Most Important Mobile App Engagement Metrics to Track
PNN Soft has experience in creating custom mobile applications and custom applications. Therefore, we are well versed in the mechanics and approaches to analysing user engagement and evaluating the success of mobile applications.
Mobile app engagement is a set of metrics that indicate how often and in what way users use the app. These indicators can be obtained through integrated metrics and analytical tools. Such a thorough assessment will help businesses improve their apps and bring them to the top of the market. This article will discuss how to measure customer engagement.
The main factors influencing product success include: time spent in the app and frequency of visits, user actions in the app, and frequency of purchases in the app. User engagement metrics can be divided into these three groups.
One of the main indicators is DAU (Daily active users) and MAU (Monthly active users), which help to determine the growth rate of the application. They are used to determine the Retention rate or otherwise known as Stickiness Ratio. This indicator is aimed at determining the value of an app through the percentage of DAU and MAU. The relatively opposite churn rate indicates the outflow of users. Both of these metrics are highly correlated, and sometimes a sharp and short-term user departure is not critical. It is important to look at customer engagement data comprehensively over a certain period of time.
Screen flow analysis is a set of metrics for measuring customer engagement that contains data on user behaviour. These metrics collect information about user gestures or clicks. Together with the Session depth indicator, businesses can draw conclusions about the engagement or complexity of their application. If a user makes many clicks or swipes but does not linger on the screens they open, it may indicate that they are looking for a specific solution. However, if the session depth is high and the user lingers on the screens, this is a positive conclusion about high engagement.
Customer engagement metrics that analyse user behaviour also include session interval assessments. That is, how much time passes between the user closing the application and returning to it again.
Monitoring the following indicators is no less important than the previous ones. These data are focused on the actual component — such as income from purchases. For example, the conversion rate is the percentage of users who have performed the desired action: requesting a consultation, registering, or purchasing extended functionality. Sometimes these customer engagement metrics can indicate a number of application inefficiencies: when the engagement rate is high, but the purchase rate is disproportionately low. In this case, the business can cut back on free functionality or add new offers, or allocate more resources to advertising.
ARPU – Average revenue per user – assessment calculated as the ratio of revenue for a given period to the total number of users for the same period.
Exit rate – customer engagement data to identify weaknesses in the application and indicates when a user leaves the application. The average rate may vary depending on the type and category of mobile application.
The question: what are the engagement metrics, can be considered closed, as we have described reliable and informative indicators of engagement. But how do you integrate these metrics into your app, and what tools will be useful?
Firstly, you can use analytics tools from Google Analytics and other independent tools. However, there are a few nuances that make tracking capabilities on iOS somewhat limited compared to Android. These limitations are due to Apple’s security and privacy requirements. Nevertheless, Apple App Analytics provides basic information about installations, app openings, user retention, transitions from the App Store, and more.
Customer engagement analytics from other platforms often provide additional tools for keyword research, competitor analysis, and SEO. They can be a targeted tool, but companies often choose them as an additional tool for managing and analysing user engagement.
Secondly, the implementation of push notifications has repeatedly proven its effectiveness. Their purpose is to remind users about the application, their unfinished activities, and interesting offers. It is not uncommon for them to reactivate users who have been inactive for an extended period. The use of in-app messaging is similar in principle, but is aimed at retention and proactive encouragement to take action. For example, in gaming apps, after spending time in the game, users are offered to take part in a competition, pass several levels to receive a prize, and so on. In commercial apps, these can be promotions, discounts on in-app purchases, or bonuses.
We have already mentioned a few tips that can optimise user engagement metrics, but let’s take a closer look at this issue. Competing in today’s app market is challenging, as it requires significant advertising expenditures. But what should you do when you have a promotion budget but still see low effectiveness, or when your budget is limited?
Personalising the user experience. Businesses can focus their activities on users who actively use the app but have not yet made a purchase or other target action.
Optimising the onboarding process as one of the methods to increase engagement. Add animated elements, mini-games, or animate common user actions. This will attract attention and help maintain interest. But overloading the screen with elements can repel consumers, so it is worth involving a UI UX designer in this process. A specialist will help you build a balanced and interesting interactive experience specifically for your consumer category.
Offers, promotions and incentives. An old and effective marketing approach to attract attention. You can give bonuses for performing certain actions in the app, offer hot discounts for a limited period of time, and diversify these processes with interactive tasks. Use different solutions for approaches, and consumers will stay with you longer. Promotions and discounts are always effective, but maintaining similar positions is not always easy. Therefore, use customer engagement analytics tools to learn everything you need to promote your app.
We have created hundreds of custom applications for businesses and implemented our own mobile solutions in the fields of sports and health, automotive and transport, online commerce, IoT, and e-learning for kids. Many of our applications have surpassed one million downloads and made it to the top of the app stores. We develop mobile applications considering requirements and trends. We can offer further support for the developed applications by our teams to measure customer engagement and implement effective updates. Submit a request for the development of an iOS or Android mobile application, and our tech team will contact you.
