Being online is more important than ever for a business. While most have websites or social media accounts, sometimes, it is also important to build a mobile app or a web app. While the process for building an app isn’t always simple, there are plenty of professionals, companies or services who can help.
While having an app for your business or company is good, the information that the app can tell you about your customers and clients is better. These are called metrics and in addition to telling you about customer behavior, they can also help you make the necessary changes to keep customers excited about your content and product. If you simply create your app and treat it as a one-time investment, it has a good chance of failing. An app needs to be continuously updated and improved, and metrics can help you do that more effectively and efficiently.
Simply knowing the metrics and why they are important isn’t enough, you should be monitoring them to ensure your app is always running as expected. If you aren’t sure about monitoring your metrics or are interested in learning more, feel free to check out this helpful link: scala monitoring & performance testing | AppOptics.
Important App Metrics
So what are these metrics and why are they important? This article will look at several of the most important app metrics that you should keep an eye on.
Number of Users
One of the most important app metrics to know is how many users and visitors your app has. This metric should also include how many times a user has downloaded your app and how often they visit. If you have a very low number of users or experienced a dramatic drop recently, something needs to change.
You should also try and keep tabs on how many users are currently using your app. This will give you a good idea of how the rest of your app performs with a certain number of online users. The last thing you want is for your app to slow down or experience hiccups with a lot of concurrent users.
Active Users
Active users is a little bit different than the number of users. Active users are people who use the app on a regular basis. Unlike regular users who might have long periods of inactivity, active users are generally pretty loyal and love to use your app.
If your active user numbers are low, you should reach out to old users to re-engage with your app, while also making sure you are still catering to your existing active users. The current active users are keeping you afloat and are committed to your app, and might feel betrayed if you “abandon” them, for lack of a better term.
User Retention
User retention is essentially the percentage of your users that return to your app after their initial visit after downloading. Unfortunately for many app creators and businesses, statistics show that around a quarter of apps are only used one time. To ensure you don’t become one of those apps, you need to be well aware of your user retention rate and always be coming up with new strategies to improve it.
User Acquisition Cost
While it would be nice if your app got flooded with users for free, that generally isn’t how it works. As a result, it is important for businesses and developers alike to be aware of their user acquisition cost. Optimizing your ad spend will ensure you keep your user acquisition costs to a minimum. If you struggle to bring your acquisition costs down, you may struggle to make your app profitable in the long run.
Load Time
In the increasingly digital age that we live in, people are used to getting what they want, when they want it. This means that if it takes a while for your app to download, or more than a few seconds to load its content, you are likely to lose users to other apps that can provide results at a faster rate.
User experience is key, and a big part of that is ensuring that your load time and download time don’t discourage your users. Even if your app is great and serves a purpose, many people won’t stick around through long and painstaking load times to find out.
How Much Time Users Spend on Your App
While knowing how often a user visits your app is great, it is arguably more important to know how long they are spending on your app. A person who spends 30 minutes is more valuable than someone who spends 30 seconds, despite them technically having the same amount of visits/logins. Tracking the length of your sessions can be a big help when it comes to seeing how much revenue potential you have within the app. There are several ways that you can monetize an app; understanding how users spend time on your app will help you develop an effective monetization strategy.
Downloads
While tracking downloads might not be as important as tracking active users and time spent on the app, it can still give you a ton of insight. Not only into how many people are interested in your app and it’s details, but you can also learn where and who these downloads are coming from. You will be able to see how effective paid marketing, word of mouth and organic search have been, which will help you determine which marketing efforts to focus on.
Hopefully this article has helped you learn and understand the most important app metrics. Monitoring these metrics will give you an overview of your apps performance that enable you to develop effective marketing plans. The more you understand and monitor your metrics, the better off your app and business will be.
Author Bio:
Wendy Dessler is a super-connector who helps businesses find their audience online through outreach, partnerships, and networking. She frequently writes about the latest advancements in digital marketing and focuses her efforts on developing customized blogger outreach plans depending on the industry and competition.
