The Ultimate Guide to Boost Retention

Boosting retention can mean simply finding a way to keep users on your site in a shorter period of time, like trying to get them back the next day. It can be a long term journey, a frequent user over months or years. But the keys to achieving this are still the same. You want to keep people with your business or site, retain them in a period of time. Time to dive in...

Retention Boosts

User retention is the life line needed for your website. The very core of user retention is not just a fancy metric but a reflection of how magnetic - sometimes called sticky - or compelling your site is. Each time a user is visiting your site again we can count that user as a retained user.

The most challenging area by far is how to keep people. But let's tackle this in the following mindset. We are ultimately talking relationships. No different from a lover, college, client or anyone you wish to build long term relations with. Your users liked your site, they came to your site so you obviously had something there to make your site attractive and a pleasant experience.

Retaining them or even getting them back should be obvious right? If you saw the person of your dreams in a bar or cafe and you hit things off, you would have a clue about what they liked from you, so how is this different? Compliment and feedback.

Lovers tiff

Like all relationships there are ups and downs. Your user is a happy person, browsing, consuming and engaging on your site. Then something, an event happens and they simply ghost you. So what went wrong? In the case of anonymous users on a website we can only work on trends, but we do have a simple list of rules on our checklist that we can run through before we dig into the fixes. Problem solving hats on, we are going to get busy.

Checklist and actions

Top of the list - is your site working? Have a browse through, even as obvious as it sounds, physically open pages and make sure it performs as you expect. If everything looks great, lets expand this to include countries and this would need a VPN so you can masquerade as a user form that country, of course.

Changes that you made? i always suggest and A/B or A/B/n test before making something live, but not all of you reading this have that luxury. Sometimes the smallest thing can dissengage a user. If you are one of the people who tells me they are not sure of that, ask yourself what the last argument with your partner was about? A car wreck or who cleaned the bathroom? Most drop off issues are minor, just like lovers argue over who looked at that other person.

World events, or things related to the real world not cyberspace, can influence users as we are a product of our environment. Many times we see seasonal dips, lower spending during vacation times, schools closed and pupils off there is a rise in online games, a drop in certain online shopping - or in summary leisure activities goes up and online consumerism drops.

Competition can be a factor, have you checked who is trying to market against you? Several portals and tools exist to help you find what are the common trends and who is looking for what on the web, in fact Google has a Trends tool that gives some very interesting insights, another topic I feel...

Mastering Retention

When we talk about user retention we have to remember this is an art. From the above, we have an idea why people drop off, trends, seasons, changes, breaks in the site or a lack of fresh content - yes, I throw that gem in as a reward for reading this far. Steps for mastering retention can be broken down into these simple stages.

Ensure you monitor your website and changes. This means all changes, everything, from images to text to page layouts. If you do not have a QA source that does testing, you do a bit of manual testing on devices and browsers. This will alert you to when drops happen, what did you do to make that happen. Keep things fresh! yes, the golden nugget - if your site is old and stale, why would anyone come back. We are consumers, we want to consume and be fed your content.

Marketing and user relationships are often thought of as the number one for retention but sadly this is not true. Marketing can even have a negative effect, less is more and more means less - so making sure the right user gets the right message at the right time about the right topic is essential. Marketing do have a critical role though, make sure your users know what is fresh, what is coming and how to sell them into your site and brand.

Release the Kraken!

There is a direct impact on you COA/ROI with every user you retain. The value your user provides can be measured in a few ways. Monetary, virality and Engagement. Some users are more likely to make purchases and this is directly related to adding value in the cash sense. Some view ads or open emails which helps the business improve its score with 3rd party providers. Some are viral, spreading the word, a type of Word-of-Mouth marketing user as we might think. Either way, the more users you retain, the less you spend to get new ones and more value you can achieve with them.

Condense everything we said so far and we can see we need something fun, fresh, social, low barrier to entry and delivers a positive experience. A way to keep users interested and engaged and in worst case scenarios get them back to your site. If only there was a magical way to do this?

The Game Silo games

A shameless plug of our fantastic platform, and now back to the business. We can explore a few options such as introducing new Challenges and Rewards. After all, the thrill of playing a game and earning a unique badge or reward maybe even accessing a previously locked feature is a great driver for a user to get involved. A sense of accomplishment acts as a magnet, drawing users back repeatedly. In short, give them a reason to return and engage with your platform in a fun way, playful and rewarding and the elevation in the experience will trigger social spread.

Social features at the core of the site allow social interaction, competitions allow users to chase a challenge and instinctively users like to tell other people about this activity that spiked their dopamine levels. This intrinsic nature can work wonders for user retention.

In summary, a gaming world combined with user retention is a plan for success. We created captivating games to ensuring your players stay engaged, loyal, and, most importantly, satisfied on your site. We offer a suite of services and tools tailored to the unique needs you have. The Game Silo has the expertise and services to guide you through the best practices and strategies to keep your players engaged and coming back for more.