Hi There,

The moment users first interact with your app sets the stage for how they perceive your brand. You have 15 seconds to prove your worth. If you don’t, your app will hang out in the uninstalled category.

The interesting part is the fear of uninstallation doesn’t end here. While an excellent onboarding experience can boost acquisition by 300%, continued user engagement also plays a critical role in making your app an everyday necessity.

A Full-Stack Engagement Strategy allows you to create a holistic environment that nurtures user relationships at every stage of their journey. Today, we’ll walk through a detailed process of creating a user engagement strategy that ensures the product’s success.

First Impressions that Stick

25% of users abandon an app after opening it once. Along with the onboarding process, the app’s look and feel, usage ease, and navigation are important in making the users stay.

Here’s how you can create the perfect onboarding experience:

• Keep the sign-in process as short as possible.
• Leverage personalization to create an app that understands them. Eg: Upon onboarding, Spotify asks users to choose their music preferences, which immediately tailors their experience.
• Instead of bombarding users with a long list of features, break them down into progressive stages.
• Use contextual guidance. Provide help by using in-app patterns like tooltips, modals, and walkthroughs.

Ensure Long-Term Success

Most users stick with an app for 3-7 days and if the app fails to impress them, it’s hard to keep them onboard. That’s why providing value from the beginning is essential.

• Clearly communicate the app's value proposition and benefits.
• Deliver relevant and valuable content regularly.
• Leverage personalized in-app messages and push notifications to drive habit formation.
• Provide in-app space for users to connect, share, and ask queries. 1:1 chat, AI-powered chatbots, blogs, and other resources encourage users to access the app more frequently.

Real-World Success Story: The Strava App

Strava, a fitness-tracking app, has successfully implemented a full-stack engagement strategy using both chat and feed features. It has evolved to be a social platform where users can track their workouts, share their achievements, and engage with other athletes.

Strava offers a number of versatile features to create a more personalized and social experience for users.

• A feed that functions similarly to social media platforms like Instagram, where users can post updates, upload photos, and track their progress.
• Personalized leaderboards to spark encouragement and friendly competitiveness.
• Users can follow their friends and other athletes to receive updates from each other.
• 1:1 Chat to facilitate personal conversations.
• Group Chats based on various monthly challenges to share progress and updates.
  

Their efforts to build a community of like-minded people through social features have resulted in 2 million new users joining the app every month. The app also boasts an engagement rate of 2.23% per post, which is notably higher than Facebook's 0.15% and X’s 0.05%.

Strava serves as a blueprint for the perfect holistic app because it refused to limit itself to one use case. Instead, they created a comprehensive experience for users by allowing them to connect, share, and grow all within one app.

If your goal is to provide a superior experience to users while simultaneously improving engagement, then creating a Strava-inspired app should be your top choice. And with LikeMinds pre-built SDKs, you can do that in just 15 minutes.

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