User Retention – The Ultimate Challenge For Entrepreneurs

By Author: Jennifer Lewis
Total Articles: 304
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The amount of competition going on in the business world has made attracting customers tougher, more complex and expensive every coming day. This made Apple change its app store ranking algorithm recently with the motive of incorporating ratings and retention. This resulted in finding users getting harder than before. Not only finding new users have become tough but also business owners are facing tough time in retaining existing users. Thus, in this write-up we will look at a few ways to increase the user retention rate.

Regular updating – The first approach towards retaining existing customers is to keep updating your app regularly. Customers may have downloaded your app by being allured by your ad campaign or because of its features, but once they are in, you need to look for ways to keep them tied in with the app. In this pursuit, what you can do is release regular updates with negligible yet interesting changes and features to revive consumer's interest in your app. However, it is important to strike a balance in release time of updates, as frequent (monthly) updates would force people to stop taking interest ...
... in the app. On the other hand, delayed updates (4-5 months), would make people get bored of your app and stop using it.

Wise use of notifications - I have mentioned above about maintaining a balance between update releases. Similarly, it is even crucial to determine the frequency of push notifications. The first rule is to not to stuff users' smart phones with unnecessary and irrelevant messages. Secondly, give users, an option of choosing the notifications rather than assuming yourself about their liking and interest. Next step in this process is to determine the frequency of updates. Business owners should first test the frequency they want to use with their friends, family and peers and seek their review. Also, determine the content of the push notification, try to keep it concise yet inclusive, easy to grab, catchy and with a clear call to action.

Using social networks wisely – Continuity in your relationship with your customers helps a lot in customer retention. No doubt, they are your best pals on the app but ultimately, you need to develop an off-app relation as well, that touches social networking websites. The perfect example in this context is the Facebook page of "Angry Birds" that used social media to build its brand and rewarding audience for being the part of social media conversations. The bottom-line here is – don't just develop apps but brands that convert into a broader community.

Smart use of game dynamic – The principle of user retention is very simple. If you want users to retain their interest in your app, you need to give them the reason. Gaming dynamics can help a lot in this. No matter what kind of app you have, you can always make it entertaining by including few games, quiz contests; trivia etc. and reward users for taking part in them. Business owners should also use the method of honouring their users by badges, acclamations, flashing their names with their achievements during ads. It also involves using games where users are bound to take a certain action within the given time limit to avoid being penalized or punished.

CONCLUSION

Running an app doesn’t always mean buying more ads or acquiring new customers. There are instances when retaining the existing users may churn more revenue for you. But for this, you need to make a strong user-retention strategy and include above-mentioned steps in it.

The author works with one of the leading enterprise mobile app development has a team of experienced iPad app developer that offers mobility solutions and app development Dallas.