A big part of the success of an app relies on how it retains and engage users so they go back again and again. After all, it’s not all about getting a large number of installs but about how users find the app valuable. That’s why we’d like to tell you some tips to increase your Android app user engagement.   

According to Google data, an average user has 36 apps on its smartphone, from which 3 out of 4 are not regularly used. Of those remaining (9) apps, user behavior tells us that there are almost three that will be used only once.     

Therefore, engaging and retaining users are considered among the best practices you should work on in order to make your app grow.

Engaging your users

One of the best things you can do is to take advantage of Google tools at your disposal. Apps links and Firebase can help you with this.

By linking your app, your allowing its content to be searchable on Google or take users directly to a specific place inside your app. In recent years, these practices have been improved with Firebase Dynamics Links and Fire App indexing, providing more control over how links work on multiple platforms or when an app is already installed or not.

More recently, Google Play Instant has been released as an option for developers to give users the opportunity to try their app and have a faster Android experience without an installation being required.      

Also, notifying your users about relevant information is a good way to remind them of your app. However, to do this, you´ll have to make a plan considering your goals, each one of your user groups and other possible channels to deliver the message, for instance.   

Understanding your users

Another important task when looking to increase user engagement is letting them know you really care about what they have to say.

Make sure to read all the reviews and ratings of your app, but most importantly, try to answer to critics in the right way if you want to positively engage with them. You should provide other contact channels like a website or an email.

Also, using Google Analytics for Firebase helps you observe user behavior and identify specific groups within your app.

Adding the Firebase SDK to your app will help you find important data of what type of content -ads- you can offer to your different users or build a Google Ads (the new brand name for Google AdWords) remarketing campaign to contact again those users who haven’t used your app in a while.

Keeping your app updated and improving its performance

Nowadays, we are all used to constant change, whether it is a big one or a little one. Making your app more engaging requires integrating new features, optimizing for other platforms or make use of the latest trends, so we don’t get behind.

Updates show you are committed to your app and it’s also a chance to integrate new attractive features such as Machine Learning or Actions for Google Assistant, for instance.

You can also extend your app to other devices like Wearables or Chromebooks, which are interesting markets for developers to explore, in order to make their app grow.      

Besides, we´ve seen how stability and performance are key to increase your retention rate, and that’s when a tool like Android Vitals comes to the rescue to help you improve your app quality and reduce users abandon.   

Wrapping up

Increasing user engagement is a very important part of an app business. There are a lot of great Android tools developers can use and there are even more best practices to implement for this matter.

For a full list of best practices to increase user engagement, head to the developer Android official site.