Users engagement is probably one of the most important things for every Application. Even if you made a great application that immediately became popular, in a while you may notice that your app is not being used anymore. Have you ever noticed that some really cool applications disappear as soon as they appear? That’s because people have no idea how to engage and what’s is the most important — how to retain users. If you’re one of them, that’s article is for you!

App page in the market place

Undoubtedly, you know the real importance of first impressions. It applies to every aspect of our life and mobile development is no exception. No matter how good your application is. If you failed to attract your user’s attention from the very beginning, your mobile application would probably get no user engagement at all. You need to convince people that it’s your application they need. Show them all the advantages of your application and focus on its benefits. Having no ideas? Find a few examples of featured apps and learn from their experience.

Make a decent app onboarding

App onboarding is another way to show the benefits of your app. Create a quite informative preview of your application. It should be something like a presentation of your application’s main features. Simply put, onboarding should explain to people what they’ll be capable of doing while using your application. App onboarding is indispensable if you want to engage more people.

Ensure a great performance of your app

It should be obvious that one of the most important aspects of your app’s success is its great importance. Make sure that your application has no bugs or errors and evaluate its load time to guarantee conversion from browser to buyer. Remember, Google will push back your app into the SERP if the load time of your app is higher.

So spend some time on learning your app’s behavior and performance if you want to ensure a great performance on your app.

Deep Linking

Another way to make people invest in your app by taking them to specific places in an app is deep linking. Use deep linking if you want to guide your audience to exact place within your app. Using this method, you’ll always be able to keep your customers engaged. As a result, you’ll provide improved retention and a better user experience.

Social Sharing

In our digital world, everyone has an account in a social network. This allows us to share our products, as well as mobile applications and enlarge our audience. Shhhh… we’ve got a little secret for you. If you allow users to share their experience inside your app, your app can become viral! Anyway, you’ll have to give your users something that’s worthy of sharing.

Another way of encouraging users to share their experience is to give them rewards for posting your application in their social networks.

Advertising is your friend

Mobile application advertising can be useful both for your income and user engagement. There’re different kinds of ads that you may find useful:

• Search Ads. This is a Google service for Android that may help you to engage with users.
• Display Ads. This kind of ad can show the benefits of your app, as well as discounts or rewards.
• Retargeting Ads. This is the best way to remind your audience about yourself while they’re using their social media platforms. As we already mentioned, use deep linking and direct people inside your app. Pretty smart, isn’t it?

Easy Contact Form

Users feedback is the soul of your app and one of the simplest ways to increase user engagement. Unfortunately, some applications have a vague contact form so that it’s highly difficult or even impossible to get in touch. In such situations, the only way users can place a feedback of your app is to write a review directly in the App store instead of sharing it with you.

Don’t make your users become internet detectives to track you down. Your application should be as user-friendly as possible. The same goes for the contact form as it’s an irreplaceable part of your application.

Push Notifications

We use various app messages to keep our users engaged while they’re using our app. If we want to keep them engaged on the regular basis, the best way to do it is to use Push Notifications. Push notifications are alerts that once in awhile pop up on a user’s screen and inform them of the latest news, features, offers and other things that are available through your app.

According to stats, 65 percent of users will probably come back to an application that provides push notifications. About 50 percent of users are sure that push notifications are crucially important. Despite the fact that the majority of people turn off notifications for social media and news, notifications for certain apps are always turned on.

App Maintenance and Updating

Today’s technology, as well as operating systems are constantly changing. Keep an eye on it and always make sure that your app is always updated and can meet the latest technology requirements. That will highly improve app productivity and retain your users.

Always Listen to Your Audience

First and foremost, you make your application for users, rightt? So the best way to find out whether you’re going in the right direction or not is to ask your users. One of the possible ways to do it is to make various surveys, such as NPS (Net Promoter Score) and determine how likely they want to recommend your app to their friends. Remember, that a promotion of your app depends on how high its NPS is.

Bottom Line

App engagement is crucially important for an app’s success. Taking all that said into consideration, we can conclude that it’s important to strike a balance between the quality and productivity of your app and how good it’s presented for users. Having met these two main aspects will definitely deliver success for your app!

Best Practices for Engaging your App Users was originally published in JetRuby on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.