How to boost your user retention by better supporting their work-life patterns.

As humans, we are undoubtedly complex.

And while that certainly makes things challenging, it also presents us with new opportunities to explore how we can better serve our users to help them reach their goals and live more fully through our product or service.

Predicting human behavior is no small task as the impact of behavioral and environmental variables can vary greatly.

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COVID HAS CHANGED HOW WE LIVE & WORK

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Take Covid for example. For many of us, it changed how we live and work.

With working from home being the new normal, people are seeing their personal and professional lives massively intertwined. If on the one end people enjoy this new setup (studies show people would rather work 5 days remotely than 4 days at the office!), on the other, it makes it harder to create boundaries which impact how people make decisions and manage their time.

Additionally, people are now spending more and more time on browsers which is contributing to a general change in how they interact with products and services.

Terms like work-life infusion, screen fatigue & wellbeing are trending like never before: having a deep understanding of our users work-life patterns thus becomes essential if we want to engage and retain them successfully.

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MASTERING YOUR USERS WORK-LIFE PATTERNS

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So what do we mean when we talk about a user's work-life patterns and why do the matter for health and wellness apps?

Knowing when people clock in and clock out, how busy their schedule is and the type of work they do means having a much better shot at predicting the context and timing of when to potentially engage with them.

And as the majority of people now work from home, (over 50% of the knowledge workers) this is a 6 to 8-hour window of opportunity apps are missing out on to meaningfully reach their users. But that is not enough.

Understanding that a user may have a very busy schedule that will lead to overwork will most likely impact their availability and willingness to engage with a long or demanding post-work activity, like for example going for a run. This does not mean that a user may not want to engage in a fitness-related activity, but it may mean providing the user with a shorter option that meets where the user is at mentally, emotionally, and physically, in this case providing her with a short stretching exercise to wind down.

This will result in greater levels of perceived empathy, and trust resulting ultimately in the ability for a user to reach a goal with a greater sense of support and fulfillment.

At 3SSENTIA, we understand the subtlety and importance that catering to a user's work-life patterns has for an engaging experience which is why our AI specialises in analysing these and other behavioral and environmental factors to help wellness & personal development apps find the right time and context to reach their users through their service or content.

Studies show 90% of users that download a health or wellness-related app drop off within 90 days, the period often associated with building a habit.

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CONCLUSION

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Despite our best intentions, we all have a hard time sticking to our best behaviors.

As product & growth people, we need to embed in our UX & user jounrey a greater sense of compassion, flexibility, and perseverance to ensure we learn and adapt to their work-life patterns to provide them with the support that drives greater satisfaction and long-term retention.

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Ready to take your user engagement & retention to the next level?

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Discover how 3SSENTIA makes it easier for your users to integrate your product into their work-life routine.

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Author:

Filippo di Lenardo

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