Mobile App KPIs and Metrics You Need to Track
Making a mobile is a big accomplishment. But your job is not finished once the mobile application launches. How is your mobile application performance doing? Are you getting the most out of your application?
The answer to this question is tracking mobile application KPIs & metrics. KPI will paint a clear picture of what are you doing right & what needs to be improved.
Regardless of your mobile application type or industry, everyone should be tracking the Key performance indicators below. We will cover application marketing Key performance indicators to mobile application performance metrics and everything in between.
This will help Mobile app development San Diego marketers and mobile app developers alike improve application performance and increase user engagement.
- Application Downloads
- Retention Rate
- Active Users
- Mobile App Stickiness Ratio
- Session Length and App Session Intervals
- App Store Rating
- In-App Purchases
- Mobile App Churn Rate
- Mobile App NPS (Net Promoter Score)
- App Store Ranking
Application Downloads
one of the most important mobile application KPIs to keep an eye on app downloads. It is one of the easiest ways to tell if your application marketing efforts are working or not.
If your mobile application is not getting downloads, then there are likely other issues with your marketing funnel.
For those of you who are not marketing your mobile application prior to launch, you can not expect a huge number of application downloads in one day. so you need to set realistic expectations for this metric and try not to compare your download metrics to Twitter & Facebook.
It is important to track your downloads over time & see how this application metric trends in correlation to your marketing efforts. Marketing campaigns help you to drive app downloads.
Retention Rate
For your Mobile app development in San Diego to truly be successful, people need to do more than just install it on their mobile device. That is why the retention rate is so important.
User retention tracks how many users come back to your mobile application after their first session.
Studies show that 24% of mobile applications are used once & never opened again. So the steepest drop-off in user retention occurs in the first 47 hours.
So it is important for you to take steps during these key hours to ensure users have a good experience. Make sure you are giving them a reason to open the application again & keep coming back for the long term.
It is in your best interest to measure user retention over daily, weekly, & monthly. This can help you determine whether or not the metric is tied to specific known issues in the mobile application, like crashes or downtime.
The key to success with high retention is optimizing the user experience. Having a great UX/UI design goes a long way to high retention.
Active Users
Active users take retention & downloads step further. These KPIs measure how many people are actually using the applications.
This metric is divided into two main categories segment – daily active users & monthly active users. The daily active user count is a key sign of engagement. What is causing people to come back & use your mobile application every day?
Your monthly active user count is also an important metric. As people in this category could be opening your mobile application several times per week — they are just not opening it every day.
Mobile App Stickiness Ratio
Daily active users and dividing it by the number of monthly active users you can calculate the stickiness ratio. This key performance indicator represents your chances of getting an MAU to become a DAU.
Taking advantage of push notifications & updating your application on a regular basis are two ways to improve the stickiness of your mobile application. You just need to come up with ways to encourage your existing users to open the application on a more frequent basis.
Session Length and App Session Intervals
Session length is a mobile app key performance indicator that tracks how long application users engage with your application in a single session. Application session intervals measure how frequently people return to your app.
Both of these are key signs of engagement. I like tracking these because they take your retention rate to another level. If your application has long session lengths & low session intervals, it tells you that people are using your application for a long time and re-opening it on a regular basis.
Research shows that mobile users spend 76% of their time on their favorite three applications.95% of application usage is spread amongst ten apps. So if you are not in the top ten applications used on someone’s phone, you likely won’t have satisfactory session length or session interval metrics.
App Store Rating
Your application store rating is a quick & easy way to see what existing users think about your application. When your rating is high, this metric can be a key part of your application marketing strategy.
The reason why this metric is so important is that it can be directly tied to your application downloads. Most users won’t consider downloading a mobile application if it doesn’t have a 4 or 5-star rating.
One way to improve your rating is by giving existing users an incentive to rate your mobile application. Most people won’t go out of their way to do this unless they had a really great experience or a really terrible experience and the average user usually falls in between these two extremes.
In-App Purchases
An in-mobile application purchase is pretty self-explanatory. It is a metric that shows you how often users are spending real money on your mobile application.
Obviously, you need to have purchases and application monetization enabled to track a metric like this. But it is important to track this number over time to see if certain events or campaigns lead to more purchases.
For example, in-application purchases may increase for e-commerce mobile applications during the holiday season. Or maybe you have a gaming application that saw an increase in purchases after a certain marketing promotion went live.
Mobile App Churn Rate
The churn rate is essentially the opposite of your retention rate. It tracks the percentage of people who stop using your mobile application altogether.
Not all users who churn are created equally. If your low-value users stop using the application, it is much worse than losing daily users who were highly engaged. Studies show that the average churn rate is 56% in the first month. This number jumps to 70% by month three.
If high-value users are churning, it is the sign of a much larger problem for your application that needs to be addressed immediately.
Mobile App NPS (Net Promoter Score)
Net promoter score is a (mobile app development San Diego) key performance indicator that is often overlooked. It is measured through surveys that ask users how likely they are to recommend your mobile application.
Why is this so important? Research shows that people are four times more likely to download an app if they have been referred by a friend. Referred customers also have a 15% higher lifetime value than other users.
So a high NPS can ultimately impact other mobile application key performance indicators, and even help keep your marketing costs low.
App Store Ranking
Your mobile application store ranking is your position on application stores for a given search term. The higher your ranking, the greater the chances that people will see your application and download it.
Knowing what to put on your mobile application store page & understanding the principles behind application store optimization are some easy ways to climb the rankings.
Check out our complete guide to application store optimization to learn more about this.
