11 mobile app retention strategies for 2016

OVERVIEW

Over past few years, world has witnessed an unprecedented number of people rushing to develop mobile apps for various platforms like iOS, Android, Windows.

According to Nielsen Report, smartphone usage across US has increased by 74% from 2012 to 2015. As of end of 2015, there are several million apps across smartphone platforms and more are added each day.

From developer or mobile app business perspective, key factor for developing apps is earning revenues either by selling apps, ad space or end user data to other companies. A closer look at growth of mobile app revenue from 2011 – 2015 and further forecast through 2017 gives a rosy picture.

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OVERVIEW

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Worldwide mobile app revenues from 2011 to 2017 (in billion U.S. dollars)

Source: Statista

OVERVIEW

•Maximum year-on-year growth was recorded in 2012. Most of revenue growth was because of iOS based apps

•This can be explained by the fact that Apple launched iPhone 5 this year.

•Android also saw significant jump this year because more mobile phone manufacturers adopted Android as base OS.

➤ Between 2011 and 2015, revenue grew 445%

➤ In 2016 and 2017, its expected to grow another 69% over 2015 revenue

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OVERVIEW

•A recent Nielsen report puts light on some important mobile app usage statistics (between Q4 2012 to Q4 2015):

•Among millions of apps, users use on average 27.1 different app. This has remained stable since 2014 (2012: 26.5, 2013: 26.8, 2014: 26.7, 2015: 27.1)

•Time spent on apps has increased by 76% from 2012 to 2015

•Women spent more time on apps than men

•Youth use fewer apps but spend more time with them

•90% of time spent on mobile is on apps

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OVERVIEW

•Technology analysts at Compuware found that mobile apps are still the preferred means of connecting for most users over mobile websites, with 85 percent choosing the former over the latter.

Most of us hop on a new app that is launched in market. There is an initial rush to download new apps. That jumps the key metric “Number of Downloads” for the app. Users’s behavior shows that they try a lot of apps, decide to ‘stop using’ those within first 3-7 days. TO be successful, apps need to to get the users hooked during that critical first 3-7 day period.

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(1) Make Apps that are stable and highly usable

A key attribute of App’s usability is its stability. Study finds that 79% users will give a second chance to an app after it fails to impress them the first time. But, this number falls to 16 %, i.e only a small number will give an app a third chance.

So, App owners should make this a key part of their App development lifecycle to have multiple levels of testing done on the app. They should target getting the app right the first time. Using newer testing tools/methodologies may help them achieve required stability.

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11 MOBILE APP RETENTION STRATEGIES FOR 2016

(2) Send App Updates & Fixes Frequently

Your app development lifecycle, should have regular cycles for sending updates and bug fixes to the users. Though update should be sent regularly (weekly or bi-weekly), bug fixes should be sent as soon as bug is identified and fixed. Delay in fixing a bug is dangerous to success of your app. Updates may include user interface update or addition of new features that are inspired by new needs or improvements of existing features.

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(3) Focus on User Experience (UX)

Study also shows that 80 to 90% apps are deleted after one use. This means, developers should not only focus on a bug-free and stable app but also do a design thinking on how to hook users immediately. Agreed that developers will have already made money from the initial download if the app was paid but a key part of revenue is in-app sales, developers lose on this.

Let’s define User Experience (UX). A key requirement for an exemplary user experience is meeting precise needs of the customer. Research shows that if exact needs of the users is taken care of, 80% of the user experience is achieved.

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Other components of User Experience are Simplicity and Elegance. Products should be a joy to own and use.

True user experience is what takes UX to next level of supremacy. It gives customers what they say they want & also what they feel they need. Key to achieve supreme-quality total user experience in a product is to have seamless merging of the various offerings related to the product like engineering, graphical design, interface design and marketing.

It's important to distinguish the total user experience from the user interface (UI) and usability. UI is integral part of UX but not the only thing to please users. Usability directly relates to meeting the requirements that decides quality of the product. Combined together, UI, Usability & Services define a Total User Experience

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(4) Use Analytics to Build, Launch & Retain Apps

By monitoring user behavior, app success can be increased multifold. Following 4 metrics define user behavior that if monitored can help you develop and grow your apps.

• Acquisition – different channels users come from

• Activation - % of users with satisfying initial experience

• Retention – returning users

• Referral – users helping in growth of user base.

By monitoring these metrics, you will be able to improve your app. You should:

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• Start monitoring before publishing app

• Use different tools for different apps

• Track what makes sense

Using in-app analytics usage will help you gather meaningful data to drive above insights.

(5) Lifetime Value

LifeTime Value is the value of a mobile user as compared to a non-mobile user. If mobile user for a business is is more loyal, spends more, and/or evangelizes more than your regular consumer, mobile strategy is working.

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Value means different to different businesses. A news app may value ad impressions, a music app may value time spent listening to content, a retail app would value purchases, a game may track in-game currency. The point is that knowing the value of various consumers means you can compare users.

(6) Monitoring User Behavior

By taking advantage of native APIs available on the mobile device, you can drive user engagement through push notifications and cloud backup options. Monitoring your users’ every move throughout your app is imperative to understanding user behavior and seeing how they use the app. Tracking the usage pattern can give you very useful information about various demographic groups. That helps in segmentation of apps.

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For example, by tracking app usage a game development company may learn about a particular age group that contributes to maximum revenues. With this information in hand, app developers can develop marketing strategies to target that group of users.

(7) Use Gesture Analysis

Gesture analysis is technique of monitoring users gestures to improve your app. Several tools are available that use mathematical algorithms to interpret human gestures. In your app, you can use touch heatmaps to see user’s gestures via a visual report. You can analyze actions such as taps, swipes and pinches that provides insight on user behavior.

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- Where are they tapping most?

- Where are they pinching?

- Where do they interact the most?

These can be valuable data points for you to improve your app for touch actions. Remember, every “micro millimeter” counts in smartphones.

(8) Use Push Notifications to derive effective marketing strategy

Push notifications is a way to alert users of something new even when the user is not actively using your application. You must convince users what benefits they will be getting if they allow you to send push notifications to them. Getting permission is key.

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Users who opt-in to receive push notifications have just over a 25% higher probability to continue using the app than those who do not. Some best practices for sending push notifications are:

• Send push notifications at right time, not at midnight or in wee hours.

• Don’t send too frequent push notifications. If it gets overwhelming, users will get annoyed.

• Based on segments defined by using user behavior data, send NarrowCast Notifications that have maximum impact.

• Try to send 1:1 notifications that look more personalized.

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• Innovate with rich texts and graphics for push notifications rather than traditional text based push notifications.

• Implement scoring models to change content in notifications.

• Try time constraint vanishing offers via push notifications.

(9) Integrated Mobile App and Marketing

With a disintegrated mobile app from marketing databases, you miss on using data for effective marketing strategies. With integrated apps to marketing data, you can trigger personalized content and interactions across your emails, website, call centers and more. With this kind of integration, you can run marketing campaigns for your mobile app across Digital Media such as email marketing, social media marketing apart from mobile app marketing.

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(10) Build Effective Feedback Monitoring Mechanisms

Apps that closely monitors feedback sent by users on app stores and responds diligently, succeeds at winning users’ confidence even if there is a negative feedback. With thousands of choices, users have low appetite for a bad User Experience. Make service a key component of your App delivery strategy. For positive feedback, thank users with personalized messages. Users normally feel disengaged from taking app experience surveys, try to be innovative so users take the surveys. Make surveys very concise with great user interface so that users don’t feel burdened. Data collected from surveys can be a good source of improving your app or any other aspect related to the app delivery.

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(11) Speed Is the Key

A key part of user experience is Speed at which your app opens, operates or responds. Specially when talking about apps for gaming, financial services (banks etc), hospitality, travel and m-commerce, network delays plays spoil-sport to the success of apps. Though CDN can be used to accelerate apps, its not very effective technology. You need to look at acceleration from multiple perspective:

• Application Layer Acceleration: It improves application layer by optimizing caching, compression, load balancing etc

• Connection Management : For efficient use of server resources

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• Network Loss Protection : Use advanced loss and congestion recovery techniques to reduce impact of packet loss

• Transparent Turn Reduction: Reduce unnecessary number of trips between end user and web server.

• Transport Layer Acceleration: Eliminates latency and improves performance.

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