Snap Notes: On User Engagement

1) How invested is the user? How much pain does he feel if he leaves the site? Maybe take some points from game design – use points, leaderboards, prizes, virtual currencies, reward incentives. This works better in the short term.

2) Also along gaming lines, give people missions and goals. Example: Scrabulous is extremely popular on Facebook. The game itself is not new; it’s the competition that draws people’s attention.

3) The most successful apps are ones that users use constantly. “Productive” apps tend not to be ones that users will use every day.

4) CTR doesn’t seem to be the right metric for this environment. Numerous panel members cited “daily active users” as a necessary (but not sufficient) stat to keep an eye on. Other proposed metrics include: how deep do users go, how long does it take for user to get tired of the feature(s), session time, bounce rate, and number of uninstalls.

5) Any successful app needs to understand its user base. (This panel posited that the future lies in segmentation – general purpose networks may have more issues to contend with.)

6) Make it really easy to use an app – a max of 2 clicks, if possible. Design for lazy people.

7) All viral channels decay. All users inevitably get bored. Need to keep adding new features (duh). - Rapid product cycle: show your momentum, growth is not enough (i.e. TIVO).

8) Social distribution – Application must have social angle – credibility matters.

9) Launch winning apps is half arts, half science. It is an interaction of psychology and web analytics.

10) The general order of priorities for these apps has been: growth à depth (keeping users) à revenue.

11) There’s less room for error on mobile because a phone is much more personal to a user and they will not tolerate anything spam-like on it. It’s a very pristine channel.