Apps are, of course, popular all over the world. According to RiskIQ, there are over 8.93 million apps globally, and they each serve different purposes, from sharing photos and videos, to helping their customers communicate with their friends and family – and much, much more
But as exciting as apps are, a key feature that can really help yours stand out and increase engagement is an activity feed.
In this article, we’ll be taking a look at exactly what an activity feed is, why your app needs one, and we’ll also be taking a look at a few apps that are already using activity feeds to great effect.
What is an Activity Feed?
Activity feeds display the most relevant and newest information to users. It’s a form of personalization that’s designed to boost engagement and loyalty to your app because you’re curating content they actually want to see.
Indeed, by building an activity feed, you’re guaranteeing the end user will see something each time they log in to or refresh the app. This could be a piece of breaking news related to something they’re interested in, a picture, a video and more.
Why Does Your App Need an Activity Feed?
An activity feed helpfully organizes what your users see first when they log in to your app. Here is why your app needs one:
Activity Feeds are Great for Collecting User Feedback
How do you know what your customers like and dislike about your app?
While you could carry out surveys, surveys don’t always work because a chunk of your customers might not fill them out.
This is where an activity feed can prove useful because it’s a forum where your customers can interact frequently. The upshot is that you gain access to feedback directly from the end user, including what’s working about the app, and any problems they’re encountering.
Customer feedback is, of course, important because it allows us to make the right changes to our app that their enjoyment – and thus engagement – improves.
Activity Feeds Let You Personalize Content and Recommendations
Personalization should be one of your top priorities. Indeed, 99% of marketers claim that personalization advances customer relationships. Moreover, customers want a personalized experience because it shows them that a) you’re listening to them and their needs and b) in an ever increasingly busy digital world, it allows the end user to cut through the noise and consume more of what they want, and less of what they don’t want.
In-app personalized content and recommendations benefit both the end user and your business. We’ve already seen how they benefit the end user, but when it comes to your business, in-app personalized content and recommendations ensure that your campaigns start hitting the spot. Instead of shooting in the dark with your recommendations, you’re tailoring your offerings to specific customers based on their preferences.
As such, not only will engagement improve, but so too will your conversions.
Activity Feeds Makes it Easy For Your Customers to Interact With Your App
The reason people like so many photos on Facebook and reply to so many tweets is because it’s super easy to do. The app makes it easy for them. If the app made it hard for them, hardly anyone would use it. Engagement would be down.
Activity feeds work in much the same way. By improving interactivity and letting your customers track what everyone else is doing on the app, they boost ease of use. This, in turn, improves engagement and customer loyalty.
Activity Feeds Can Improve Your Customer Support
Customer support is vitally important to the success of your app. Indeed, it’s fundamental to the overall user experience.
And activity feeds are one of the best ways you can leverage in-app technology to deliver top notch customer support.
Essentially, when your activity feeds collect user feedback, they will detect some problems that customers are having with your app. You can then use your feeds to clear the issue up by offering immediate and direct support to the end user. This means they don’t even need to leave the app and head to another channel. Instead, you can keep them inside the app, which in turn increases customer satisfaction and engagement at the same time.
Brands That Use Activity Feeds
Looking for some inspiration? Wondering how to implement an activity feed of your own?
Brands that are using activity feeds include FitPlan, a personal training app that treats customers to personalized workout plans. FitPlan also has a community feed where customers can chat with friends, meet new people and even talk to FitPlan trainers.
Strava, meanwhile, comes with an activity feed that makes it easy for their users to share updates on their fitness plans and encourage and motivate others to keep going. It’s a social network app for athletes – exactly the kind of app that truly benefits from activity feeds.
Crush Them All goes down a similar route. It’s a social gaming app where the app shares gaming updates, features and more via the activity feed in order to help its users learn and get better at gaming. Such an activity feed has the knock-on effect of improving engagement.
Wrapping Up
Hopefully by now you understand the benefits of adding activity feeds to your app, and maybe you’ve got a few ideas bubbling away inside your head about the kind of activity feed you can implement yourself.
Just remember that an activity needs to be social, it needs to be designed with the end user in mind, but it also needs to benefit both the end user and your business so that you can use it to keep improving the UX and delivering the in-app goods your customers want.
About the Author
Ashley Kimler is the founder of [CopyNoise]. She’s been working remotely in the tech space since 2014. Interested in getting her advice on your blog? She’s always looking for the opportunity to share her perspective with new communities!
Featured image: ©mangpor2004
