Engaging user experience in mobile apps

App developers must focus on delivering a compelling user experience in today’s digital environment. On the other hand, engagement does not come from a random collection of novel features or ideas; it comes through creative, strategic planning and execution.

Consider the annual Wrapped feature on Spotify, for example. Users can view their favourite songs and artists, favourite playlists, and the number of minutes they’ve spent listening to music and podcasts in the app at the end. Users are readily enthralled by their usage data, and Spotify does a fantastic job of displaying it in an engaging and easily shareable style. What’s the result? A user experience that is anchored in strategy, purpose, and direction.

What do active users want?

When creating a mobile app, you should take a similar strategy. Concentrate on tailoring the user’s experience. Your goal should always be to keep users interested, and there are a few guidelines to follow to do so.

Make your app friendly, to begin with. Allowing users to find community in your app — whether through shareable content or messaging — gives them a cause to stay engaged and return time and time. When users participate, they attempt to provide positive reinforcement on that topic.

Everyone enjoys receiving praise, so consider including welcome messages or daily challenges as part of the user experience. Users will have fewer reasons to return if in-app content is unchanging. They’ll be most likely to engage consistently and for a long time if in-app material is constantly updated, bite-sized, and dynamic.

How to Make Your App More Engaging

It might be difficult to create an interesting user experience in an app, but it is an essential component of any successful product. Follow these three stages as you seek to increase user engagement and create a platform that users enjoy:

#1: Establish a high level of engagement for your product. For different products, ideal mobile app engagement could mean other things. Although the number of daily active users is a frequent starting point, it isn’t always accurate. Even your most ardent supporters are unlikely to utilise your grocery shopping app daily. To acquire an appropriate engagement assessment, you may need to change your measurement of “active” or “engaged” subscribers and instead focus on weekly or biweekly active users or time spent in the app.

#2: Conduct trend forecasting or affinity mapping. Affinity diagrams illustrate the connections between them by grouping information, opinions, problems, solutions, and issues. Affinity diagrams can turn research and data into useful knowledge and foresee economic, demographic, and social trends important to your product. Your research may demonstrate that individuals will be frightened of huge groups for several years in the event of a pandemic. You might discover that in-app chat tools are better to promote community and engagement than sponsoring concerts or events if you use affinity diagrams.

#3: Understand your target audience and their requirements. Your target audience consists of several groups with varying needs, and your goal is to design for the core consumers while also serving the secondary ones. You should be aware of your audiences’ demographics, goals, pain points, behaviours, and attitudes to decide on the most effective engagement tactics. If your target audience cares about social issues, working with a nonprofit could help them commit to your brand or software. Make sure the engagement opportunity you choose is both relevant and valuable.

It’s all too easy to get caught up in the stats, but not all apps should strive for the same usage level. If your app is intended to assist users in stopping harmful habits, for example, you should hope that it will become so popular that users will no longer require it. Put mechanisms in place to reliably track mobile app engagement and help you consistently enhance your product — and its user experience — regardless of the solution you create.