What Is Engagement Rate

Engagement rate refers to how many people interact with your app or website. It shows you how engaging your product is. To calculate it, you take the number of engaged users and divide by the total number of users.

Benchmarking Engagement

A good engagement rate for an app is 1-5% and 50-70% for websites. The exact target will depend on your industry and business goals. Compare your engagement over time to see if you're improving. You should also compare against competitors to make sure you're in the ballpark. 

Why Engagement Rate Matters

Engagement rate tells you how well your app or website is connecting with users. If people are highly engaged, they're sticking around, clicking links, and actually using your product. For businesses, this means higher revenue, more sales, and better brand loyalty. 

Improve user experience

Engagement metrics also point to ways you can improve. If people are bouncing quickly from your site or barely using certain features in your app, that's a sign of a poor user experience. Look at where users are dropping off or hesitating and make changes to smooth out pain points. Small tweaks to onboarding, navigation, or the kinds of experiences can make a big difference.

Run gamification mechanics like loyalty programs, referral programs, challenges, streaks, etc. to boost engagement rate. 

Calculating Engagement Rate for Apps and Websites

To understand how engaged your users are, you need to calculate your engagement rate. This metric shows the percentage of users who take action on your site or in your app.

Engagement Rate = Total engagements or engaged users / Total users * 100 

For websites, look at page views vs unique visitors. If you had 100 unique visitors last month and a total of 500 page views, your engagement rate would be 5 page views per visitor (500/100 = 5). The higher the number, the more pages each visitor viewed — indicating higher engagement.

For mobile apps, calculate opens vs daily active users (DAU). If you had 50 DAU last month and 200 app opens, your engagement rate would be 4%  { (50/200) * 100) }. This means on average, each user opened the app 4 times per day. The more times a user opens your app, the more engaged they are.

Engagement rate gives you insight into how compelling your user experiences are. Make improvements to boost this key metric, and your visitors and users will stick around longer and come back more often.

Tips to Improve Engagement Rates

To boost engagement with your app or website, focus on optimizing the user experience. 

1) Make it personal

Personalize the experience for your users based on their preferences and past behavior. Send personalized messages and content recommendations to keep them engaged.

2) Keep them engaged

Once you have users, work to keep them engaged. Integrate loyalty programs, give rewards, run challenges, and make the experience interactive. The more people engage with your app or site, the more likely they are to become loyal users.

3) Simplify the interface

A clean, simple interface is key. Remove any clutter or distractions and make the most important actions and content prominent. Use spotlight or tooltips to highlight a feature on the app or feature, to drive usage. People should be able to quickly and easily find what they're looking for. Confusing or complicated interfaces will turn many users away.

4) Improve load times

Nothing frustrates users more than slow load times. Optimize your site for speed by reducing file sizes, enabling compression, and caching data. Fast, responsive sites keep people engaged - they can access the content they want without delay. Slow load times, on the other hand, lead to high bounce rates as people quickly leave your site.

5) Analyze and optimize

Track key metrics like page views/ opens, bounce rates, and conversion rates. See which features are most engaging so you can optimize them, and identify drop off points to make data-driven decisions and improve the overall experience.