If you are like most smart phone users you have several apps on your phone and you use a handful of those regularly.
What makes those apps different?
Why do you keep coming back to them and not the others?
Those apps have succeeded in engaging your interest. You want to keep using it. Many of these apps have integrated themselves into your everyday life.
There are several ways you can improve engagement on your mobile apps to keep users coming back rather than having them sit unused on users’ phones. Make sure you evaluate which of these fits your business, mobile isn’t an arena where one-size-fits all. Your iPhone app developer or Android app developer can offer insights as to which is the best fit for your program and existing apps as well as helping you understand what is needed to implement each.
Collect Data
Whenever your users open your application they complete an action that can be tracked. This is just one type of action. Action taken within you application can be tracked using analytics. Understanding how your users use your app and knowing which features they utilize the most can be very useful information.
The cornerstone of any great engagement program will be allowing users to opt-in to data collection in order to improve their app experience. Not only will it allow you to focus your efforts for future app updates but the data will also allow you to create personalized, relevant messaging for your users.
Personalize Content
More than anytime in history there is data overload. Personalized content can cut through the clutter and be relevant to users.
To deliver content that matters to your users keep in mind their goals for using your app and then deliver information based on their user habits. As you can imagine, you won’t know those habits unless you have built a program to collect data.
Push Notifications
Customers regularly will opt-in for push notification programs (60% in some app categories). This is a huge opportunity for you and your business as push notifications are a great way to engage and retain app users.
The most effective push notification programs are offer value and are relevant to users.
Your app can improve its chances of a user giving you permission to send them push notifications if you let them know how push messages will add to their experience when asking for permission.
Mobile Only Rewards
If you have users that don’t use your app regularly, you can re-engage them by creating off mobile exclusive offers or a mobile loyalty program. Incorporate these offers with your push notifications and personalize them per the data you are collecting to maximize effectiveness.
Photo: Kārlis Dambrāns (Flikr) http://bit.ly/1emjUQV
Regardless of the purpose for your app, it important that it be built to the highest possible standards if it is going to succeed.
Modern consumers are highly experienced with mobile apps and will quickly abandon apps that don’t meet their standards. This is exactly why you should hire a professional mobile app development company to build your application.
When you hire professional iPhone app developers or Android app developers you know that your project is in expert hands.
But beyond that, there are other benefits to working with a crack team.
Cost Savings
There can be a great deal of cost associated with hiring and managing the professionals you need to build a mobile application and do the necessary online programming. But hiring and training personnel is just the start of it, as this team will need software and other assets such as test devices to complete their job. It can be much cheaper to hire a professional team to build your project. If you move ahead with in-house development you will find that unless you choose to hire experienced designers and programmers to develop your project, you are likely to waste a great deal of time and money by choosing to develop your app in-house.
Leverage Experience and Resources
Professional app design and development firms are experienced with app development and can provide their experience to your organization’s app, thereby shortening your learning curve. Teams that have build hundreds of apps will understand challenges and will have the experience to address them. They will also understand trends as they work with many customers and generally keep a careful eye on industry innovations.
Expedite Development
Specialists that have build several apps will be able to complete your mobile app in a much quicker time-frame than hiring and bringing in-house new developers. Not only will a newly hired staff have to overcome start-up challenges once hired getting to speed in their new environment but the company will need to spend time on a lengthy recruitment process. Whereas, most professional firms can start your project right away and hit stride quickly on your project.
Photo: Kārlis Dambrāns (Flikr) http://bit.ly/1eYA1Fo
Customers abandon shopping carts with items in them for a wide variety of reasons.
What can a business do to draw them back and encourage them to proceed with check out for their purchase?
A well-timed push notification can be an effective way to remind your mobile apps visitors that they have forgotten items.
How do you grab users’ attention and brings them back?
By delivering well written content that takes into account the customers themselves at a proper time.
There are three key parts to get right with this strategy. Make sure you discuss these items with your iPhone application developer or Android application developer before starting your mobile application development project so they can plan ahead to best serve your needs.
Message
Your message needs to not only grab the user’s attention but also give them a reason to come back and re-engage with your mobile app.
Typically the two factors that make the push notifications effective are sound copy and personalization.
Consider the effect a message like “You left an item in your shopping cart” as compared to “Hi Jan, the Stone Band Ring you selected is still in your shopping cart. Would you like to checkout now?” Clearly one is more inviting and likely to encourage action.
Don’t forget to utilize A/B testing with multiple messages to see which message works best for your user base. While the first message you write may sound great it might not be the right message for your audience.
Personalization
Personalization involves so much more than just including a users name in a push notification. With data you can determine the interests and preferences customers have. Customers often choose to opt-in to data programs to allow businesses to deliver content that reflects their interests and a business should not ignore the ability to improve their app by using data.
Relevant messages get results and with data you can make sure you are sending push notifications that fall within the interests of users. Send pushes to customers who have items in their cart that fall within the usual types of items they purchase. If you have a customer that regularly buys books but has a post card in their shopping cart, this probably isn’t the best time to send them a push. First of all, this items falls outside of their usual purchase patterns and it is also a low value item. Developing a set of perimeters to send out push notifications based on customer preferences and appropriate scenarios.
Consider sending pushes to clients with multiple items in their cart or higher value items. You want to send out push notifications that seem significant and not like spam to users.
Timing
The timing of a push notification can have a huge effect on how it is received.
There is no hard and fast rule. Experiment with different time frames to determine what works best for your consumers. Send out your message too soon and you seem eager, but wait to long and the customer may have lost interest in the item. Try sending out a notification 24 hours after the cart was abandoned and experiment from there.
Push notifications sent at appropriate times will be most effective and easiest for customers to open, while apps send in the middle of the night with leave a bad impression. Timing is important as users are more likely to act on messages received at convenient times, such as at lunch time or after work.
Conclusion
When customers abandon items in the cart on your app don’t feel like that sale been lost. With an effective push notification strategy these customers can be encouraged back to complete their purchases.
Photo: Jorge Quinteros (Flikr) http://bit.ly/1TqLahK