In today’s digital world where everything is available at the fingertips, the mobile application has become a basic key for any business growth and a customer’s first preference for engagement with the business entity. Here we will understand mobile app retention and the ability of apps to engage users for the long term and why app developers and businesses need to aim for sustainable success and high user retention rates. We will also look into app retention strategies.
Apart from the first download, it concentrates on creating and keeping connections with users/customers. This article will explain the most beneficial mobile app retention strategies for keeping users engaged with your application/product/services you provide. It will help your business to succeed by increasing customer loyalty, will try to boost average customer value, and will help increase your app’s profitability.
What is Mobile App Retention?
Mobile app retention shows the capability of mobile applications to maintain user engagement and utilization over some time after downloading. It also helps to show, how well an application keeps its user and keeps them from uninstalling the application.
The mobile app retention rate controls the percentage of users who continue actively using your app over a specified period. Mobile app retention is an important user retention metric for application developers and app development companies since it directly impacts the app’s long-term profitability and success in the market. High retention rates suggest that users value the app and keep using it, which may boost in-app purchases and customer lifetime value for the application in the market.
Importance of Mobile App User Retention
According to the business perspective, the benefits of mobile app user retention are extensive. An economical way is to retain monthly active users rather than continuously bringing on new ones. The mobile app user market is wide and competitive, having loyal customers can produce a recurring generation of income, offer insightful recommendations, and serve as brand ambassadors. You can promote long-term growth, and create sustainability, and competitive advantage by focusing on user retention.
How to Increase Mobile App Retention
The basic and key indicator of your mobile app’s success is user engagement. User engagement is the way to create the most engaging digital product. The average user retention rate for apps can be small, but following these best mobile app retention strategies can help to increase app retention:
User retention strategies:
- Better customer/client relationship
- Cost-effectiveness
- Ability to receive feedback
- Continuous improvement
- Competitive advantage
1. Streamline the onboarding process
“First impression is last impression”. It is very important to create an initial impression for your users. It starts with onboarding and it should be without any hassle and smooth. For this, you have to create a simple but unique and eye-catching application that can receive the user’s attention because any application will only have 20 seconds to make that impression otherwise if you fail to do so you will lose customers as they will not feel interested and close your application.
By designing and executing an easy-to-use onboarding process, you can encourage people to explore your app and find its features. The Localytics study has demonstrated that mobile apps can increase retention rates by over 50% with the proper onboarding flow.
2. Ensure good performance
Excellent application performance is one of the first things you should focus on to increase customer retention here we make mistakes as we are always in a hurry and doesn’t encourage having patience and focus on performance. If you have created your mobile app is slow/time-consuming or keeps popping up with different errors/bugs, it does not call for the engagement of users. You will lose all your customers and they will look for better products in the market. Nothing is more annoying than an app that does not function as desired.
You can make your application user’s favorite by checking on reducing app crashes, improving gesture recognition accuracy, and cutting loading/redirecting times these are crucial for optimal app performance. If any issues are created, you should fix them on an immediate basis.
3. Provide a customized user experience
It feels good to be cared for and appreciated. Not just when using a mobile application but in everyday life as well. Customizing your content will attract more readers who will value your application strategy. Many applications still don’t provide users with content made for them or any customized application experience. That is your opportunity to get in the market game and win them over.
It is a question of how is customized user experience accomplished. Here you can access a multitude of data where you can collect users’ information about their location, interests, age, gender, for what they use the application, behavior, and conversion history. The more data you have, the more customized your app can be created.
4. Gather user feedback
If you want to make your business grow all the customer’s feedback is the key to doing so as it will have to improve your product and make it a customer favorite. For instance, you can have a survey on your targeted market audience about their experiences using your mobile app or whether they would be willing to refer a friend to this digital product of yours.
Keeping a good check on your app reviews and ratings on the app store page is another excellent source of information because people are happy to express their thoughts and rate products with stars or write a review on the product.
5. Send push notifications
We always have push notifications on our mobile it shows and the product provider tries to remind us of any updates or send some interesting notification of our interest in regularly using their application or software. If push notifications are used correctly it can be one of the most effective ways to capture users’ attention and keep them returning to your app. These notifications are emphasized because unwanted notifications won’t engage users, that much is certain. This will lead them to uninstall the application immediately if they become uncomfortable with the meaningless messages of the app.
6. Reward dedicated and engaged users
The best way to make your application interesting is by giving rewards to your users on certain activities or references, people enjoy receiving rewards. When selecting an online retailer, 69% of them inquire about reward programs for devoted customers. Users feel they received a great deal and have saved money on a good or service they would have purchased when offered various incentives, discounts, or referral bonuses. It is a fantastic method of persuading customers to pick you over your competition.
Giving free or discounted things can be expensive and it rarely works. It is preferable to select inexpensive but effective rewards, such as introducing indicators of high user status.
Here are some rewards you can suggest to the application provider:
- Limited discounts on the next purchase made in your application
- Joining the VIP program
- Access to freebies
- Unlocked access to premium content
- Moderator status to control other users’ activities
- Access to updates and new features
7. Create an attractive user interface
The user interface plays the most important role in creating a first impression and influencing the customer to use the application. The harsh reality is that users make quick decisions about their mobile app based only on their appearance. Investing time and money to create a stunning UI design is highly recommended. It can grab users’ interest, hold it, and extend its duration on your application.
8. App Store Optimization (ASO)
Developing an outstanding application in all areas creates more users. You can hire dedicated developers from custom software development services like Nevina Infotech to create successful applications. App store optimization makes it easier for potential users to find your app by increasing its visibility in search results. Increasing the visibility of your app makes it more likely that new users will visit and stay engaged with your application.
ASO concentrates on attracting genuinely interested users in your app and is more likely to interact with it, in addition to simply increasing the number of users. Observing the metadata and descriptions of your app will help you generate a specific user base that will benefit from its value and increase mobile app retention rates.
9. Add new features
Always try to upgrade your application with the latest features available. User preferences and needs are subject to change over time with the technology. Developing new features shows that you’re actively listening to your users and meeting their needs. Always update and upgrade with new features on your app, it helps the users to explore it more and keep them engaged in your application.
You can encourage them to check on more of your app’s features by targeting the usefulness and advantages of these features through onboarding processes and pop-ups/push notifications. Promoting a sense of engagement and discovery, this exploration increases user retention.
Planning and Communication
When it comes to project deliverables for mobile application schedules, planning plays the main role.
- Proposals
- Market research
- Vision
- Plans
- Business strategy
- Uniting teams for information flow
Proposals
The proposal document covers all essential information, including its title, operation dates, objectives, goals, features, costs, and many other estimated events, desires, and requirements you expect your app to fulfill.
Market research
It is the most important base to check and background checking of any market is the base point to start with. Your idea may be incredible and groundbreaking, but you need research to make sure whether there is a capable market and that nobody else is already doing it better than you can in that area.
Vision
Your vision outlines the essential and unique ideas that will make or break the product. It’s a list of features it must include, others that ‘would be good if it could’, and how they translate into a marketable, saleable product in the market. Hiring the best Android developers or IOS developers will make a difference for your desired application.
Plans
Plans include technical requirements, infrastructures, languages, and the steps you need to take to reach their launch in each chosen market and country.
Business Strategy
Business strategies consider costs, budgets, risk analysis, and the monetization of your and your competitor’s products, which all lead to product functions and proof of concept. It also caters to how you’ll structure your discussions, workflows, presentations, design ideas, development plan, and development, leading to advertising, marketing, and sales, plus a set timeline for each stage and step. You can hire the best mobile development services for the same.
Uniting teams for information flow
Everyone is invested in the product progress and their part in the plan, from designers and developers to clients, customers, marketers, and accountants. Make sure that everyone gets what they desire for an app like yours and with the appropriate project management or communication tools. These will help to make loyal customers.
Deliverables vs Milestones
For Custom software development services, you can hire custom mobile app developer from development services for the best results. It is very important to make sure of their scheduled deliverables and milestones. There are differences which will be shown below.
- Deliverables fulfill an objective: At the time of delivery of the product make sure it fulfills its objective and at the time scheduled. Deliverables can also be internal or external, a product, plan, tool, or agreement.
- Internal deliverables: Internal deliverables are most relevant to your production team members – for example, reports, test results, budgets, technical documentation, builds, sprints, and much more.
- External deliverables: External deliverables are most relevant to stakeholders/customers – like design files, presentations, prototypes, MVPs, and test models.
- Milestone: A milestone is a winning point in the project journey. They’re valuable parts of the scheduled time slots for the project, delivering a timescale and measuring how well you’re achieving your goals through the application.
Smartphone App Development Tips – Advanced Mobile App
What is an App Retention Rate?
An app retention rate is calculated by the percentage of your users being actively engaged with your app over a specific period. How you define your app retention in your organization should be driven by how you want users to interact with your product and in the market. For instance, if your application helps people with grocery shopping, then an engaged user is someone who uses it during their weekly shopping or maybe frequently on like alternate days. If your application is a language learning app then the engaged learner might be defined as someone who uses your app for at least 5-minute sessions each day or more.
Payment Services Provider (PSP)
Payment service providers are third-party fintech apps that connect a merchant bank with the buyer bank to smoothly and securely complete payment transactions between users and providers. They perform important tasks behind every e-commerce transaction, like currency changes, account verification, and other finance-related areas. To make sure of an easy experience for the customers and buyers.
Payment service providers help merchants focus on their business instead of dealing with different financial institutions to manage transactions. Payment service providers simplify the merchant’s life by minimizing external work and facilitating buyers with seamless payment processing.
Payment service providers are the backbone of the digital economy; their rule is important in running e-businesses. PSP is not only about prices; here it is considered by many factors while partnering with a payment processing solution company. We recommend considering security, simplicity, availability in your chosen country and currency, customer support, and pricing. You need to analyze these factors, and your business size, and to choose the best PSP that makes your business and customer life easy with payments.
How Much Does It Cost To Develop A Mobile App In 2024?
Conclusion
Mobile app retention is very important to a successful mobile application strategy. It is not a one-time effort but an ongoing journey that requires a deep understanding of your market, and its specific engaged users, their different preferences, and their pain points/problems. As mobile app technology develops, retaining users has become more important. We have mentioned the above strategies, such as user onboarding, personalization, push notifications, and content updates, are all essential tools to foster user loyalty and keep them coming back.
Nevina Infotech can be your best choice for developing your mobile application. We have skilled mobile app developers and we provide with best facilities and no pinch of doubt in our work.
