How to Enhance Mobile App User Experience with Personalization

There are plenty of video streaming apps and OTT platforms out there with awesome content, yet I always end up choosing Netflix whenever I feel the urge to watch something. Why? Because of the personalized user experience, Netflix serves millions of users, including me.

With the ever-increasing level of competition in iOS and Android app stores and the advantages of custom app UI/UX design for businesses, personalization is one of the last great differentiators.). This is not lost on many mobile app developers who have started making significant shifts towards personalization.

According to Google, 89% of US marketers reported that personalization on their apps resulted in an increase in revenue, and 63% of smartphone users are more likely to purchase from companies whose mobile apps offer them relevant recommendations. So, creating a unique and personalized user experience has become an essential differentiator for mobile app developers.

Personalized App User Experience: What and Why

Personalization is dynamic and deals with real-time individualization of a mobile app (or anything else) to suit visitors' unique needs and guide them through a custom conversion funnel. In short, personalization is all about tailoring the app experience to meet the needs of a specific user. 

Why personalize? Simple, because your users want you to personalize. We humans are rare creatures; we want to feel special, we all want to be understood, and we all want things tailored just for us. That's why an app developed with personalization can convert a user for life.

App personalization can include push notifications, recommendations, suggestions, tips, discounts, special offers, and more, all tailored (or seemingly tailored) specifically for the user.

Benefits of a Personalized Mobile Application:

• Higher User Retention
• Improved Customer Experience
• Increased Engagement and Conversions
• More Timely and Relevant Interactions
• Greater Customer Affinity and Word of Mouth
• Increased Brand Loyalty
• Improved App Quality
• Better Customer Support

Top 8 Proven Ways to Enhance Mobile App User Experience with Personalization

Personalized UI/UX Design

A professional mobile app UI/UX designer endeavors to solve a user's needs because a successful app design makes users feel more comfortable with your app, giving them what they want when they want it. Users are more prone to stay with your app when their needs are met with little or no friction.

Strong User Data

Users want to have a streamlined and personalized experience tailored to their needs and interests. By collecting the correct user data, including age, gender, interests, profession, location, preferences, likes and dislikes, purchase history, app activity, and more across channels and platforms, you can understand your customers' in-app actions, responses, and behavior to ensure a great personalized app experience. 

Navigation Experience

Apart from your users' search, browsing, click behavior, and consumption history, you can personalize how your users navigate your mobile app. Parameters, including gender, buyer personas, geolocation, time of day/time zone, and seasons/weather, can be harnessed to personalize the images, graphics, CTAs, trending offers, and more.

Personalized Search Experience

User intent plays a vital role in making your app successful. When users conduct a search on your app, it's a solid signal of intent (users' wants, needs, and preferences). Your aim must be to direct your users to exactly what they want faster. Therefore, personalizing the search experience helps you reduce the path from product discovery to purchase significantly.

Push Notifications

When considering enhancing the app user experience with personalization, push notifications are the first thing that comes to mind. Sending users relevant and engaging push notifications is a good way to interact with your users, even when they're not using your app. This keeps your brand name fresh in your users' minds and keeps them up to speed with your app's new additions and upgrades. 

Personalized App Marketing

Personalized app marketing utilizes information based on personal interests and picks. This way, a user receives helpful information that relates to his/her previous search. You can use custom marketing campaigns to drive customers back to your app by piquing their interests and leveraging location-based marketing for better CTR.

In-App Personalized Storefront or Playlist

Do you want to please your users with a unique online shopping or content intake experience while increasing CTRs by 120-150% every time they launch your app? Then create an in-app personalized storefront or playlist based on your app. Your app should refresh the list of recommendations every time a user chooses to launch the personalized storefront, watch-list, playlist, or read-list.

Test and Optimize

You may have included everything in your app to enhance user experience with personalization, but these enhancements can have the exact opposite effect if not done correctly. In order to make sure that your personalization efforts are spot on, you need to keep your app very tight, test and optimize it through qualitative analytics, and emphasize app maintenance.

Many major apps, including Starbucks, Spotify, Nike Training Club, Netflix, and Instagram, have already started reaping the benefits of personalization. So what are you waiting for?

Have anything in mind related to mobile app personalization? Feel free to share your thoughts with us!