Capitalizing on your returns in the mobile app business can be mind-boggling. The competition is fierce with most of the mobile apps flopping shortly after launch. While having a splendid mobile app and a slaying mobile app marketing strategy will not assure success, it is going to prove to be a good start. On this blog we will discuss Key Metrics that Matter for your Mobile App Success.
To withstand your momentum and feed your mobile app’s growth, aim your attention towards mobile app performance tracking. This comprehensive approach is the only thing that will empower you to constantly make modifications that lead to wins. Knowing what to modify is the kingpin of time and again pivoting your app in a precise direction.Looking at the changing nature of the mobile app ecosystem, what type of metrics should mobile app developers be focusing on these days? Previously, mobile app developers were chiefly focused on a single metric: They wanted their app to rank high on App Store.
With enormous data accumulated by third-party app-intelligence platforms like App Annie and other mobile analytics providers, mobile app developers have commenced to plunge deeper into their apps’ data to inspect frequency of use, duration, loyalty and much more.
While accumulating data is vital, interpretation and appropriate application of outcomes are what’s even more significant. It is a complex process, but it can be understood. We’ve fragmented 28 of the most useful mobile app metrics into categories like user engagement, customer satisfaction, customer acquisition and mobile app performance.
With the right metrics in place, spotting problem areas and solutions will become simple and upfront.MOBILE APP METRICS FOR APP-USER ENGAGEMENT
Although gaining new users is great, retaining engaged users is always better. Several studies validate a strong link between engaged users and revenue growth.
This section envelops the key metrics you need to gauge how engaged your users are with your mobile app. These metrics will convey the number of users who installed and use your app, how often a user interacts with your app along with the probability of converting an occasional user into a daily user and if your users are abandoning your app for better.
- App downloads
One should always be aware of the number of people who have installed your app. However, this is metric alone wouldn’t be able to convey about the real success of your mobile app. What if users download your app because of some specific marketing campaign or may never use it? Or uninstalled it right away?
The number of mobile app installs is crucial since it lays the foundation for all other metrics you must track and analyze.
- Active users of your app
Not everyone who downloads your mobile app can be categorized as active users. Active users are the ones who regularly open and engage with your app. This metric is crucial for it demonstrates how engaging and useful your mobile app is to users.
So, what categorizes a user as ‘active’? It all entirely depends on the analytics tool you use. According to Google Analytics, an active user is the one who has logged in and interacted with a mobile app within the last 30 days.
App stickiness ratio displays how often users come back to your mobile app
- Average visit time and Screen views per visit
Average visit time conveys the average duration of your app users’ sessions. Screen views per visit trace the number of app screen that a user interacts with during a single session. Both the parameters enlighten how engaged your active users are with your mobile app.
In short, the longer time your users spend on your mobile app and the number of screens they interact with per visit the more engaged your users are.
This is where creating an experience rather than focusing just on features will help you[
- App session intervals
Mobile app session intervals gauge the frequency of your users returning to your mobile app. Session intervals calculate the time between a users’ sessions.
This is yet another way to identify the engagement of your users. It is usually better to have shorter session intervals which would further mean that the users aren’t waiting very long between using your app.
The trick to improving your session intervals metric is to try to make your app part of your users’ routines. Give them a reason to interact with your app every day
- App retention
The retention game begins once you have convinced a potential user to download and launch your app. App retention simply calculates the number of users you retain after a set period of time.
People get bored with things easily. Retaining app users over time poses to be the greatest challenges on your journey to app success.
This app metric can be helpful if you are planning a new update release or implement new features. It can help you identify if the new updates/features are keeping users engaged or are driving them away.
To help diagnose why users aren’t returning to your app, measure your retention rate over a daily, weekly, and monthly period
- App churn
Even the top-notch apps fail to retain all of their users, with most mobile app owners dropping 80% of new users in the first 90 days. While not the most pleasant metric to analyze, it is a crucial one to track.
Churn is a companion metric to retention as it measures the percentage of users who stop using your app.
If you discover that the uninstall rate of your mobile app to be peculiarly high, it should be a red flag and a reason to act immediately to prevent losing the rest of your user base. Bugs, crashes, battery drainage and other performance flaws can be the possible culprits in this case.
A solid re-engagement strategy like retargeting ads, surveys, discounts and exclusives can help you win back lost users.
- App event tracking
App event tracking examines how users cooperate with vital features/flows in your mobile app. Instances of events could include making a purchase, sharing some sort of content with your friends or reaching a certain level in a game.
With app event tracking you are actually evaluating the actual actions users take with your mobile app.MOBILE APP METRICS FOR CUSTOMER SATISFACTION
Users are the lifeblood of mobile apps and great apps know their audiences inside-out. Find out whether all the user research you performed at the beginning of app creation was on the mark
This section covers the key metrics you must consider to reveal whether your app is meeting your user expectations. The metrics covered below help you recognize which app features are preferred by the users, which are missed, how probable are your users to suggest your app to others and whether the engagement is taking place as per your expectations.
- App rating
Regardless of the number of other app metrics that you track and analyze, the app star rating is by far the most crucial one. You must always aim to increase your mobile app reviews.
Before downloading an app, people out there always check an app’s rating. Your mobile app rating can either encourage or discourage new users from downloading your app.
To improve your app’s rating, try incentivizing 5-star reviews. Prompt your users to rate your app within the app itself or redirect them to the Playstore
- App store reviews
App store reviews are feedbacks left by your users that show up in your mobile app’s app store listings. Like the app ratings, these reviews can either positively or negatively impact your app store rankings and preferences.
According to a report by Apptentive, the users that are not satisfied with your app are 33% more likely to rate and review your app on the app store than the ones who are satisfied with your app.
70% of the users tend to read at least one review before downloading an app so it is advisable to keep your reviews as positive as possible
- In-app feedback
In-app feedbacks are the feedbacks catered by the users from within the mobile app through various modes like surveys, contact forms or shake-to-send feedback prompts.
The users who involve in and provide in-app feedbacks are the ones who actively use your mobile app. Hence, their feedback can be considered more valuable than those who have barely gotten started.
Besides user’s feedbacks, in-app feedback tools also provide additional diagnostic information which provides crucial context for understanding and identifying any issues.
- Support response time
Support response times determines how long it takes to respond to customer requests and feedbacks.
While considering to examine this data, make sure to take into account the quality of customer support responses and how satisfied your users are with them.
MOBILE APP METRICS FOR APP DOWNLOADS
Users are the quintessence of your mobile app. How many you manage to acquire, how often they use your mobile app, and how soon they experience your mobile app’s value will influence your long-term success
For steady growth, you will need to keep adding new users. This section will cover the key metrics that you need to determine how users are finding your app. These metrics show how noticeable your app is in the app stores, which marketing channels are funneling users to your mobile app, how much does it cost to get a new user and how much revenue can you predict to make off from an average user.
- App store ranking
App-store ranking determines how visible your mobile app is in the app store search results. According to Apple, 65% of people download apps they find after searching for something in the App Store.
The more visible your app is in the app stores, the better chance you have of reaching out to your potential users.
In order to increase the chances of having your mobile app appear in the right search results, consider optimizing your app store listing
- App attribution
App-attribution metric enables you to track various sources that lead the users to your mobile app. It shows you where your users are coming from.
It is especially useful in measuring the success of your marketing campaigns based on which marketing effort led to your user download or signups or sales etc.
You can try implementing deep link to direct your app users from promotion/advertisements to the exact screen you want them to interact with in order to improve returns on your marketing campaigns
- App abandonment
The app abandonment metric determines the rate of users who abandon your mobile app specifically before signing up or commencing to use it.
This metric is crucial to track and analyze because it can pinpoint to deficiencies in your mobile app’s onboarding processes or other issues that’s standing in the way of signing up your new users.
- Funnel tracking
Funnel tracking displays the sequence of user flows from acquisition to conversion. Few common conversion points you may want to consider in your funnel may include referring a friend, subscribing to a service or purchasing a subscription or in-app feature.
You can make sense of how many steps a user has to take to reach to a conversion point by tracking and analyzing your users through a funnel model. This provides insights into the number of users that are dropping off before converting and at what stage.
Target users at different stages of the funnel with incentives to encourage them to continue along to the next stage
- Viralness
This metric measures the number of new users that your average user brings to your mobile app.
In our experience, apps seem to have more success with viralness when they offer users the option to share content with their networks rather than just including an invite button within the app
These newly acquired users tend to be more likely to be active and stick with your mobile app ever since they are connected to friends or family who are just doing that.
Also, these new users tend to cost less to acquire as one doesn’t need to depend on marketing campaigns to attract them to your app, instead you use your existing users and word-of-mouth
To help encourage your existing users to recommend your apps to their networks, promote word-of-mouth sharing with referral promotions within and outside the app
- Cost per acquisition
This metric calculates the amount you have to spend to get an active, paying user or a subscriber.
User acquisition costs can comprise of costs like spends on advertisements or PR, technology costs like infrastructure and hosting, or salaries and contract fees for design, development, customer support, legal help or comparable assistance.
You will need to adjust your cost per acquisition depending on the revenue-generating opportunities within your app
- Lifetime value
Mobile app lifetime value (LTV) helps you determine the value each customer brings to your app.
Make sure your app’s lifetime value is always greater than your cost per acquisition metric. If it isn’t, it probably could mean you are paying way too much for your customers.
- Revenue target
This metric is the goal one sets to accomplish a certain amount of revenue over a period of time.
One can leverage this metric to align all your mobile app strategies.
- Average revenue per user (ARPU)
Average revenue per user determines the revenue generated on an average by every app user in the form of subscriptions, in-app purchases, paid downloads, ad clicks or any other mobile app monetization channel.
ARPU is crucial because it shows you the overall value that a single user brings to your app.
- AOV (average order value) and AOV per paying user
The average order value (AOV) metric displays the average amount spent by the users in your mobile app. Whereas, average order value per paying user is the amount you can expect a paying user to spend on an average.
These metrics are particularly used in e-commerce. These metrics assists you to measure the value of app users who haven’t converted into paying users or customers yet.
You can also use these metrics to understand how much users are buying on average and know whether you need to implement strategies to convince paying users to purchase more
MOBILE APP METRICS FOR APP-PERFORMANCE
Mobile app speed and stability is chiefly trivial given the app users’ expectation
This section covers the key-metrics that will help you determine the speed and stability of your mobile app. These metrics will dig deeper and give you insights on crashes, load-time, network errors, latency and various other factors that may make the app perform poorly in some circumstances. It becomes crucial to consider these factors seriously as either of them could potentially persuade your user to abandon your mobile app
- App crashes
This metric scales how often your mobile app crashes and closes abruptly while a user is using it.
To keep your crashes to a minimum, continually test builds during the development process to identify issues right away
- App speed
This metric measures how fast your mobile app loads and runs. Speed is something that one cannot ignore in an app given the users’ expectations.
You must invest considerable time to optimize, refactor and improve the speed of your mobile app to make sure you meet the user expectations while treating speed as a feature.
- App latency
Mobile app latency determines the time taken by your mobile app to request and receive a response from an API. The app latency duration is expected to be as short as possible. People often mistake latency for speed.
While app speed addresses things like app load and transition times, app latency addresses how long it takes to press a button, make a call to API server, parse the info and finally display the information
- Network errors
Network errors are errors from service providers and HTTP errors while a user tries to connect to a network. These network errors can eventually lead to app-crashes.
Focus on good caching so the user isn’t 100% dependent on using the network system.
- App load per period
This metric describes how well your mobile app handles several transactions/events at once. It can be considered as a stress test, where one tries to do things in rapid succession to overload the app with too much input.
It’s important to account for these scenarios as your user may encounter problems if they are impatient and try to tap something multiple times to get it to load.Focus on the Metrics That Matter Going through mobile analytics might seem easy, but you need to really understand what you’re looking for before you dive into the data. Be clear on the goals you set for your app, and don’t waste too much time on metrics that don’t matter. Try to focus only on the key areas that help you achieve your goals. Write to us at marketing@aimdek.com if you wish to transform your billion-dollar app idea into a reality.
