April 2023 Summaries

The shift towards remote work has led to a surge in demand for collaborative tools that enable teams to work together synchronously on the same digital artefact. Real-time multiplayer collaboration features are becoming increasingly important, as they help increase efficiency and productivity by reducing context switching between multiple applications. Ably is developing a Collaborative Spaces SDK to aid the creation of multiplayer features in team-centric apps, helping businesses quickly respond to the rise of remote work and the growing popularity of realtime multiplayer collaboration.

Multiplayer collaboration features have become increasingly popular and essential in productivity software due to the rise of distributed teams and remote working. Realtime updates, live playback, presence and status, and data integrity are the four fundamental characteristics of multiplayer collaboration. These features improve retention and engagement, reduce context switching, make your tool central to customer workflows, and break silos within organizations. Key features needed for a collaborative user experience include a shared space, authentication, user avatars, live location, live cursors, typing indicators, field locking, live updates, live comments, and support for large numbers of concurrent users. Examples of successful multiplayer collaboration tools are Figma, Webflow, and Miro. Adding multiplayer collaboration to existing apps can be challenging but using a realtime Platform as a Service (PaaS) like Ably can help developers build scalable and dependable realtime applications.

Engagement is crucial for software products as it determines the value users derive from them and influences investment decisions and sales revenue. Product Owners use various product and user engagement metrics to measure this value. These metrics help identify product weaknesses, opportunities, and deliver more value to both users and companies. Two types of engagement matter: product engagement and user engagement. Product engagement is about how much engagement a product gets from active users, while user engagement looks at the value the product gives to both the user and the organization behind it. Selecting a north star metric helps focus on the most important numbers that indicate the success of the product. Common metrics for product engagement include activation rate, usage depth, exit point, time in product, and customer churn. User engagement metrics include daily or monthly active users, Net Promoter Score (NPS), Customer Acquisition Cost (CAC), Lifetime Value (LTV), and engagement by user location. Strategies to improve website product and user engagement include delivering multiplayer collaboration, rewarding referrals, providing interactive features, showcasing user-generated content, and enabling social media sharing. Apps have an immediate engagement advantage over websites due to their ability to access device functionalities like push notifications, location services, and the camera. Strategies for improving app product and user engagement include personalized offers and content, location-based services, in-app messages, gamifying the experience, and improving activation through smoother onboarding. Tools like Hubspot, Split, Appcues, and Ably can help implement changes to drive product and user engagement.