Every product has a distinct definition of engagement—for example, a travel app will always be used less often than email—and there are not any other ways to improve user engagement. Product managers widely accept the indicator as the benchmark. In the end, however, engagement is the result of people repeatedly doing significant activities inside your platform.
Every successful SaaS firm is built on a foundation of engaged and active customers; without a consistent flow of consumers utilizing your product regularly, your SaaS business isn’t truly sustainable. Furthermore, you won’t accomplish growth driven by your product.
This is because SaaS solutions earn subscription income over months or even years. It may take up to five or seven months for even the most robust SaaS enterprises to begin making a profit. Maintaining user engagement with your product for as long as feasible is crucial.
Tips To Improve User Engagement
1. Early Impressions Improve User Engagement
The whole customer journey and experience are significantly impacted by user onboarding and the ways to improve user engagement. Making a strong impression throughout your onboarding process is crucial since it’s the first time your consumers will interact with your product. Consider user onboarding as the catalyst for sustained interaction and active user conversion.
Onboarding is an excellent moment to encourage users to do worthwhile tasks and get instant benefits since user motivation is usually at its peak during this phase. Assist each new user in identifying the main value proposition of your product by guiding them through its essential features. Put another way, assist them in quickly discovering their “aha” moment.
2. Use Personalized Approach
Adding a user’s first name to an email was our previous definition of a personalized customer strategy. However, in terms of user engagement, the second sort of customization is even more successful than this dynamic content. It’s either customized onboarding or event-driven automation. The most successful applications use this strategy to provide a distinctive client journey and a personalized user experience inside the app.
For instance, the language-learning program Duolingo makes it ideal for many users by guiding new users through a customized onboarding funnel based on several tasks that need to be completed. Users’ in-app journey is influenced by the decisions they make at each level of the funnel.
3. Optimize UX Writing
UX writing should not be neglected as an answer to how to improve user engagement. Your product’s microcopy, such as CTA buttons, form descriptions, and modal dialogs, may assist users in completing tasks, translate technical information into ordinary English, and motivate them to continue using your product.
Naturally, persuasive material may also encourage trial customers to upgrade to premium accounts and become active users, thereby increasing their income. A great example of well-written, persuasive microcopy that encourages users to act is provided by Mailchimp.
Every time a user logs in, the welcoming, customized welcome letter helps to grab their attention. Additionally, Mailchimp’s feature descriptions and calls to action are brief and informative, making it easy for users to find and comprehend the capabilities they want.
4. Focus On Offering An Omnichannel Experience
A smooth connection with a user across all channels—whether through email, social media, live chat, phone, or in person—is at the heart of the omnichannel value. The omnichannel strategy ensures that no matter how or where a customer reaches out, their experience remains consistent, seamless, and personalized. It removes the traditional silos between marketing, sales, and product teams by integrating all touchpoints into a unified user journey.
This alignment enables a brand to respond to user needs in real time, with context and continuity. While implementing such an approach can be particularly challenging for large organizations due to their complex structures and systems, the long-term rewards are significant.
A true omnichannel experience increases customer satisfaction, drives higher retention, and fosters deeper engagement by making interactions feel more fluid and responsive. When users feel understood and supported at every step, they are far more likely to stay loyal, make repeat purchases, and advocate for your brand.
5. Gradually Present New And Helpful Product Features
Adding a bright new feature might be one of the really helpful ways to improve user engagement, but only if people are aware of it. New product enhancements may be effectively announced to customers via blog posts and emails. However, you must also interact with your active users inside your app if you really want to help them find and utilize your new feature.
Using Appcues, Litmus, an email marketing platform, created a straightforward tooltip informing users of the Process HTML feature’s launch. Compared to only 2% in the control group, 62% of users who viewed the tooltip went on to utilize the feature regularly. The adoption of features has increased by a staggering 22X.
6. Interact Using In-App Chat
An effective way to support clients experiencing issues with your product is by providing in-app chat functionality. This real-time support tool allows users to ask questions or report problems directly within the application, eliminating the need to switch platforms or search for help elsewhere.
In-app chat offers companies a unique opportunity to engage with users at the exact moment they need assistance, which not only improves problem resolution times but also boosts overall customer satisfaction.
Moreover, these interactions provide valuable insights into which features or aspects of the product users find confusing or problematic. By analyzing chat conversations, businesses can identify recurring pain points, gaps in user understanding, or design flaws that may hinder the user experience.
These insights can then be used to inform product improvements, redesign complex workflows, and deliver more intuitive updates. Ultimately, in-app chat serves as both a support channel and a powerful feedback loop that enhances the overall customer experience.
Read More: 8 Ways To Increase YouTube Engagement
7. Use Videos To Grab Attention
What types of educational resources are you offering your users? Most SaaS organizations commonly provide written materials such as step-by-step guides, eBooks, and blog posts to help users understand their products. While these resources can be informative, they aren’t always the most effective learning tools.
Reading through lengthy text can feel like a chore, especially when users are seeking quick answers or trying to solve a problem efficiently. In contrast, video tutorials offer a highly engaging and user-friendly answer to how to improve user engagement. Videos can communicate complex ideas more clearly and quickly than text, often using visuals, animations, and voiceovers to simplify the learning process.
They also appeal to different learning styles and tend to keep viewers’ attention longer. More importantly, video content helps foster an emotional connection with the audience. Through effective storytelling and a conversational tone, videos can humanize your brand, make users feel supported, and leave a stronger, more memorable impression that builds trust over time.
8. Collect Qualitative Feedback To Improve
Analytics tools and quantitative data are valuable for identifying your product’s performance issues by providing metrics such as bounce rates, drop-off points, or low engagement features. However, these numbers alone can’t tell you why users are experiencing friction. To uncover the reasons behind the data, you need to collect qualitative insights directly from your active users.
This can be done through live chat interactions, user feedback forms, Net Promoter Score (NPS) surveys, and session recordings. These sources offer real, human context to the raw data, helping you understand the motivations, frustrations, and expectations of your users.
Tools like FullStory, for example, allow product managers to watch session replays and observe exactly how users interact with the product—where they click, where they hesitate, and where they abandon tasks. These visual insights can reveal usability flaws, confusing interfaces, or unmet needs, enabling teams to make more informed, user-centered decisions that improve overall product experience.
9. Use Gamification
The concept of gamification has been around for years, but it is now being embraced more strategically by SaaS companies as a powerful tool to boost user engagement. In an increasingly competitive market, where user attention is limited and churn rates are a concern, gamification offers a dynamic way to keep customers actively involved with a product.
By incorporating game-like elements such as points, progress bars, leaderboards, and rewards, SaaS platforms can make the user experience more interactive and enjoyable. A practical example of SaaS gamification could involve awarding loyalty badges for specific achievements—like completing a tutorial, using a feature consistently, or referring a friend.
These badges not only create a sense of accomplishment but also encourage continued use. Additionally, users might be rewarded with free credits for engaging in activities such as sharing content on social media or leaving a review. These credits could then be redeemed for add-ons, service upgrades, or discounts, reinforcing user loyalty.
There Isn’t A Single, Universal Approach To User Engagement
Every consumer and every product is unique, which means there is no universal formula for ways to improve user engagement. What works for one user base may fall flat for another. As a result, finding the most effective strategies often involves a process of trial and error, guided by experimentation, data, and feedback.
This reality can be challenging for product teams, especially when they realize that some users may leave even when the product performs well—sometimes simply because they want to try something new. It’s an unsettling thought, but one that highlights the importance of continually evolving the user experience.
Fortunately, there are many actionable ways to boost user engagement and retain customers over time. Enhancing the onboarding process can make a strong first impression, helping users find value quickly. Refining microcopy to make interactions more intuitive can reduce confusion and improve usability.
Introducing helpful new features keeps the product fresh and relevant, while gathering and acting on user feedback shows customers that their voices matter. These efforts, whether big or small, collectively contribute to a better overall experience.
When users feel that a product understands and adapts to their needs, they are far more likely to stay loyal. In the long run, consistently focusing on user engagement not only curbs churn but also fosters sustainable growth, stronger relationships, and a more competitive product.
FAQ
Q: What part does user engagement play?
A: User engagement, which may be gauged by metrics like clicks, likes, shares, comments, or time spent, is the degree of involvement and reaction that users have with the software’s features and content.
Q: What constitutes effective user engagement?
A: The term “active” might mean various things to different items. A budgeting program may have users who log in just once or twice a month and yet classify it as high engagement, but a social media automation service may have people who log in daily.
Q: What does enhanced user engagement mean?
A: Consistent optimization, careful design, and dependable system performance are all necessary to boost user engagement. Digital platforms can provide consumers with a more engaging and customized experience and retain them over time by putting in place a strategy that supports each of these components.
