific services as soon as it traces the user’s location through his or her phone’s GPS feature. Similarly, relevant offers on the services that users had previously availed from the app are also equally effective in retaining them.
Timely Push Notifications
How your users are going to know that you have rolled out some new offers or a new function update in your app? Push notifications is predominantly an impressive feature for fetching back the old customers and keeping the existing users alerted about your updates all the time. Once a notification flashes on the screens of the users, it reminds them of the app and the new experiences that might be slipping out of their hands. This eventually urges them to revisit the app.
Deep links
This is a crucial feature for apps to make push notifications and other app messages fruitful in drawing users, even sometimes from different external sources. With the inclusion of deep links in the notifications or shared messages, the users are directly pushed to the app page as soon as they tap into the link embedded in the message.
Messaging or chat feature
When a messaging or instant chat feature are included in the app, it empowers a strong connectivity between the users and app owner by facilitating communication. With such feature, users can easily convey their views, feedbacks, suggestions, queries or issues to the owners and get faster responses. Furthermore, chat feature is not only confined to use-owner communication but also enables interaction among the different users on the same app.
Easy sharing option
There is a need for a definite feature in the app to open ways for social sharing of the various in-app activities performed by the users. Social network plugins within the app add spark to the app’s name by making it popular on the social media pages. This is simply because the existing users constantly share their app experiences with others on those common platforms.
Concluding Note
Acquisition of users and pursuing higher engagement are inevitably most backbreaking for the app owners and marketers. In today’s mobile-first generation, where preferences of the users are changing fast and hundreds of apps are stepping into the field, retaining the user base is pretty challenging. However, with implantation of these basic features in an app, one can rest assured that most of their loyal users are going to stay for longer.
