User Engagement

To build an enduring consumer product, you must maximize user engagement in three levels: 1. Grow users who complete your core action, the single most important action that defines your product. 2. Retain users through accruing benefits and mounting losses as they use the product more. 3. Finally, create virtuous loops where user engagement fuels self-perpetuating growth through network effects and other feedback cycles. Of these, network effects are the strongest virtuous loop as they improve the product simply by users using it more. Interesting products like Evernote have succeeded at the first two levels but failed to create virtuous loops to reach the third level of enduring growth.

Tomer writes about how user engagement can reveal how much a product is meeting a human need and how much people are engaged in using it. Companies can measure user engagement by looking at the frequency, intensity, or depth of interaction between a user and a product, feature, or service over a given period. In measuring engagement, the HEART framework can be used as a guideline to choose and define appropriate metrics. It includes five dimensions: Happiness, Engagement, Adoption, Retention, and Task success. To measure engagement, businesses should avoid the mistake of only measuring overall engagement or reporting a total count. Instead, they should focus on identifying the core, most valuable, revenue-driving, or satisfaction-driving features and track their user engagement.

The Power User Curve, which plots the number of active users by number of days active in a month, provides a richer way to understand user engagement than DAU/MAU. It shows if there are hardcore, daily power users and the variability among users. Over time, it can reveal if engagement is improving. It can also be used for different user actions beyond just app opens. Not all products need daily use to succeed. Those with infrequent engagement should find ways to monetize when users are active. The 7 day Power User Curve can be useful for workweek products. Comparing cohorts over time shows if products are becoming more engaging. The curve can be based on core activities that matter most. What matters is using the right metrics for each business. The shape of the curve indicates different opportunities for product improvement and monetization strategies.

For a product to grow, founders must first define the critical user journey they want users to take. This involves mapping out the optimal steps from a user's first action to their end goal. Companies should then measure how well users are progressing along this journey through key metrics at each step. Products should focus on levers that move these metrics, like notifications or suggestions, while avoiding adding too many features that obscure the journey. Finally, studying the actions of the most engaged users can reveal the pivotal moments that new users need to replicate for growth.

Social products like Facebook and Twitter succeed based on three feedback loops: content creation, content consumption, and meaningful connections. Content creators are rewarded when people engage with their posts, fueling more creation. Consumers are satisfied when they see relevant, frequent updates. Meaningful connections between creators and consumers drive relevant content and social feedback, stimulating further creation. However, if any loop fails due to irrelevant content, stagnation can set in. Andrew provides a checklist to evaluate if the loops are healthy for a given social product. Innovations in social products over the past decade have tweaked different aspects of these feedback loops to achieve success.

Push notifications have the potential to be a powerful tool for re-engaging users and boosting app usage. However, they must be timely, personalized and actionable to be effective. Developers must ask users for permission to send notifications and then measure key metrics like opt-out rates, uninstalls and actions per notification to ensure they are not annoying users. As mobile devices evolve, notifications delivered at the right context will become even more important for guiding users and reminding them of what matters. If done well, smart notifications can become the most intimate feature of mobile apps, like a close friend who remembers your preferences.