How often is your app being un-installed from users’ mobile devices? If the answer is, “Almost never, we’ve got a great app,” then you’re doing something right, and you can stop reading right now. However, if the answer is, “Users are definitely un-installing it more often than we would like,” then you’re most certainly not alone. And you should absolutely keep reading to learn why users are un-installing your app and what you can do to change that.
The App User Funnel
The mobile app retention solution provider Apptentive published an infographic with data from Flurry Analytics a few years ago. If you haven’t seen it, click here.
This infographic displays data in the shape of a funnel. At the top of the funnel is the percentage of users who stick with an app after downloading it. Before the three month anniversary of their download, users’ retention rate is very high – at 100%. That number drops dramatically after the three month anniversary, all the way down to 24%. As the months pass, the funnel narrows even more. By the year anniversary of a download, many apps only have a 4% user retention rate.
How Can You Change this Picture?
While the infographic paints a bleak picture of customer retention rates for mobile apps, there are steps you can take to determine why users are un-installing your apps. And, there are things you can do to make them love your app and never want to give it up.
The first step is to understand how users behave when they’re utilizing an app. This is quite easily accomplished on the app creator’s part. App creators have a number of analytics tools at their disposal to track user actions and determine when users are exiting the app and when they utilize it the most.
Once you have this data, your next step is to figure out how to best engage your users. Soliciting feedback from your users will go a long way in boosting engagement levels, but actually implementing their comments and ideas goes even further.
Robi Ganguly, CEO of Apptentive, recommends communicating with users in a targeted and personalized manner. Instead of sending out a mass email to all of your users, segment those who use your apps into groups. Ganguly suggests dividing these groups up based on the actions users have taken within the app as well as what kinds of questions they’re asking about it. When you use what Ganguly describes as “intelligent in-app communication” to reach out to your users as well as personalized follow up, your users are more likely to stick with your app because they believe you care about their experience with your product.
Think of the app as the mobile extension of your brand. If users aren’t enthralled with it, they’ll be far less likely to become customers. When you make the app user experience amazing, you improve people’s perception of your brand, which will have a positive effect on your bottom line.
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