What is a Product Engagement Score (PES)?

Product Engagement Score (PES) is a metric used for tracking how users interact with your product. 

It provides an overall view of user engagement, helping teams understand what’s working and where improvements are needed. PES combines three key components: adoption, stickiness, and growth:

• Adoption: This metric shows how frequently users are adopting your product’s core features. Higher adoption indicates that users are finding value in the product.
• Stickiness: Stickiness measures how often users return to your product. It’s often calculated using ratios like daily active users (DAU) to weekly or monthly active users (WAU/MAU). A sticky product keeps users coming back regularly, which is essential for long-term engagement.
• Growth: This refers to the balance between new, lost, and recovered users over time. It’s often measured by the Quick Ratio, which shows how well your product is growing its user base.

By calculating PES, you get a comprehensive understanding of how users engage with your product, providing a single score that reflects overall engagement.

In this blog, we’ll explore the importance of PES, how to improve it, and how it impacts customer retention and product success.

How to calculate product engagement score

To calculate PES, you average the three main metrics: adoption, stickiness, and growth. Each of these metrics contributes to your understanding of how users engage with your product. 

The formula looks like this:

This simple calculation helps you consolidate different aspects of user engagement into one manageable score. Now, let’s explore why this score is essential and how it can impact your business.

Why product engagement score is important

Understanding your Product Engagement Score is key to improving how users interact with your product. Here are the main reasons why tracking PES is important:

1. Understanding overall user engagement

PES offers a snapshot of how actively users are interacting with your product. It shows whether users are adopting key features, returning regularly, and whether your user base is growing.

2. Identifying potential areas for improvement

By breaking PES down into its core components, you can identify specific areas that need attention. For example, if your stickiness is low, you may need to focus on increasing retention.

3. Impact on customer retention and product success

A high PES generally indicates that users are engaged, making them more likely to stick around long-term. By improving PES, you directly impact retention, which leads to greater customer satisfaction and long-term success.

4. Simplifies complex metrics into a single score: 

Instead of tracking multiple engagement metrics separately, PES combines adoption, stickiness, and growth into one number, making it easier to monitor overall product health.

5. Supports continuous improvement

Tracking PES over time allows you to measure the impact of product updates and user behavior. By monitoring trends, you can make data-driven decisions to continually improve the user experience based on real feedback.

With these benefits in mind, PES becomes a useful tool for keeping your product aligned with user needs. Next, let’s look at how you can improve your PES and drive better engagement.

How to improve your product engagement score

Once you’ve started tracking your PES, the next step is improving it. Focusing on key areas can help boost engagement and ensure that users are getting the most value from your product.

1. Identify high-value features

Use data to figure out which features users engage with the most. By focusing on enhancing and promoting these features, you can drive higher adoption and deliver more value to your users.

2. Increase product stickiness

To encourage users to return regularly, integrate your product into their daily workflows. This could involve making it easier for users to access and interact with your product in ways that solve recurring problems or tasks.

3. Optimize onboarding

A smooth and effective onboarding process is critical to ensuring new users find value quickly. Highlighting key features and providing helpful guidance early on can lead to better long-term engagement.

By focusing on these areas, you can improve your PES and ensure that users are consistently finding value in your product.

Next, let’s look at some common mistakes people make when using PES and how to avoid them.

Common mistakes when using product engagement score

While tracking your PES is essential, there are common mistakes that can lead to a misinterpretation of the data or missed opportunities for improvement. Here are a couple of things to watch out for:

Focusing too much on one component

It's easy to get caught up in boosting a single metric, like adoption, while ignoring stickiness or growth. All three components of PES must be balanced to reflect true engagement.

Not contextualizing the score with qualitative feedback

PES is a quantitative measure, but without qualitative insights like customer feedback or surveys, it can miss the reasons behind the score. Use both quantitative and qualitative data to make well-rounded decisions.

By avoiding these common pitfalls, you can use PES effectively to improve your product and customer engagement.

Key takeaways

• Product Engagement Score (PES) is a metric that measures user engagement across three areas: adoption, stickiness, and growth.
• Tracking PES helps you understand overall user behavior, identify areas for improvement and drive product success.
• Balancing all three components (adoption, stickiness, and growth) is crucial for accurate insights.
• Qualitative feedback should complement PES to provide a full understanding of user experiences.
• Improving PES involves focusing on high-value features, increasing stickiness, and optimizing onboarding.