The document discusses 5 steps to better user engagement: 1) Measure user metrics to understand engagement; 2) Eliminate hurdles for new users such as confirmation emails; 3) Provide guided onboarding processes like wizards; 4) Implement lifecycle drip marketing emails for different user stages; 5) Include in-app notifications and tours to highlight features. It provides examples from companies like Twitter, Shopify, Fiverr and Google that implement these strategies well.
1. 5 Steps To Better User Engagement
Siddharta Govindaraj
siddharta@silverstripesoftware.com
http://tourmyapp.com
@tourmyapp
http://facebook.com/tourmyapp
2. Measure, measure, measure
You have to know what your users are doing before you can come up
with an engagement strategy. How many people are signed up and
never logged in? How many are highly engaged? What are the key
activities a use must perform in order to start getting engaged?
3. Measure, measure, measure
Metrics will tell you exactly how a
person has used your product.
The dashboard on the left shows one
of the test users of Tour My App. We
know when this account was created,
when the user last logged in, how
much activity the user has done in
our app, whether they have created a
tour or not.
With this information, we can get a
better picture of app usage. Every
app must have a dashboard like this
4. Eliminate humps for new users
Signup → Confirmation Email → Login
Confirmation Email is a hump for new users. They might type their
email address wrong and never get the email. Their ISP might block
the email. It might go into Spam/Junk. Even if they get it, the act of
leaving your app, and switching over to their email software is a speed
breaker. By that time, they may decide to check out your app later and
never do it. A large % of users will sign up and never login.
Signup → Login → Confirm Later
5. Eliminate humps for new users
Signup → Integrate → Experience
When building Tour My App, we needed the user to perform an
integration in order to create and run tours. Until the integration was
done, you couldn't use the app. Integration was dead simple, but it
meant the user (usually marketing person) giving it to a developer,
getting it approved, and deployed. The process could take weeks!
Guess what, many didn't go through and experience the product.
Signup → Experience → Integrate
We built a custom Google Chrome extension just to eliminate this
hump. The extension enabled the user to start using Tour My App
without having to do the integration. After they signed up, they used the
product immediately. Once hooked, they are much more likely to
expedite the integration.
6. Getting Started Process
Twitter uses a wizard onboarding
process. A wizard is a separate set of
pages solely for onboarding a new
user.
When you sign up for a Twitter
account, you'll get a screen like the
one on the left. The Twitter Teacher
will tell you what twitter is all about
and will help you quickly find users to
follow based on your location,
interests and friends already on
Twitter
8. Getting Started Process
Shopify is a site that allows anybody
to set up a shop and sell items
online. Most people who want to sell
are non-technical. Yet, there is a
significant amount of setup to be
done before a shop can be created.
Unlike Twitter, which uses a wizard,
Shopify uses in-application tours to
guide the users.
10. Getting Started Process
Guided pop-ups show what you need to do to complete each task
As you complete tasks, the tutorial bar at the bottom shows you what
you have completed and what you need to do next
11. Getting Started Process
Shopify could have taken the user directly to the theme page when
they clicked the link on the tutorial bar. Instead they show where the
link is located on the navigation.The next time the user wants to
change the theme, they know exactly where to look for it.
12. Lifecycle Drip Marketing
Lifecycle drip marketing is basically
sending out a number of small,
relevant emails over the course of a
user's lifetime with the product.
The email on the left is an example
of a signup lifecycle campaign. It is
sent out when the user first signs up.
Followup emails may be
automatically sent every few days
after signup.
13. Lifecycle Drip Marketing
This email on from fiverr is an
example of inactivity lifecycle
campaign.
The email is sent when a user is
inactive for a certain period of time.
Follow emails may be sent as the
inactivity period grows, eg: first when
the user is inactive for a week,
another when inactive for a month,
another when inactive for 3 months
and so on.
The idea is to help users get started,
get re-engaged or bring back inactive
users.
14. Lifecycle Drip Marketing
This email from google is a behaviour lifecycle campaign. They
analyse their user's usage and find features they haven't used. The
email campaign targets unused features to try and make basic users
start using advanced features, thereby hooking them into the product
further.
15. In Application Notifications
In-application notifications can be used to show users how to perform
tasks in you application, or highlight features that the user might be
interested in. They can be simple single-box notifications, or complex
multi-step tours. Here is an example from Microsoft's new outlook.com
17. In Application Tours
In application tours are a more general case of in-application
notifications. Instead of just a single notification box, guided tours
consist of multiple steps. Tours can be purely informative, or interactive
(wait for the user to perform an action before continuing)
Here is a walk through of a tour that Google used in YouTube
18. In Application Tours
As you click Next, the tour shows different elements on the page with an explanation of
the element
20. facebook.com/tourmyapp
If you are interested in the topics presented here, go to facebook.com/tourmyapp and
Like the page. We share tons of content on conversion optimisation, trial conversion,
user engagement, drip marketing, onboarding, and related themes
21. Tour My App
Tour My App is a tool that allows any web app developer to integrate in-application
guided tours, getting started tours, and in-app notifications into their product.
If you looked at the examples of Shopify, outlook.com, Facebook, YouTube and Google
and thought I wish I could do this in my app, then Tour My App is for you.
Free 30 day trial and plans starting at just $5/month.
Sign up today at http://tourmyapp.com
22. Sequence
Sequence is a tool for drip marketing campaigns. Easily integrate with your analytics
data and create signup, inactivity and behaviour driven lifecycle campaigns within
minutes.
All the cool stuff that we showed you from Skillshare, Fiverr, and Google Analytics can
now be done by you.
Sequence is currently in development. You can sign up as an early customer to get
access to the application pre-beta. Sign up at http://sequencemyapp.com
