Integrating Engagement in Daily Apps
Welcome back! For our first Understanding Nuances article of 2022, we will focus on how daily apps have come up with different ways of driving engagement and how integration has become a key method.
Have you seen the JioSaavn music player embedded in some random website or any other music player or a small gaming interface integrated into a website or app? Application integration has become one of the popular ways to integrate an application into another to boost user engagement. This is not a new phenomenon. Many applications include multiple API integrations, which help them borrow functionalities from apps that are better at it.
For example, Uber borrowed Google Maps functionality from Google. API acts as an interface between two applications. Application integration works with multiple APIs to replicate the application inside another application.
Integration helps brands integrate missing experiences in their application flow, boost engagement, fill gaps in user experience or upsell something new. I am particularly interested in one integration that comes up with Hotstar during live matches. Can you guess one such integration?
Sporting events like IPL attract lots of fantasy and betting games; just as the intensity of the match increases, these fantasy games attract lots and lots of users. Hotstar partnered with the biggest fantasy league of India, and as a result, you can now play on Dream 11 while watching Hotstar. Refer to the snapshot below.
Did you notice a small Dream 11 icon on the right side of the placeholder section? Interactive play screens and elements have become common in the app ecosystem. You can't just wait for traffic to stick and engage on their own. Engagement drivers like gamification help the audience to remain proactive and extract value even when not performing a transactional operation.
Another example can be taken straight from the Google Pay app, where they integrate goals and games from time to time to engage users and drive spending through Google Pay API. Fitness apps have turned boring jogs into a race against zombie hordes. Productivity apps pit us against the clock to get us to finish our to-do lists. Financial apps have even made paying bills fun.
With millions of apps available to users, building an app that sticks requires more than just a great product. It needs a great user experience. Even simple rewards like discount codes or digital badges can be effective motivators for users to complete a task, make a purchase, or share your app.
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