Engagement in SaaS Platforms

Defining and Comprehending Engagement in SaaS Platforms

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Defining and Comprehending Engagement in SaaS Platforms
Before we can tackle the issues surrounding SaaS engagement, it's important to clarify it's nature and what can happen if it's disregarded completely. Ideally, you want to onboard as many new users as possible. But this is only half of the battle... Earning new users is one thing. Keeping them using presents a whole new layer of challenges.

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If you fail to focus on and motivate new users, they are more likely to abandon your product and never return. Proper design centers around your platform providing useful, clear and meaningful action to these users, easing their passage through your software. If you can offer this type of “behind the scenes” assistance, you're able to increase the odds your users will return to your product, ultimately improving your level of service and success. In other words, your clients will choose to keep coming back and be more satisfied than ever.
However, it is useful to first define SaaS engagement, as it will make the steps of improving this type of metric seem less complex and insurmountable. We also aim to break down how the level of engagement for your customers can affect your business. At heart, all businesses can benefit from a solid foundation of understanding engagement.


Defining Engagement:
So you know you need to optimize your level of engagement. But what does that mean?
We call the overall percentage of users actively participating within your business over a certain time period the “engagement rate”. Engagement rate can be a strong indicator towards the viability and longevity of your platform. Even seemingly minor modifications that are made to your platform can lead to drastic effects (both positive or negative) and can be used to gauge potential future opportunities (or pitfalls) for your product. With the right resources, it can be possible ahead of time to know how successful your proposed changes will be. If you'd like to know more, we explore this concept in more detail on our blog.


Methods to Assess Levels of User Engagement:
Working towards heightened levels of engagement is important. But how can you know how strongly your customers engage with your product?
Accurately measuring the engagement level of your SaaS platform requires specific tools. Fortunately, there are a selection of appropriate tool suites available, such as Predikat, which gauges multiple engagement metrics. Common metrics that are tracked include frequency of usage, percentage of active users, the level of user churn and the amount of time a user invests towards using your platform. Appropriately dividing your focus among several different metrics can help you improve all of them over time (Source).
Failing to measure and interpret these metrics limits precisely how well you know your customers and knowing how engaged they are with your services. But fortunately, once you have this data and know how it's useful to you, you will be in a position to action tweaks, additions and other adjustments to increase engagement levels, effectively elevating the success of your product.


Moving Forward with Engagement Rate Data:
Now you should have a better idea of what engagement is and, with the right tools, can tell how engaged your users are. But where do you go from here?
Once you have clear insight into your engagement rate, you can begin to create informed objectives as to how you want your service to improve. There are different types of objectives you can aim for, as success can be defined many different ways (and also can vary from platform to platform). Some examples you may set for your business are:
-Improving user satisfaction
-Raising your revenue/sales figures
-Increasing brand awareness for your product or service
-Elevating the number of active users on your platform
-Escalating your number of loyal users
For example, if you were attempting to gain more loyal customers, you may consider offering a user loyalty program, offering rewards, discounts or other types of incentives to keep them returning. If you want to improve customer satisfaction, you might consider adding live chat functionality to your product, allowing your users to get the online help they need to move forward.
By defining how you can grade your future success through these types of objectives, you are able to take steps and formulate tactics, effectively moving towards measurable improvement.
Want to know how Predikat can help you grade your user engagement? Connect with us today. 

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