Social News Platform Design to Enhance User Retention and Engagement

After Quartz introduced its community contribution features, my focus shifted to improving user engagement on the platform. The community feature strategy aimed to build habitual engagement by layering insights from other readers onto the core news experience and fostering active interaction with these contributions.

We targeted three key areas for improvement: simplifying interactions, optimizing push notification opt-in rates, and creating stronger feedback mechanisms to highlight user contributions.

‍Experimenting with Simplifying Interaction: We tackled user confusion surrounding the "Pick" feature, refining the commenting process to encourage more meaningful interactions and elevate user engagement.

‍Better Notifications with Improved Notification Opt-in: Our strategies to enhance push notification opt-in rates directly influenced user retention and ongoing engagement, ensuring users remained connected to the community.

‍More Feedback to User Actions and Contributions: By increasing visibility into social interactions and recognizing individual contributions, we fostered a more vibrant and engaged community, encouraging users to participate actively in discussions.

Through these initiatives, we aimed to create a more engaging experience for users, building a stronger sense of community within the app.

The strategy behind the community feature is to cultivate a user habit of returning to the platform by engaging with insightful stories, sharing original insights, and receiving feedback from other contributors.

The Problem:

The "Pick" feature in the app allows users to recommend, comment on, or save stories for later. However, confusion arose from users not fully understanding the various functions tied to picking, which affected engagement. About 18% of users were unsure if "picking" was for recommending or commenting, causing friction in encouraging meaningful interactions, like leaving comments.

Design Exploration:

I worked through several iterations to simplify and clarify the process, aiming to make commenting more intuitive while still supporting passive engagement for users who preferred just to pick.

The Original Version: Two-step process

The original design revealed the comment field and share option after tapping a large "Pick" button in the exposed field. However, this two-step process seemed to deter users from commenting.

Quick Improvement: The keyboard is immediately available

The keyboard opened immediately upon tapping the "Pick" button, signaling commenting as the main action. A clear placeholder text was added to explain that commenting was optional, helping passive users engage without confusion.

Comment-Friendly Design: Full-screen interface for seamless engagement

A full-screen interface was introduced, giving users an article preview alongside the comment field. This addressed user feedback that small text fields made commenting uncomfortable. While this version was well-received, further monitoring was planned to ensure it didn’t annoy users who liked switching between the article and comment UI.

The Outcome:

Through iterative testing, the final UI improved user understanding of the "Pick" feature, encouraging more engagement. User surveys showed positive feedback, and for the first time, the holistic comment count saw improvement. The process revealed that direct explanations, such as banners and tooltips, were essential in communicating complex features like picking effectively.

The Problem:

The Day 1 retention rate of the app experienced a sudden decline due to a lower acceptance ratio for opting into push notifications. After investigating the issue, we discovered that the timing of the push notification prompt had been altered. Previously, the prompt appeared immediately after installation, but it was moved to a much later stage, aiming to increase acceptance by waiting until users had spent more time in the app. Unfortunately, this change resulted in fewer users encountering the prompt, leading to a significant loss in returning users who relied on push notifications for engagement.

Design Exploration:

To address this, I conducted competitive analysis and user research on the push notification opt-in flow.

Takuma Kakehi

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Version 1: Animated Onboarding

This approach used an animated onboarding flow to highlight the benefits of push notifications, as previous research indicated that similar explainers could enhance acceptance rates.

Version 2: Static Slide

In contrast, I opted for a static image, which was easier to implement and modify as needed. This decision was made due to the lack of evidence supporting the effectiveness of animations, allowing for quicker copy and design tests.

Version 3: Secondary Inquiry

To capture users who initially skipped the opt-in prompt, I proposed a reminder banner or popup. Research suggested that users who experienced the app were more likely to opt in. Initially, I intended for this reminder to appear six days post-installation, but due to low Day 7 retention rates, I adjusted the interval to just two days.

The experiments led to the final design of the onboarding cards.

The Problem:

The lack of visibility into the social interactions on the platform was hindering user engagement. While our team focused on short-term retention strategies—such as enhancing the news experience with push notifications and layout tweaks—these measures fell short of fostering long-term user involvement, as my research on gamification suggests that recognizing user contributions can significantly enhance engagement and create a more vibrant community.

Takuma Kakehi

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Design Exploration:

Solution 1: Uncovering Individual User’s Picks

To keep users actively engaged, it was crucial to showcase their contributions. The design solution provided multiple access points to individual profile pages, where users could view a consolidated list of their picks and comments. This visibility allowed users to receive feedback from the community, reinforcing their participation.

Solution 2: Featuring Comments

Recognizing valuable contributions was key to motivating users. By monitoring incoming comments through dedicated Slack channels, our community and curation teams identified impactful comments. The solution involved implementing a “Featured Comment” label for high-quality contributions. Moderators could easily flag these comments, notifying the authors with a congratulatory push alert and elevating their comments to the top of the comment stream. As the community grows, we plan to filter and curate these contributions efficiently, ensuring that moderation remains manageable.