5 Kickass User Retention Strategies for Your Business App
So your app is getting downloaded by thousands of users? That’s great. But how many of these people are actively using your app?
It is said that 90% of daily active app users disappear within 30 days of installation. And 23% of apps are used only once.
Thus, you will have to do something to increase the retention rate of your mobile app. The Retention Rate is the percentage of people who actively use your app over a given time period.
Some of the main reasons why the mobile app retention app is low include:
⦁ Difficult onboarding
⦁ Slow or overwhelming navigation
⦁ An outdated or incomplete experience like slow-loading pages
⦁ Broken links
⦁ Incomplete information
⦁ Challenging to convert in-app.
Here are kickass user retention strategies for your business app you can follow to increase retention rate:
1⦁ Acquisition vs. Retention (know which campaign to implement)
Is it only the initial days after you have launched your app? In that case, a retention marketing campaign isn’t for you. You should be focusing more on user acquisition instead, as if you don’t have users, you can’t retain them.
A HubSpot study says that you should implement retention marketing when your new users reach a mark of 70%. Give your app some time to gain recognition and shift your goal to user retention from the acquisition. It is crucial to check the stage of app startup prior to creating any marketing strategy for it to work.
2⦁ Use cohort analysis to measure your mobile app retention
With the cohort analysis approach of measuring mobile app retention, you can group different users based on their behavior in a given period of time.
Find out the different reasons why the once active users of your app have stopped being active. It can be followed with appropriate action to retain the different groups.
This approach can take all types of data into account. Heatmaps can be used to visualize your users’ touch gestures while using your app. It will help you to understand the different obstructions faced by your user when navigating your app.
Or you can produce and audit visual recordings to replay actual user sessions. This way, you can spot trends about how people utilize your app during a specific time frame after they download it.
3⦁ Focus on optimizing your app’s onboarding flow
It goes without saying that first impressions matter!
When it comes to websites, it takes only 0.05 seconds for visitors to form an opinion about your site. That’s pretty quick. The same psychology applies to mobile apps, as well.
When your users launch an app for the first time, they want a seamless and enjoyable experience. Thus, the mobile app onboarding experience is crucial.
It can be categorized into three methods:
⦁ Benefit-oriented onboarding – This method of onboarding focuses on highlighting the value that your user will get out of using your mobile app. If you are implementing this, you can showcase how your mobile app can benefit your users in a few slides using clear language.
⦁ Function-oriented onboarding – Use this onboarding method if your mobile app has several features that your users need to learn.
⦁ Progressive onboarding – This method involves showcasing the features of your app to your users in a specific order. It comes really handy when your mobile app has complex functionality.
Psychology plays a significant role in the onboarding process. Once you are able to make your users feel successful and accomplished while using your mobile app, you can retain them. Also, offer as much context as possible. It will gain their trust.
Mobile app navigation should be kept simple. Don’t make it more than two to three steps. Also, make the log-ins and account creation easy. It is not a great idea to overload users with information at the initial stage of onboarding.
Just look at how Strava, a social networking site for athletes and cyclists, makes the onboarding flow extremely simple for their users.
You can either sign up via Facebook, Google, or email. Once the signup process is complete, you will be directed to a page where you can import the contacts on your Facebook account or search for users by their name.
Once you begin to follow people, the screen is set to start your activity. You can then check out the remaining functions. The task is easy to perform, and they have such a neat and simple UI.
You can also use user onboarding platforms like Whatfix that are designed to help you create personalized and engaging user onboarding programs, allowing your users to make the most of your applications.
Whatfix can help you to design interactive product tours, onboarding task lists, and contextual guidance. And since personalization is key to engagement, with Whatfix’s user-level segmentation, you can create personalized user onboarding experiences.
The platform also solves the problem of poor product adoption that is a cause of low user retention. You can use Whatfix’s analytics data to measure and understand a user’s engagement with your product and re-engage lost users.
5⦁ Use in-app messages
As per studies, companies that use in-app messaging increased their user retention by 3.5 times as opposed to those who didn’t implement it at all.
You can use in-app messaging to increase your mobile app retention.
Some of the best strategies of in-app messaging include:
⦁ Segmenting your audience to maximize campaign effectiveness
⦁ Offering essential information while onboarding
⦁ Creating compelling headlines
⦁ Designing with the user in mind
⦁ Creating compelling CTAs
⦁ And A/B testing all your campaigns.
Here’s how Amazon uses in-app messaging for its shopping app.
The headline is compelling while offering value to the user. It can easily catch the user’s attention.
Wrapping-Up
The rate of mobile app abandonment after one use is really high.
Your business will have to implement effective strategies to stand out and engage the users lest you end up losing your active users. The strategies mentioned in this article are tried and tested. You can implement them to see positive results.
Author Bio –
Hazel Raoult is a freelance marketing writer and works with PRmention. She has 6+ years of experience in writing about business, entrepreneurship, marketing, and all things SaaS. Hazel loves to split her time between writing, editing, and hanging out with her family.
