How to Improve Product Engagement in Your App

Product engagement goes deeper than just opening an app. It’s about what users actually do once they’re inside. Do they complete the setup? Try your best features? Come back because they got value, not just because you reminded them?

This guide breaks down the difference between app and product engagement, and gives you five actionable ways to improve it using content that lives right inside the app experience. No extra features needed. Just better interaction at the right moments.

What Is Product Engagement (and Why It Matters)?

When someone opens your app and scrolls for thirty seconds, that’s app engagement. When they complete a goal your product was designed to support like connecting a device, placing an order, or exploring a dashboard that’s product engagement.

It’s the difference between attention and intention.

Product engagement measures how effectively users interact with the parts of your app that deliver real value. It answers questions like:

• Are new users getting to the “aha moment”?
• Are returning users forming habits around the right features?
• Are core flows being completed or abandoned midway?

In an ecommerce app, that might mean setting a delivery preference or using a loyalty code. In wellness, it could be finishing a guided routine or syncing a tracker. In banking, maybe it’s activating a card or setting spending limits.

The strongest signal of retention is usage that aligns with value. That’s where product engagement comes in and where smart in-app content can make all the difference.

Product Engagement vs. App Engagement: What’s the Difference?

App engagement and product engagement often get grouped together. But they serve different goals and understanding the difference is what helps teams build apps people actually return to.

App engagement is about presence. It tells you how often someone shows up. Product engagement is about purpose. It tells you whether someone is using the features that matter. Here’s how they compare:

App engagement tells you if users are coming back. Product engagement tells you why they’re staying.

In a streaming app, high session time might look great until you realize people are browsing, not listening. In a fintech app, a login means little unless users are actually setting savings goals or checking their budget. That’s why product engagement is a better signal of long-term value.

When teams focus only on app metrics, they optimize for volume. When they track product engagement, they optimize for outcomes.

How to Improve Product Engagement (5 Steps That Work in Real Apps)

Improving product engagement is all about making the product easier to understand, more rewarding to use, and more relevant at every step. These five steps help turn passive users into active ones by meeting them where they are inside your app.

Step 1: Focus on the Right Engagement Actions

Product engagement begins with identifying the actions that reflect real value. These actions are usually tied to the product’s core purpose such as completing onboarding, using a key feature, or reaching a functional milestone.

Not every tap or screen view counts. High engagement happens when users perform actions that signal they understand the product and find it useful. Common examples include:

• Completing an order or reordering with saved preferences (eCommerce)
• Setting up a spending limit or payment reminder (Fintech)
• Connecting a wearable device for data sync (Health & Wellness)

Once these high-value actions are identified, they should be supported with targeted, in-app content that guides users toward completion.

Welltory used interactive onboarding stories to highlight key setup actions. These stories guide users through connecting smart devices and interpreting wellness metrics. The flow is short, contextual, and visual. This approach has led to 70%+ monthly story engagement and a 12.5% conversion rate to paid features, directly from story content.

Step 2: Use Interactive Content to Reduce Friction

Even strong features can underperform if users do not understand how or why to use them. Common points of friction include unclear onboarding steps, technical setup flows, and underexplained product logic.

Interactive stories solve this by offering contextual help at the moment users need it. These stories are visual and lightweight. They appear inside the app and can be triggered by specific behaviors or feature entry points.

By replacing static instructions or external FAQs, in-app stories reduce confusion and support smoother user journeys.

Careem used in-app stories to communicate with its captains—drivers and couriers operating across 10 countries. Traditional channels like SMS and push notifications often went unnoticed. With stories, the team shared updates about safety, incentives, and app features in a visual, swipeable format. 

This use of stories helped reduce confusion, deliver consistent information, and ensure captains felt supported inside the product without interrupting their workflow.

Step 3: Personalize Content with Timing and Targeting

One-size-fits-all content leads to lower engagement. Product interaction improves when stories are relevant to the user’s experience, behavior, or location.

Personalized content can be delivered based on:

• User type (new, returning, power user)
• Region or language
• Time since install or last activity
• Feature usage history

This targeting ensures users only see content that matches their current context, which increases completion and satisfaction.

Step 4: Make Engagement Feel Like Exploration

Engagement improves when users interact with a product by choice, not force. If content feels like discovery (something useful or interesting) they are more likely to continue and complete the flow.

Interactive stories offer a flexible format for this type of in-product exploration. They allow teams to create content that is visual, short, and linked to specific user goals. This approach supports both education and action without adding pressure.

Dodo Pizza ran a summer campaign featuring a story-based postcard builder inside its mobile app. Users could choose a design, add a custom message, and send digital postcards to friends. The campaign wasn’t tied to a transaction, but it kept users engaged during a slow season and brought visibility to the loyalty program in a fun, indirect way.

Step 5: Remove Bottlenecks That Block Iteration

Many product teams know where users drop off or get confused. But even small content improvements often rely on developer capacity. This slows down iteration and limits the ability to respond to user behavior in real time.

Content that improves product engagement should be editable, testable, and publishable without waiting on a release cycle. A no-code editor solves this challenge by letting non-technical teams manage content directly inside the app.

Hamkorbank applied this approach to onboarding. Instead of changing the app interface, the team used story-based explainers to introduce features and guide new users. Stories could be updated at any time through the content console. This gave the team control without creating delays.

Conclusion

Product engagement is about guiding users toward the value that’s already there. Interactive content plays a key role in that journey. It turns passive moments into active ones. It reduces drop-offs, answers unasked questions, and supports users right where they are. And it gives teams the ability to adapt quickly without long dev cycles.

If you're working on retention, activation, or feature adoption, this isn’t a marketing problem. It’s a product experience problem. And that’s exactly where product engagement belongs.

Key Takeaways

• Product engagement means meaningful use of key features, not just time spent or sessions logged
• It differs from app engagement by focusing on user outcomes, not just activity
• To improve it, use interactive, in-product content to support onboarding, exploration, and personalization
• InAppStory customers like Dodo Brands, Careem, and Welltory improved engagement with no-code stories built directly into the app experience
• Success comes from small, well-timed changes that help users move forward, not from adding more functionality

FAQ

How do I know if low engagement is a product issue or a messaging issue?
 

If users are dropping off after seeing the right screens but not completing actions, the problem may lie in how information is presented, not the feature itself. Try using in-app stories to simplify the message before redesigning the flow.

What if my app has multiple user segments with different goals?
 

That’s common. The key is to define what product engagement means for each group. For example, a free user might be considered engaged if they complete onboarding, while a paid user should be using premium tools weekly. Segment-specific content can help align expectations and actions.

Should product engagement be owned by product teams or marketing?
 

Ideally, both. Product teams define the moments that matter. Marketing teams create content that supports those moments. Tools like InAppStory give both teams visibility and control, which reduces handoffs and increases speed.

Can interactive content replace onboarding flows entirely?
 

Not always, but it can reduce the need for static walkthroughs or modals. For many apps, stories are a better way to explain functionality in context especially for returning users who don’t need a full tutorial but still need guidance.

How do I explain the value of product engagement to execs focused on growth metrics?
 

Frame product engagement as a multiplier for acquisition. Increasing app installs has no value if users don’t use the product meaningfully. By improving engagement, you increase the ROI of every acquired user and reduce churn without increasing acquisition costs.