User Engagement: Transforming Clicks into Connections

Where do you start from when building your user engagement strategy?

You can begin by going over the features you already have and ensuring that they are meaningful for your users. If not, you can cut them ruthlessly and introduce new features that would provide valuable functions and would keep users engaged. You can also introduce new real time features to keep users engaged as well as gamification for better user engagement.

Let’s look in detail at some features that your users could benefit from and, thus, stay more engaged with your product.

Features to Keep Users Engaged

In order to introduce the new features to keep users engaged, first and foremost, you should understand your customer very well. You can do so by collecting your users’ data and making sure you are open about how this data is used, - it will help you create the customer profile and better understand your users’ needs without compromising their trust. Thinking about how to increase and improve user engagement, consider introducing only the features that give value to users and would constantly keep them interested and engaged with your product.

So, how to increase and improve user engagement?

1. First, try to make an unforgettable first impression.

Remember that the first impression is often the last one. So, even when the user comes to the website or app, they might leave it very soon. In order to avoid that, - help users understand exactly what your product is about and why they should care about it, - let them reach their “aha” moment very quickly. You can do so when you:

• Use UX writing effectively to give contextual messages that would guide users.
• Have relevant and intuitive design elements that speak about the product.
• Introduce such real-time feature as live chat and answer all the users inquiries immediately, - besides, it’s also a great way of making first connection and starting building trust.

2. Refine onboarding process

The main purpose of onboarding is to help the user get acquainted with your product. So, to increase user engagement, you can optimize the onboarding process in the following way:

• Virtual tour or live-guided tour. The virtual tour will help the user get more interested in your product. Introducing such a new real time feature, as a live-guided tour (a video call inside of a virtual tour) will surely keep your users more engaged with your product.
• Relevant manuals. Provide users with the manuals that will help them better understand how to use your product.
• Email drip campaign. Send useful emails to the users that will help them see all the advantages of your product.
• Wizards. Apply wizards to assist the user by following sequential steps.

3. Create the best user experience

Let users navigate through your website or app easily and effortlessly. Even more than that, create such remarkable user experience that they will want to come back to your website and stay engaged with your product. In order to achieve that, you’ll need:

• Responsive design. Responsive design helps users navigate through the content and pictures on various devices without compromising the quality of pictures or text readability.
• Easy-to-navigate website and app. Users are likely to spend more time and get engaged with the product if the website is easy-to-navigate and intuitive.
• Eliminate all the bugs. It’s very frustrating to spend time on a website that is running slow because of some bugs, -that’s why it’s important to keep the website “healthy” all the time.
• Introduce interactive experience. Gamification engagement works perfectly for increasing overall user engagement. You can get creative here, - introduce some games with reward systems to get users engaged in real time or some quiz with the scores, etc.

Enhancing User Engagement Through Content and Social Media:

• Provide product visuals and descriptions. A relevant picture can substitute hundreds of words, -besides, visual elements always add some spice and attract attention. But make sure all the visual elements are relevant to the product’s description.
• Provide relevant website content. Make sure that the content on your website is beneficial for users. You can also deliver the content via games, -it will be more engaging and interesting for users, -and gamification for engagement is one of the best strategies for getting the users more involved in your product.
• Come up with clear call to action. Let users clearly understand what steps they should do next, and clear call-to-action will definitely be helpful in providing such understanding. If it’s relevant for your product, you can add such a new real time feature as “live order status,” and it will help to keep users engaged with your product.
• Use social media as an extension of your website. Don’t underestimate the power of social media. Your users can interact with each other on social media, write comments and get more involved in the discussion, -and this is also helpful in increasing your user engagement.

4.  Introduce new real time features to keep users engaged

Establishing real time features can help you significantly increase user engagement rate, and thus, retain the customers and keep them loyal to your brand. In today’s fast developing world, once new and interesting features soon become just must-have features, and the customers get used to them quickly. Introducing new real time features can make a difference, as it’s more interesting for users to have direct interaction and will keep them interested and more focused.

So, you can engage the users in real time by introducing :

• Live chats. No one wants to wait for the answer for a long time. You can eliminate this problem easily by introducing live chats. Through live chats, users can get all their questions and inquiries answered instantly. Users can also feel valued when they have human-to-human interaction via live chat.
• Live stream. You can invite the users to participate in live stream sessions and get engaged by being able to ask direct questions after the live stream. Such sessions can have an educational character and give your users relevant information about the product as well as show how to use the product properly.
• Live events for customers. You can organize webinars, invite some experts in the field to give speeches that will be useful for the customers. After the event, users could ask questions in such a way, not only receive valuable information but also get more engaged with your product.
• Establish digital community. It's also important for the users to interact with each other, to be able to ask each other questions, discuss relevant information, and so on. Upon establishing digital community, you create for your users valuable platform where like-minded people can gather and discuss all the relevant information.

Gamification Engagement

Gamification is the use of game-like elements to other areas. It is used in business as one of the marketing techniques with the aim of improving user engagement. Games usually have an end-goal or the state of winning. Games can be used to foster motivation and to provide a more playful (thus, more interesting and engaging) experience for users.

You can apply the following gamification elements for keeping users more engaged:

• Quizzes. Quizzes can contain questions related to the content on your website or some specific topics. The users will be motivated to get high scores and to complete the quizzes in the best way
• Points, scoring. Let users get some scores or points by completing some interactive activities like answering questions, participating in competition between users, etc.
• Rewards or incentives. People love getting rewards for completing some activities. And if you offer some discounts or free participation in the webinar as a reward, -you’ll get more engaged users. You can also offer special status for the most active users.
• Progress bar. If users get to see their progress, they are more likely to complete their activities. Progress bar is a great motivational element.

How to Increase Your App’s User Engagement  

If you wonder how to increase user engagement in an app, the answer is simple: all the pieces of advice that we’ve shared about improving user engagement on the website are relevant for increasing user engagement on the app.

So, to summarize it:

-  try to create memorable first impression of the app

-   make the most out of app onboarding

-   let your users have the best customer experience

-   introduce real-time features

-   never underestimate the power of gamification elements

Also, regarding the apps, you could use in-app messaging to improve customer engagement. Additionally, it’s a good idea to add relevant location-based app suggestions.

You can also increase engagement by giving attention to your users.

Let your users feel special when they visit your website and/or app. The attention you give to every user will be much appreciated, and when they feel special, they are more likely to stay loyal to your product.

How can you make every user feel exceptional?

-   first, use only personalized approach and start the message with the user’s name

-   second, establish reward system for loyal users

-   third, offer free trial or free help to newcomers

-   fourth, provide only useful content

-   fifth, offer your users option to connect with the experts in the field (it can be via additional payment)

How to Increase User Engagement by Building Trust

According to the salesforce research, 95% of customers admit that they are more likely to stay loyal to the brand if they trust the company, so nurturing trust becomes a new business imperative. Also, according to the same research, customers expect “to be treated like a person, not a number”, so personalization is another important component, as well as the transparency of how your customers’ data are used.

Building a trusting relationship between you and the customers will help you develop long-term relationships, as well as significantly increase user engagement. But keep in mind that establishing a trusting relationship takes time and effort, it doesn’t happen overnight. It is like building the bridge between you and the customer, -it requires a long time to construct that bridge, -and once it’s built, always make sure that it’s steady and strong.

So, what are the ways of establishing trustful relationships and increasing user engagement?

-   First of all, deliver a continuous high-quality experience for every customer.

-   Use personalized approach to every customer

-   Be open about how (and what for) you use users’ data, don’t hide anything

-   Honor your commitments and be responsible for your words, -always keep your promises

-   Don’t be afraid to admit openly if you did something wrong,  

Once you’ve established the bridge of trust between you and the users, you can add up elements for building your strategy to increase user engagement. Trust is simply the foundation for constructing a more complex user engagement strategy that will help keep the users loyal and fuel your business.

How to Increase User Engagement. Key Takeaways

It takes time and effort to establish trustful relationships with users, and then to keep them engaged with your product and loyal to your brand. But if you make the effort and build the right strategy for user engagement and then work on increasing user engagement, -all your efforts will be paid off.

So, to increase and improve user engagement, you should certainly:

• Concentrate on creating only valuable features. Make sure that all the features you offer are really beneficial and valuable for your users, -if not-get rid of them, learn to prioritize.
• Notify users about new features and updates. Always let users know when you’ve introduced new features and/or updates and describe them in detail. Highlight all the perks of those features, give detailed instructions on how to use them. You could also let users experiment with them in real time.
• Gather qualitative user feedback. Try to ask the users directly about their experience, -it will give you room for improvement. You could also use customer surveys or ask users to rate your product in order to see how to enhance user experience.

A-Team Global -Your Helping Hand in Boosting User Engagement on Your Website or App

At A-Team Global, we can help you improve user engagement by giving you qualitative feedback on how your website/app operates and how it can be further improved. With 10 years of experience in the market, we’ve helped hundreds of clients in operating their online business. Whether you need a website to be created from scratch or need help in improving your website for better user engagement, highly-skilled tech specialists at A-Team Global will help you with everything you need.

Let’s briefly review how we’ve already helped the companies to improve user engagement.

Reaching 15% increase in subscribers after completing marketing campaign app update

The customer requested to review their martech app, redesign it to better fit their business goals, and re-power it with newer technology. But our collaboration turned out to be so fruitful that we have also added several additional features to make the app even better tailored to their business needs. A thorough analysis was done as to which features would be best valuable for users and could drive more traffic. As a result of our work, the number of subscribers to the app has increased by 15%, so the users became much more engaged with the app.

Boosting user engagement by adding specific features for flower delivery eCommerce website

The customer’s initial request was to create a simple eCommerce website for ordering flowers. But our professional and experienced team went beyond that and offered to create an Enterprise Resource Planning system for keeping all the issues under control. Our team has also analyzed what features to include that would keep users engaged with the website from the very beginning. Eventually, the following features were implemented: catalog, quick search, instant ordering, live chat and feedback from it, search filters, smart ordering system, payment system integration, promo features, and created mobile-friendly version. As a result of our work, a tiny business has soon become a medium-sized one and has attracted many more users.

Updating website for health industry with new features for better user engagement

The customer reached out for us with the request to review the legacy code of the app built a few years ago by another team, refactor its core modules and create a number of new features based on the new design and layout. Our team not only successfully reviewed the code but also added core features for better website performance and better user engagement. Our team has updated the website design making it more user friendly; added new user roles with specific sets of permissions and functions; introduced new systems for collecting data since it is very important for users to see all the data well-organized and properly structured. All these features made the website more attractive for users and helped boost user engagement.