As App Downloads Ramp Up for Holidays, Make Sure Your App Is Ready to Engage New Users

With the US economy steaming along, there is every reason to believe that holiday consumers are going to feel good about spending money this year on technology. The iPhone 6 may not be in abundant supply, however there will still be enough inventory available to significantly augment new iPad sales. And of course they will be accompanied by an onslaught of new Android based products.

The purchase of all these new devices provides a perfect opportunity for consumers to try out new apps. And as an app publisher, you need to make sure that you have done everything possible to ensure new app users will become loyal users.

Your app customer will never be more interested in your app than immediately after they have made the decision that they want your app and have downloaded it. This is an extremely critical time period as you set the tone for the relationship between your app and the user. So you should do everything you can to make sure that the experience is not just great, its fantastic.

Now fantastic is a tall order, and it may seem to be a daunting task to start the process of creating that experience, however it can be helpful if you start with the basics - make sure that you eliminate things that will cause a bad experience. Such as performance issues, which are the number one killer of an app relationship. If your app does not perform optimally right off the bat, then users will abandon it. So a comprehensive program of monitoring app performance allows you to immediately address, prioritize and troubleshoot prominent app issues, ensuring that those crucial first few seconds upon app open go smoothly.

You should prepare users for communications. Push messages sometimes get a bad rap, but its not a problem of push messages themselves, it’s the sloppy and haphazard way many app publishers use them. Your app should incorporate push messages as part of an integrated app usage experience. Early in the app engagement process, you need to let users know how you are going to communicate with them, give them the opportunity to opt-in, and then use push messages smartly.

Consider providing a simple orientation upon the first time an app is opened and show users the good stuff, which is the reason they downloaded the app in the first place. If there is a registration process, keep it simple and easy. Remember – it is crucial to make sure that you keep users interested, so don’t be clunky as you introduce them to your app.

If you want to learn more techniques on how to quickly engage your users, Localytics has created the e-book “10 Ways to Better Engage App Users in 10 Seconds.” As the title suggests, the publication provides 10 tips on how to ensure that your users get a fast start with your app. It also provides advice on how to accomplish the things you need to take care of before users go full steam ahead.

For each tip, Localytics provides detailed information on how you can incorporate that tip into your app engagement strategy. They also offer specific examples of how other app publishers have used these tips to quickly and effectively connect with users.

To learn more, you can visit the Localytics website and download the publication for free.