Enhancing User Engagement in Business Tools

How to Gamify Product Engagement and Keep Your Users Coming Back for More Ever felt like life is just one big game? As a Product Manager, I often think about how the elements that make games fun—progress, rewards, competition—can make our products sticky. Gamification isn’t just for gaming apps; it’s a powerful tool to drive user engagement across industries. Let me break it down for you: 1) Tap into Core Human Motivations People love recognition, accomplishment, and even a little healthy competition. Use features like leaderboards, badges, or streaks to appeal to these instincts. Think Duolingo’s daily streaks or LinkedIn’s profile strength meter. Users get hooked on achieving that next milestone. 2) Design Clear Goals and Feedback Loops Ever notice how games make progress visible? That’s no accident. Create a roadmap for users that tracks their journey and celebrates their progress. This could be a progress bar for onboarding, a daily challenge, or personalized feedback. Take inspiration from fitness apps like Strava—those achievements feel personal, meaningful, and motivating. 3) Reward Effort, Not Just Results Not everyone wins, but everyone should feel valued. Gamified systems should reward engagement, not just excellence. For example, incentivize users for exploring features, completing surveys, or returning daily. Starbucks’ Rewards program nails this by turning coffee runs into a game of points and free drinks. 4) Create FOMO with Community Challenges Games are social, and products should be too. Adding community challenges, time-limited events, or collaborative goals can spark engagement. Think of how Peloton gets users hyped for virtual classes or Nike Run Club makes running a group achievement. 5) Iterate, Test, Improve Gamification isn’t a one-and-done deal. Track metrics like session length, feature adoption, and retention rates. Experiment with different gamified features to see what clicks with your audience. Remember: what works for a productivity app might not work for a B2B SaaS product. 📈 Food for Thought: How are you measuring the success of your gamification efforts? What’s YOUR Take on Gamification? Have you used gamification in your product? Which tactics have worked for you? Let’s swap ideas and make the comments section a treasure trove of insights for PMs and innovators alike. Gamifying engagement isn’t just about fun—it’s about creating meaningful, habit-forming user experiences that deliver value. And as Product Managers, it’s one of the most creative tools in our toolkit. Let’s play this game together! Drop your thoughts and stories below 👇. #Gamification #ProductManagement #Innovation #UserEngagement #ProductManagement #Product #PM #PeopleInProduct #PeopleInProductManagement #PMLife #PeopleInPM #PMCommunity #ProductCommunity #ProductManagementCommunity #LifeofaPM #ProductOwner

Build it and they will come? 🤔 When product teams launch a highly-requested feature, they tend to expect users to engage with it. But things don’t always work out that way. 😬 This is what Lyft discovered when they launched Women+ Connect. Despite the clear benefits and the demand for the feature, not all drivers who were eligible were opting into it. 🔍 The challenge? Simply telling users about a feature isn’t always enough to drive action. When Irrational Labs partnered with Lyft, here’s what our brilliant behavioral scientist Isabel Macdonald, PhD and team learned, working closely with Robyn Bald and Kirsten M.: 🚀 A simple shift in messaging—based on behavioral science—can massively impact feature engagement. Irrational Labs tested several behaviorally-informed messages and all outperformed the control. The winning message? “Just checking. Looks like you are not opted into Women+ Connect. Is this correct? Tap to review.” What this does: The question creates a desire for resolution and nudges the driver to take action (versus do nothing). The result? Compared to the control group, this approach got 173% more opt-ins from new drivers. 📈 So, what’s the takeaway for product teams? 👉🏼 Product success doesn’t come just from building great features. You have to frame them in ways that resonate with your users, capture their attention, and motivate them to act. 💡 Curious to see how small changes can lead to massive impact? Check out the link in the comments to learn how we helped Lyft get great engagement with a great feature. 👇🏼 #BehavioralScience #ProductManagement #UserEngagement #WomenInTech #IrrationalLabs #Lyft

Digital Experience Optimization isn't just about tweaking your website. It's about transforming how users interact with your entire digital ecosystem. Helium 10, a software company for Amazon entrepreneurs, faced a common challenge: their platform offered powerful tools, but prospective users struggled to grasp the core benefits. Through a comprehensive audit and optimization program, The Good uncovered that those prospective users found the homepage too cluttered, tool names unclear, and a pricing structure that left them confused. But identifying problems is only half the battle. The real value comes from strategic solutions. We redesigned the homepage to showcase platform benefits rather than individual features. This simple shift increased free account signups by 4.75% and paid conversions by 5.51%. On the registration page, we added social proof, like quotes from current customers. This seemingly small change boosted paid conversions by 12%. Throughout the site, we improved navigation, clarified tool categorization, and refined pricing communication. Each adjustment was driven by user data and validated through rigorous A/B testing. The results speak for themselves. Helium 10 saw reduced bounce rates, increased registrations, and higher paid conversion rates across the board. Want to uncover insights that drive more signups for your software? By focusing on the user journey and aligning it with business goals, companies can unlock significant growth potential. The key is to approach optimization as an ongoing process, not a one-time project.

The most immediate and highest-impact application of AI is not a new feature but contextualizing the features you already have. Hear me out... Every user journey has several key moments in which the value of the product needs to be explained or expanded upon. As an example, for a self-serve subscription product, this might be (1) join flow, (2) onboarding and aha moment, (3) driving engagement and repeat usage, (4) extension/expansion, (5) cancellation flow. At each of these critical junctures, there’s a measurable action you want the user to take and you have ever-increasing context to help nudge the user toward that action. Use that context to create interactions or interventions to better demonstrate the value your product provides and measure the direct impact of those interventions with A/B tests. Going backwards (since there is more context and the stakes are higher later in the journey): (5) Cancellation flow - instead of showing a generic “are you sure” message, generate a bespoke sales pitch that showcases unused features, contextualizes them based on their specific use case, and showcases ROI using language likely to resonate. (4) Extension and expansion - before emailing saying their CC is about to be charged, send a customized email for each customer that highlights the value they got from using the product and other success indicators similar to a personalized “year in review”. (3) Driving engagement and usage - contextualize features and explain their value given the context of what the user is doing. For example, by analyzing the image that a user is manipulating in Photoshop, Adobe could describe not just what the smudge tool does, but why it would be useful (ie. “hide blemishes from your HD photo” or “add a finger-paint effect to your painting”). (2) Onboarding and aha moment - tailor help content and timing of progressive disclosure based on observed technical sophistication, feature adoption to-date, and user intent, contextualize the most important engagement moment given their context (1) Join flow - customize the messaging for each potential subscriber based on the acquisition channel, what pages they clicked to (and didn’t), and where they spent their time on the website before starting the flow to maximize conversion rates. Each of these is generally easier and lower risk than building brand new features, with high potential ROI that is relatively easy to measure. Product leaders who achieve early successes with these improvements can leverage them to build stronger cases for more aggressive AI-enabled product investments down the line. Please comment if you agree/disagree or are considering making investments along these lines. I'd love to chat 1:1 to anyone shifting - or interested in shifting - their roadmap in this direction. #productleadership #productmanagement #ai #productstrategy

If you think product tours drive engagement, think again. The data says otherwise. I recently got a preview of Chameleon's annual benchmark report, and it confirmed what I’ve long believed as both a B2B product builder and user: lengthy product tours just don’t work, and contextual, in-app guidance is the future in terms of activating and engaging users. One thing product and growth teams forget sometimes is that EVERY SINGLE USER goes through onboarding, so it needs to be as simple and as streamlined as possible. Your onboarding isn’t just a UX problem, it’s a revenue problem. The teams who adapt will see higher activation, lower churn, and fewer rage-clicks on the ‘skip tour’ button. Which is why I was excited to partner with the Chameleon team as they analyzed a collection of over 550M onboarding flows, tooltips, modals, and other in-product experiences across SaaS. When we dove into this year’s findings, we identified several actionable takeaways for B2B PM/GTM leaders that I wanted to share with my audience: * only 30% of users complete a product tour, and completion rates drop below 18% if they hit 10 steps or more * embedded guidance is the new paradigm - swapping pop-ups out for in-app embeddables leads to 20% higher engagement * traditional microsurveys, like NPS, are losing engagement - completion rates have dropped below 9% * structured, button-based surveys with quick, contextual responses (like Yes/No or multiple-choice) show 20% higher completion These insights barely scratch the surface. See what top teams are doing in the full report (linked in comments 👇) These insights jibe with my own experience as someone who’s had to solve both activation and expansion problems for B2B products - you need to build a pipeline of champions, but attempting a one-size-fits-all journey instead of a more contextualized approach is a recipe for failure. the tl;dr for me is that it’s time to pull the plug on pushy product tours and start implementing personalized, in-app guidance Have you swapped product tours for embedded guidance? What results have you seen?

In a recent conversation with technology leaders of mid sized and large firms, I encountered a shared challenge: “How can we ensure our teams 𝗺𝗮𝘅𝗶𝗺𝗶𝘇𝗲 𝘁𝗵𝗲 𝘃𝗮𝗹𝘂𝗲 of tools like ChatGPT and Microsoft Copilot to justify the investment?” This aligns with findings from the Australian government’s recent trial of Microsoft 365 Copilot. Conducted by the Digital Transformation Agency (DTA), this six-month initiative gave 7200 government employees access to Copilot. The results were insightful. While the tool showed promise in simplifying workflows and supporting tasks like summarizing and content rephrasing, only one-third of users engaged with it daily, with others using it “a few times a week” or less. This moderate usage highlighted the opportunity for better alignment with workflows and training. Reflecting on the DTA’s experience, here are some strategies that can help drive effective AI adoption and maximize the impact of tools like Copilot: 𝗧𝗮𝗶𝗹𝗼𝗿𝗲𝗱, 𝗥𝗼𝗹𝗲-𝗦𝗽𝗲𝗰𝗶𝗳𝗶𝗰 𝗧𝗿𝗮𝗶𝗻𝗶𝗻𝗴: In the DTA trial, teams who received customized training that connected Copilot’s features to their specific roles saw greater adoption and satisfaction. Tailoring training to reflect actual workflows can enable teams to realize the full potential of AI in their daily tasks. 𝗖𝗹𝗲𝗮𝗿𝗲𝗿 𝗜𝗻𝘁𝗲𝗴𝗿𝗮𝘁𝗶𝗼𝗻 𝘄𝗶𝘁𝗵𝗶𝗻 𝗨𝘀𝗲𝗿 𝗜𝗻𝘁𝗲𝗿𝗳𝗮𝗰𝗲𝘀: Some trial participants noted that Copilot’s features were easy to overlook within existing software. Making tools highly visible and intuitive within user interfaces can encourage consistent use and help employees see their value instantly. 𝗦𝗲𝘁𝘁𝗶𝗻𝗴 𝗥𝗲𝗮𝗹𝗶𝘀𝘁𝗶𝗰, 𝗧𝗿𝗮𝗻𝘀𝗽𝗮𝗿𝗲𝗻𝘁 𝗘𝘅𝗽𝗲𝗰𝘁𝗮𝘁𝗶𝗼𝗻𝘀: The trial demonstrated the importance of setting achievable expectations around AI tools. Many participants entered the trial anticipating significant time savings, only to find moderate efficiency gains. A clear, upfront understanding of what these tools can and cannot achieve fosters user trust and engagement. 𝗕𝘂𝗶𝗹𝗱𝗶𝗻𝗴 𝗮 𝗖𝘂𝗹𝘁𝘂𝗿𝗲 𝗼𝗳 𝗖𝗼𝗻𝘁𝗶𝗻𝘂𝗼𝘂𝘀 𝗟𝗲𝗮𝗿𝗻𝗶𝗻𝗴: As AI capabilities evolve, so too should employees’ skills. The DTA’s commitment to keeping “humans in the loop” underscores that AI is a support tool rather than a replacement for human judgment. Regularly scheduled upskilling and reskilling can empower employees to engage critically with AI outputs and adapt to new tools. 𝗘𝗻𝘀𝘂𝗿𝗶𝗻𝗴 𝗖𝗼𝗺𝗽𝗮𝘁𝗶𝗯𝗶𝗹𝗶𝘁𝘆 𝗮𝗻𝗱 𝗙𝘂𝗻𝗰𝘁𝗶𝗼𝗻𝗮𝗹𝗶𝘁𝘆: Some DTA trial participants found limitations due to compatibility issues, such as older Outlook versions. The DTA’s proactive approach to exploring AI tools is a powerful step toward modernizing workflows within the public sector. With the right training, workflow customization, and cultural buy-in, government agencies can make AI tools like Copilot an invaluable asset in achieving their mission. P.S. AI Champions can help with all of this! 𝘋𝘔 𝘮𝘦. :)

I opened Canva the other day and something caught my eye - 👀 A vibrant banner right on the home screen announcing "Droptober is coming." With a countdown, hyping up new features that are set to launch in a few days. It's a simple yet effective reminder for users that new and exciting tools are just around the corner that not only sparks curiosity but also creates anticipation. 👉🏻 𝗜𝘁'𝘀 𝗮 𝗯𝗿𝗶𝗹𝗹𝗶𝗮𝗻𝘁 𝘀𝘁𝗿𝗮𝘁𝗲𝗴𝘆 𝘁𝗼 𝗯𝗼𝗼𝘀𝘁 𝗻𝗲𝘄 𝗳𝗲𝗮𝘁𝘂𝗿𝗲 𝗮𝗱𝗼𝗽𝘁𝗶𝗼𝗻 𝗿𝗮𝘁𝗲𝘀 𝗯𝗲𝗰𝗮𝘂𝘀𝗲: ✅ Instead of relying on emails or external announcements that might get lost, a banner on the app's home screen ensures the message reaches active users. It’s an in-app reminder that stays top of mind. ✅ Adding a countdown creates a sense of urgency. It makes users feel like they’re part of something special, something they don’t want to miss out on. ✅ Visual elements like banners can capture attention faster than text-heavy announcements. 🔵 𝗪𝗵𝗮𝘁 𝗼𝘁𝗵𝗲𝗿 𝘀𝘁𝗿𝗮𝘁𝗲𝗴𝗶𝗲𝘀 𝗰𝗮𝗻 𝘄𝗲 𝘂𝘁𝗶𝗹𝗶𝘇𝗲 𝗳𝗼𝗿 𝗱𝗿𝗶𝘃𝗶𝗻𝗴 𝗮𝗱𝗼𝗽𝘁𝗶𝗼𝗻: 💡 𝗜𝗻-𝗮𝗽𝗽 𝗮𝗻𝗻𝗼𝘂𝗻𝗰𝗲𝗺𝗲𝗻𝘁𝘀: Like Canva, using banners or pop-ups within the product helps to keep users informed. It’s a great way to announce a new feature, offer tutorials, or even give a sneak peek. 💡 𝗚𝗮𝗺𝗶𝗳𝘆 𝘁𝗵𝗲 𝗹𝗮𝘂𝗻𝗰𝗵: Products like Duolingo have mastered gamification. What if you could create a mini-challenge for users to try out the new feature? Reward them with badges or exclusive access. 💡 𝗣𝗿𝗼𝗴𝗿𝗲𝘀𝘀𝗶𝘃𝗲 𝗿𝗼𝗹𝗹𝗼𝘂𝘁𝘀 𝘄𝗶𝘁𝗵 𝘂𝘀𝗲𝗿 𝘀𝗲𝗴𝗺𝗲𝗻𝘁𝘀: Netflix often tests new features with a small percentage of users before a full rollout. This helps gather feedback, refine the experience, and build buzz through word-of-mouth. 💡 𝗢𝗻𝗯𝗼𝗮𝗿𝗱𝗶𝗻𝗴 𝘄𝗮𝗹𝗸𝘁𝗵𝗿𝗼𝘂𝗴𝗵𝘀: When Slack releases a new feature, they often integrate it directly into the product’s onboarding flow, guiding users step-by-step. It’s not just about telling users what's new, but how to use it. 👉🏻 𝗧𝗮𝗸𝗲𝗮𝘄𝗮𝘆 𝗳𝗼𝗿 𝗣𝗠𝘀 - Invest in strategies that bring the message to where your users are most engaged i.e. within your product itself. Keep it simple, visually appealing, and engaging. And remember, the more excitement you build around a new feature, the higher the chances of driving adoption. So, next time you’re planning a launch, think about how you can create that “I can’t wait to try this!” moment. PS. What other strategies do you use as a PM for new feature launches? Do share in the comments!

Unlocking AI’s Potential: Engaging Every User in Your Organization Adopting AI internally isn’t just a technological leap—it’s a cultural and strategic transformation. Success hinges on engaging diverse user groups, each with unique roles and needs. 1️⃣ Executives need a clear vision of how AI aligns with business goals. Providing them with high-level insights on ROI, competitive advantages, and risk management is key to gaining buy-in. 2️⃣ AI Champions act as advocates, driving adoption across teams. Equip them with resources for experimentation and support for promoting AI’s value. Recognize their contributions to build momentum. 3️⃣ Technical Teams are at the heart of AI implementation. They require cutting-edge tools, defined business problems to solve, and opportunities for continuous learning to stay ahead. 4️⃣ Operational Users interact with AI in their daily workflows. Simplicity is crucial—intuitive tools, clear insights, and training on using AI effectively foster trust and adoption. 5️⃣ Support Teams (HR, IT, Legal) ensure AI’s safe and compliant use. Establishing governance frameworks and best practices empowers them to manage AI responsibly. Resistance to AI often stems from a fear of change. Address this by promoting transparency, including AI in decision-making, and showcasing how AI complements, not replaces, human roles. By understanding and addressing the needs of these groups, organizations can harness AI’s full potential, transforming how they work and compete. How is your organization engaging its people in the AI journey? Let’s discuss it! https://lnkd.in/gJ3NYTvW #AIAdoption #Leadership #DigitalTransformation #AIForBusiness #FutureOfWork

If SaaS Business Were To Be a Restaurant, your Power Users would be Regular Diners, and your Super Users would be Food Critics / Influencers Your growth is determined not just by how many users sign up—but by how deeply they engage. And at the heart of engagement are two critical groups: 1. Power Users = Product Masters 2. Super Users = Community Champions Here is how they influence the Retention & Renewals Power Users → Retention Drivers These users push the limits of your product’s core functionality. Their daily workflows depend on it. If they stay engaged, churn drops. But if they hit friction points, retention is at risk. Super Users → Renewal & Growth Engines They don’t just use your product—they advocate for it. Super users drive organic adoption, onboard teammates, and influence buying decisions. If they champion your product, renewals and expansions follow. So, How to Engage & Leverage Them ? Here are some basics Power Users: 1. Identify their usage patterns & remove friction. 2. Offer early access to new features. 3. Create dedicated feedback loops to shape your product roadmap. For Super Users: 1. Elevate them as community leaders (e.g., advisory boards, recognition programs). 2. Involve them in beta programs & user advocacy initiatives. 3. Make them your ambassador - Your UGC programs must be spearheaded by your Super Users. Bottom Line Your most engaged users don’t just determine if customers stay—they influence how much they grow. Treat them like partners, not just users. What’s working for you?