Most organisations are currently scrambling to drive more customers to interact in digital channels – on apps and websites. Optimising websites is already a given, but many organisations are not actively measuring the interaction in mobile apps. When digital interaction increases, even small changes and optimisation of your digital experience will matter. Here are the 7 most important metrics, that allow you to take action and improve your app engagement.
1. Retention Rate
How loyal are your customers? This needs to be tracked and developed from day one!
This metric shows what percentage of your users return to your app at least once during a 90 day business quarter, or, depending on your industry, it can be measured over a 30 day time period just as well. The retention rate is a direct indicator of how satisfied your customers are with your product.
2. Churn
One of the most important KPIs is the churn rate. Your app’s “churn rate” is the percentage of lost customers within a certain period. All mobile apps have this problem, so it’s important to track this rate and try to outperform your competitors. By keeping your churn rate low, you can retain users for a longer period and thus bring more revenue to your product and brand overall.
3. Daily & Monthly Active Users, aka DAU & MAU
The title itself is pretty self-explanatory, but these are significant KPIs that shouldn’t be overlooked. It indicates whether your app is bringing value to your customers and if they come back to it daily or monthly. It can be measured by interactions with the app or sign-ins. It also doesn’t matter if the user logs in many times during the day since only the first action is registered.
4. Average Session Time
The time a user spends in the app on average from launching the app to exiting it. The longer the user spends time in the app, the more intrigued and satisfied they usually are with the content. The more you update the content and optimise your UI to match the customers’ needs, the longer they want to stay in the app. This can directly affect your revenue from ads or in-app purchases.
5. CPA
Maybe you are a startup and came up with a brand new out-of-this-world app and you get loads of users by word of mouth and don’t have to spend any money to market your app to the audience. That’s great! But in most cases, you have to spend money on marketing, and at this point, it’s great to know how much money you are spending to gain a user.
It’s a great metric to track and by using data analytic platforms such as Mixpanel and Branch.io, which we, here at Avaus have implemented and used, you can track which channels are working the best and what the costs of acquiring users are.
6. Crashed sessions
One of the biggest reasons to quit using someone’s app is if it keeps crashing. Even one crash at a crucial time can make a user abandon an app instantly, and spread the word to other people about the bad experience. We usually remember bad experiences far longer than good experiences. It is extremely important to pinpoint the exact situation that caused a crash and fix it right away. Another important nurture aspect is to communicate clearly about all the updates to the app so people that previously had a bad experience might give a second chance to the app if they feel the problem has been fixed.
7. Unsuggested gestures
This is an important takeaway in seeing your product through the users’ eyes. What functionalities are they expecting but you aren’t delivering (yet)? You can track users’ behaviour with different heat-map tracking software and try to add more features as the demand emerges.
If you’ve thought of tracking these KPIs, you are already on the right path. The best day to start tracking these was yesterday, but the second-best day is today.
List of useful resources:
- Why mobile apps are important for your business
- 6 great tips how to improve your mobile app performance
- Well made list of mobile app analytic platforms
- Making your app profitable with mobile analytics
Written by Jere Meriluoto
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