Product Management
User Engagement
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The Practica AI Coach helps you improve in User Engagement by using your current work challenges as opportunities to improve. The AI Coach will ask you questions, instruct you on concepts and tactics, and give you feedback as you make progress.Intro to User Engagement
User engagement is the level of involvement and interaction between users and a product or service. It is a critical metric for businesses to measure as it can impact customer loyalty, retention, and revenue. Engagement can be measured through various methods such as time spent on a site, clicks, and social media interactions. It is important for businesses to understand the factors that drive engagement and how to increase it.
Hierarchy of Engagement, ExpandedTo 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.
How to Measure User Engagement
There are various ways to measure user engagement, such as tracking user behavior through Analytics, conducting Surveys, and analyzing social media interactions. Metrics such as bounce rates, time spent on site, and conversion rates can provide insights into user engagement. However, it is important to consider the context and goals of the business when measuring engagement. A combination of quantitative and qualitative methods can provide a more comprehensive understanding of user engagement.
Measuring user engagementTomer 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: The Best Way to Understand Your Most Engaged UsersThe 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.
How to Increase Engagement
Increasing user engagement requires a deep understanding of user needs and preferences. Personalization, Gamification, and social media integration are effective ways to increase engagement. Providing value to users through relevant content and features can also drive engagement. Additionally, optimizing the user experience through intuitive design and ease of use can improve engagement. Regularly analyzing and adjusting engagement strategies can ensure continued success.
What To Do If Your Product Isn’t GrowingFor 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.- How to design successful social products with 3 habit-forming feedback loopsSocial 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.
What You Must Know To Build Savvy Push NotificationsPush 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.