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The most reliable way to boost user engagement is straightforward: give people what they want, when they want it. That means leading with context, not promotions. Before your product pushes a feature or an offer, it needs to first help users get where they are trying to go.
This is Part 1 in our series on the three main principles of user engagement we use to help clients reach their business and UX goals. Read Part 2 and Part 3. For an overview of our general approach to the topic, watch my video conversation with our lead product strategist, Alicia Fremling.
What Does "Boost User Engagement" Actually Mean?
This is the question that should come first but often does not get asked at all.
We hear it from clients regularly. People are not logging into their app enough. Users are not engaging with the new features the team spent months building. Upgrade options are sitting there, ignored.
Before chasing engagement metrics, it is worth asking: why are you focused on user engagement in the first place, and how are you measuring it?
- Are you trying to move a specific metric like user growth rate, mobile downloads, or subscriptions?
- Are you getting pressure from a business unit to promote a product or service that has not gotten traction?
Define your goals in terms of measurable success metrics. Then make sure those metrics are actually measuring user engagement, and not just giving your marketing team fun numbers to toss around.
How Do You Boost User Engagement?
You boost user engagement by understanding what your users are trying to accomplish, then designing your product to help them do exactly that.
That feels like a common-sense goal. But we have come across plenty of product teams who have lost their way in a dense fog of competing business priorities and urgent feature requests. Thoughtful design that anticipates user needs keeps people coming back. But it cannot be built in a day. It takes a constant focus on continuous improvement.
The sweet spot is where user needs and business goals overlap. Find that, and engagement follows naturally.
Why Does Context Matter for User Engagement?
User engagement is a natural response to contextual messaging. The problem is that many products get bogged down by random messages that look splashy but just get in the way.
Many product requests from the business assume that bigger and louder is better. If people are not using a feature or responding to an offer, the thinking goes, it is because the button needs to be red, the text needs to be bigger, or we are just not talking about it enough.
These assumptions overlook something important: you may not be prioritising your users' top jobs-to-be-done, or anticipating their needs. And even if you are, your signs need to first offer users a clear direction before they promote a specific feature or service.
What Are Jobs-to-Be-Done?
Jobs-to-be-done is a way of thinking about what users are actually trying to accomplish when they open your product. It is not about features or demographics. It is about the task a user is trying to get done right now.
When you design around jobs-to-be-done, you build a product that feels useful rather than pushy.
How Is User Engagement Like Road Signs?
Think of your product like a highway. Users need directional signs before they need billboards.
Imagine you are on a road trip and the only signs on the highway point you to the next McDonald's. That could be useful when you are hungry and looking for food, especially if you love McDonald's. But that could also be a very long, winding, and frustrating path to your actual destination.
That is why all road signs are contextual:
- The simple, easy-to-read green signs tell you how far to the next city
- The signs with the odd shapes and numbers tell you what road you are on
- Those directional signs help you make sure you are getting where you need to go
- And the billboard for McDonald's? It is placed strategically where you are most likely to act on it, like right before the exit
Your product works the same way. Help users navigate first. Then surface the contextual message that is relevant to where they are and what they have just done.
What Happens When Products Get Context Wrong?
When products skip context and go straight to promotion, users get annoyed and tune it out.
We have seen too many products littered with promos some other team said everybody needs to know about. Banners and pop-ups that take up half the scroll trying to force users to do something they do not want to do, while blocking them from doing what they actually came for.
Here is a concrete example. Say your business wants to push paperless billing. The common move is to pop up a full-page banner immediately after the user logs in to grab their attention right away. Most users will feel annoyed and frustrated as they click out of it as fast as possible to get to what they came for.
You are more likely to get higher conversion rates if you present a friendly opt-in message after they have completed a related task, like checking their account balance.
People do not come to your product to see an ad, read a marketing message, or fill out a survey about their experience. They come to do a job. Help them accomplish that job first, then offer contextual messaging that fills an additional need for them and for the business.
FAQ
How do I know if my user engagement metrics are actually meaningful? Ask whether your metrics reflect what users are doing in your product, not just what your marketing team wants to report. Metrics like session depth, task completion rate, and feature adoption tied to specific user goals are far more meaningful than raw login counts.
What is contextual messaging in UX? Contextual messaging is communication that appears at the right moment, in the right place, based on what a user is doing or has just done. Instead of showing a generic promo on login, you surface a relevant message after a user completes a task where that message is actually useful to them.
Why are my users not using the new features we built? Usually because users are not clear on how the feature helps them do something they already want to do. It is less often a visibility problem and more often a context problem. If the feature is not connected to a user's job-to-be-done, making the button bigger will not help.
What is jobs-to-be-done and why does it matter for engagement? Jobs-to-be-done is a framework for understanding what users are actually trying to accomplish when they use your product. When your product is designed around those goals, users find it more useful, return more often, and are more open to additional prompts or offers because they trust the product to serve their needs.
Where should I start if I want to improve user engagement? Start by understanding your users' needs and the core jobs they want to get done. Then look at your business goals and find the overlap. That intersection is where contextual design decisions will have the most impact on engagement.
We know what it takes to shepherd a product through that process. Start a conversation about how we can help you boost user engagement and keep you and your product on the right track.
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