User engagement is a key metric for measuring the success of any app or website. It’s a broad term that can encompass many different actions, but generally, it refers to how often users interact with your app and it’s content and how much time they spend within your app doing so.

Why is User Engagement important?

User engagement is important because it helps to ensure that users always remain interested in your product or services. If user engagement is low, it typically indicates that users are losing interest and may eventually stop using your product or service altogether. By keeping user engagement high, you can help to keep users interested and invested in your product or service.

How to increase User Engagement?

For making your app engaging, here are few qualities that your app should have:

1. Useful: The first and the most important criteria that your app must fulfill is that it should be useful. What this means is that users should have a strong reason to download and install your app. On using the app, your users should feel and agree that it serves a purpose or solves a problem for them. In the best case scenario, the users should believe that your app is indispensable for them.
2. Simple and intuitive: The app should not require the users to spend significant time and effort to learn how to use. Keeping the overall design simple reduces any friction and learning curve. A guided tour or a mini-tutorial at first app launch can help towards achieving this. Alternatively you can add passive tips by providing an on-screen tip/overlay explaining the use of a different elements or features. As a thumb rule, any feature or function should be evident or self-explanatory. This is where you need a rock-solid UX designer, since the app adoption can increase drastically if your UX is designed right. One of the few ways of validating your design can be through user reviews / user acceptance testing and end-user feedback.
3. Fluid & responsive: If your app does everything right but is slow or sluggish, then users are going to stop using it sooner than later. Ensure that your app is fluid & responsive. Develop responsive apps which adapt easily to modern high resolution smartphone displays. Even when the app is waiting for a response from the backend service, it should appear responsive to the users by showing progress bar or partial progress view.
4. Non-intrusive: Most SaaS apps tend to have popup ads or in-app purchases. However, it need to be implemented such that users do not perceive them as intrusive.
5. Beautiful: Last but not the least, a bespoke design goes a long way in attracting new users. One of the safe bets is to choose a neutral theme that will look good for majority of your target audience. Use soft colors, peppy fonts, fluid transitions and very occasionally use sound feedback for some user actions.

Want to upgrade your app design?

If your are looking to overhaul your app or SaaS design to make it more user-friendly and intuitive, our experts in UI/UX can help you create bespoke designs to make your app stand out from your competitors.