Why the Stories Format is Transforming Mobile User Engagement for Brands

It is becoming clear that these conventional channels are no longer sufficient to maintain user interest and engagement. They all have different challenges. They only occupy a small part of the screen, they have few interactive elements. They lack the flexibility that brands need to reflect their creativity today and ultimately diminish the impact of the message they are trying to convey in such a limited screen size. They can’t compete with full-screen, distraction-free environments that inspire deeper engagement with audiences.

Stories are quickly becoming the first mobile format

According to an Instagram trend research study commissioned by Facebook, 91% of Instagram’s 4,500 active users say they watch videos on Instagram every week. Additionally, 50% of Instagrammers have visited a website to purchase a product/service after seeing it in Stories. Similarly, according to Forrester Consulting, 64% of users prefer content delivered in an accessible story format to the equivalent of a scrolling article. The authenticity, interactivity and snacking of Stories make them indispensable.

Stories have the potential for more interactivity than any other channel, and that potential extends far beyond the circles at the top of the Instagram app. They can be integrated into any mobile app and website today, and allow brands to show off videos and images, add product tags, and create quizzes or question stickers to collect feedback. data to their target audience in order to retarget them in the future.

Stories were first published by Snapchat in 2013, which means they’ve now been around for nearly a decade. Users know them very well and can browse them well. Unlike other user interface elements designed for the desktop and later adapted to mobile, stories are the first content format designed solely for mobile creation and consumption.

One of the standout features of Stories is that they stand in contrast to traditional, highly curated corporate social media feeds. They essentially offer audiences a “behind-the-scenes look” at the brands they love. This creates a more informal and improvised experience that millennials and Gen Z are looking for.

A new kind of engagement channel

Storyly is a mobile user engagement platform that transforms the full-screen, immersive experience of Stories into a new kind of channel for brands to embed Stories into any mobile app or website.

Brands can create App Stories, Web Stories or interactive Shoppable videos to engage their audience. More recently, Storyly created another complementary product, “Moments by Storyly,” a community engagement solution for mobile apps that allows users to instantly create and share full-screen stories. Storyly’s lightweight software development kit (SDK) can be easily integrated, enabling the creation of engaging experiences without any post-integration development effort.

“Visit the Footasylum website or mobile app, for example – you’ll see stories in the form of rectangles,” says Emre Fadillioglu, CEO and co-founder of Storyly. “And when you click on them, they just appear as full-screen stories like the ones you see on other social media platforms, offering richer content than any other engagement tool. And there’s the premium nutrition and wellness product OLLY – which combined product discovery and interactivity with Storyly Stories on their website. Both are also great examples of how stories can take n’ any shape to fit app or website style.

This will give brands the ability to engage new users by leveraging full-screen, uninterrupted experiences that use swipes, shareable promo codes, call-to-action buttons, interactive stickers, and product labels. that gamify the shopping experience and drive visitors directly. to consult. Brands can also target regular customers with personalized stories tailored to customer interests and preferences.

Over 300 brands in over 40 countries already trust Storyly. He recently helped Domino’s Pizza, the multinational pizzeria chain, increase campaign conversions through Stories. Domino’s saw a 64% higher conversion rate communicating campaigns through Storyly-powered in-app stories compared to banners, and 37% of users clicked through to the campaign detail page after viewing brand stories. Usage of Domino’s wallet feature also increased by 20% after the feature was boosted by in-app stories.

“The real challenge for brands starts after user acquisition. Growth is also about user retention, which means effective engagement efforts,” says Fadillioglu. “But in this noisy world where the span of user consideration is shrinking, that’s easier said than done. 25% of every new app downloaded is abandoned after a single use and 97% of users disappear permanently within 30 days. »

He continues, “This is where the magic of Storyly Stories shines through. By using them, marketers have a layer of content that enables opportunities for direct communication and engagement, from onboarding to retention, from conversion to advocacy. Over 64,000 Storyly Stories were published in 2022 and so far, with over 200 million monthly active users, they have been viewed 500 million times in 169 countries.

Leverage zero-party data to target users

With third-party cookies on the way, marketers are scrambling to find new ways to collect data to find out what their audience cares about. get frustrated when they don’t.

Many companies are looking for new ways to collect zero-party data (data that customers proactively share with brands) from their audiences. One of Storyly’s newest features, “Audience Builder,” is designed to encourage nonpartisan data collection. It allows brands to ask their audience a question and then use the answers to create and target multiple audiences based on the answers they provide.

“So in the app, you publish a story, and you ask me the question: ‘what is your favorite color?’ I answer “blue”, then you collect all the people who like blue, then you start targeting them with relevant content,” says Fadillioglu.

Over the next few years, the Internet is expected to become even more privacy-centric. As brands rely more on zero-party data, interactive stories will become a key way for marketers to understand and engage with their audience.

“It’s a constant challenge for digital marketers to maintain a balance between providing personalized experiences to their users and respecting their privacy,” says Fadillioglu. “Despite the abundance of information about user behavior on the Internet, not all data is valuable, reliable, or usable, and high-quality user data is essential for brands to inform their product and content strategies. .

“Zero-party data is a golden opportunity and the new ‘must-have’ for marketers in the cookieless world. And full-screen interactive elements like polls, quizzes, and question stickers help do it all in a non-intrusive and really fun and engaging way. In 2022, our customers were able to ask 20,000 questions to their users with these interactive stickers, which would otherwise take thousands of survey forms.

Stories have quickly become one of the most accurate and reliable ways to find out what users want, while increasing engagement and facilitating brand loyalty. As m-commerce continues to grow, the most successful brands will be those that learn to make data collection a fun and immersive part of the user experience.

To learn more about what Storyly has to offer, click here.