Currently my app has a couple of issues with a few crashes a day which I am working to resolve but I don't think that is the culprit. My design is decent, it performs decently and its not too convoluted. I use google analytics to track events but they are more of a way to report how much activity my app gets rather than reports on how people feel about my app.
I have about 500 active users and about 1,300 accounts. I used mail chimp to retrieve feedback about two weeks ago when I had about 200 active users and 400 accounts and I received only a couple of responses from people saying they really liked it, with just a few minor suggestions but nothing really enlightening. Just today I used to the new search keyword feature in the play console that allows you to see by which terms your users found the app. I have two keywords which I am targeting and have a very nice 50% conversion rate but mostly all of my installs come from keywords that are not listed and get placed in the "other" category. So I am a bit lost since I feel like the app could be optimized right now as its still very new before I try scaling out and just churn through more potential customers.
I am looking for advice in general since I work alone but more specifically are there any tools/methods that could aid me? I came across https://www.appsee.com/ which looks great to be able to see how users interact with my app but I was unable to get a response? (maybe they don't like the little guys)
2) Fill in all the stats of the conversion funnels. This will give you a baseline to answer: Did my modifications help or make it worse. EG: clicked ad -> installed app will be a %50 drop. installed app -> registered was a 20% drop. Amplitude works fine here.
3) Get a steady stream of users in. Ads, forums, social anything. Just a handful so you can see if you are changing things in 2).
4) Setup user testing. (UXCam <- makes VIDEOS of mobile sessions) This will let you see videos of EVERYTHING a person did. Watch each user's behavior 10 times. Over and over. Get to the point where you know what happens next.
5) This is the hard part. Make some change. See if it changes 2). Changes made in the early part of the funnel will change how many people TRY your app. Changes made in the later portion will change how many people STAY in your app.
6) Do 5) until you give up. Over and over. Then if you can't make 2) better quit.
7) If your cost of user acquisition is less than your profit. Run to a VC as fast as possible and pour gas all over it [or not].
I like to look at it as a rethink moment for when you build in the mechanism to track. Do I really need this? Is there data I don't need to collect here? Do I need a user's consent?
I’m asking because I usually uninstall apps either:
- Months later after I notice I’m not using it
- Minutes after opening it for the first time
If you just launched your app, I imagine your uninstall is happening right away.
As an app user, let me tell you what usually makes me uninstall right away.
- App permissions that I don’t want to give. If the app keeps working 100% after I decline, I may keep it. Otherwise, uninstall.
- Prompt for account creation. If the app provides something I REALLY want, I might create an account. If I was just curios, uninstall. If the account creation is with only social accounts (SSO with Facebook or Twitter) and no option for email, uninstall. Others may vary.
- I was looking for an app that does what your app does, and while waiting for a large download, found another app that looks to do that thing better. Either screenshots, reviews, description, something convinced me that it’s better. Downloaded the other one, tried it, decided to keep it and uninstall yours.
- It’s a free app but any useful feature is behind a paid subscription or behind an in-app purchase.
The next thing is the user installs it, but finds out how shallow and useless the content / app is for their own use case. You need something that keeps users coming back, what is it?
Instead of trying to understand why 80% of the people are leaving, try to find out why 20% are staying.
Instead of contacting the people who are uninstalling the app, contact the people who install it and stay with it. Ask them why they are buying and what they are using it for.
The people who are uninstalling are not your customers. The people who install and stay are your customers. Find out why they like the app and then use these insights to attract more customers.
That's a survivorship bias. You have to analyze both groups in order to improve the ratio.
In that context, it's really not a survivorship bias. If you want to know about the survivors, it's not wrong to consider the surviors only.
1) It’s going to be a grind and the fact that you increased from 200 actives to 500 actives is a good sign!
2) 10-20% trial signups conversion isn’t terrible until you’ve found the right type of customer you’re targeting. Bigger companies might be getting close to 40% but that is for a product that already has market fit.
3) second other suggestion...email and get in front of your users. Or when users file support tickets (make it super easy for them), use that as opp to get educated.
4) don’t spend money on ads to increase traffic until you are getting more of the type of customer you want and consistently converting them
5) don’t spend more time insrutmenting analytics. You already know what’s up. Just talk to users more and iterate based on their feedback
App reviews seem to have gone unmentioned - are you getting any negative reviews?
If you are, see if they contain anything actionable or even a hint of what the problem might be.
If not, the uninstalls may or may not be a problem - for a paid app that’s free to install, you could be getting a lot of window shopping. Once people realize there is no free lunch, they move on. If this is the version of events playing out, then these were never your target market to begin with - they were not willing to pay and could have been just trying to get something for free.
Only way to know for sure is, like many other comments stated, talk to them - forums, support sites/emails, even reddit could be a good source. Try to figure out who your customers are and look for the place where they communicate.
But should you convince me that your app might be worth its while we bump into the next hindrance.
As a general rule, things that make me abort the installation or uninstall right away:
- app crashes or has particularly custom or sluggish UI which stands out from the more modest applications on my phone
- app wants me to sign in to something
- app absolutely requires permissions I don't want to give
These can be born if the application is truly good (useful) and unique (can't go with another app). But most of these points prevent me from figuring out if the app is worth it.
And these all come into consideration only after I have positive expectations of why should I even try your app.
Considering the 20%, it could actually be quite high (depending on the context, app, and target audience of course).
Maybe your app simply did not do what the user wanted, as they found it with an irrelevant keyword? So basically they are just adding noise to your data as they aren't your target market.
How sure are you about this? Speaking personally, if I installed an app that was otherwise good but crashed that often, I'd likely uninstall it.
>I have a high churn rate (install/uninstall ratio) of about 70-80%
Contradict this statement:
>I know its an app with a viable market, and has potential.
Other suggestions:
>I am getting 3-5 free 3 day trial signups
You are giving it away for free, charge people up front, then you will know if it really solves a problem they are willing to pay for. That is when you will know you have product / market fit.
>I use google analytics to track events but they are more of a way to report how much activity my app gets rather than reports on how people feel about my app.
Use Mixpanel or something similar (idk what the Mixpanel equivalent for apps is) to get a more detailed view of what people are doing.
https://github.com/maartenba/GoogleAnalyticsTracker
You can also detect the uninstall event and try to launch a browser to a quick optional survey
https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/dotnet/api/system.configura...
I’d say try to treat the desktop app as much like a We app as possible from a metrics perspective. Unlike web people have a general disdain for tracking so with all of the info above I’d consider making it opt-in only.
Finally as mentioned above. Post on LinkedIn for some honest reviews of the app, offer some money for their time. At low volume this is easy to manage manually. At scale consider something like https://www.giftbit.com/
Good luck!
Edit: By which I mean, in that moment you do not want to get in the user's way.
Focus on your target market and measure the churn rate in your target market. Forget the rest of the users, those are noise. Develop what you need for your target market.
Well thats not true, if people (the market) are finding (though a marketing channel) your app (the product) then you have done marketing (posting your app on the store) you just don't realise it.
If you don't plan out your marketing you are still marketing you are just usually doing it poorly by marketing to everyone and no one, you should expect to get a lot of confused non customers.
a.) Adding MixPanel, Amplitude or other Analytics is must.
b.) Understand your customer - Are you getting 150 organic downloads? I believe - you are running an ad campaign. Try to make few changes to make your app do organic downloads.
c.) Hire a good UX Designer - Run your analytics & fix the Leakage.
There are agencies who provide consulting on App Growth & Churn - Speak to them. phiture.com, prolificinteractive.com are my favorite ones.
I also consult apps for organic growth & downloads.
As others mentioned, offer a giftcard for a brief phone call or chat interview.
We do this for a living daily. Give me a shout out at tarun@appice.io
Do you have a mini tutorial (3~5 'swipes') for the first time users?
Did you try sending a personalized email to users that created an account and then stopped using?
If I stop using an app the last thing I want is to receive spam (and yeah, to my eyes this would be spam).
Don’t do this.
If you can detect a first time install you may want to put a little sales/tutorial in.
Is the performance of the app bad?
Sign up for a meeting, happy to chat about retention/growth/whatever! Let me know if you need a different +/- time zone and will be happy to accommodate you.
Not sure what the timeframe is between a user trying it out and subsequently uninstalling, but if there is a bit of a time gap, the decreased interaction analytics could be a used as a leading indicator of pending uninstallation and used to trigger a win-back attempt?
