Author: Sabih Javed / Source: The Next Web
Making users stick with your app is getting more and more challenging as their choices keep increasing. There are well over 2.8 million Android apps and 2.2 million iOS apps out there and still counting. The competition is fierce and there is little room for mistakes.
In most cases, you’d never know that your mobile app is on its way to the cemetery. Even if you know it, there’s little you can do when users start losing interest in your app. It calls for proactive planning, in-depth analysis, and regular monitoring right from day one that will help you stay ahead of your competitors and to save your app from getting lost (or uninstalled).
The big question is: How to do it?
Below are the signs that will help you determine if your mobile app is on its way to the cemetery and what steps you can take to revive it before the damage is done. The whole point is to be proactive and take precautionary measures on-time so you can avoid losing your entire user-base.
1. Decline in revenue
Is your mobile app performing poorly in terms of revenue that it generates? Is revenue declining every month?
It’s a clear sign that your app is not doing well and is moving towards the graveyard. The worldwide mobile app revenues are increasing every year and are expected to hit $188.9 billion by 2020.
According to Fortune, App Store and Play Store mobile app revenue rose by 35 percent in 2017. So a declining app revenue is a reason to worry.
To fix this revenue issue, you need to find average revenue per user (ARPU) which refers to the average revenue generated per user. Here is how to calculate it:
Total revenue (in a specific period, say a year) / Total number of users (in that specific period)
For instance, the ARPU for last three months is $50. Here is what to do next:
- If the number of users declined in the past three months, you need to bring more people onboard as it will increase overall revenue
- If the number of users remained constant or increased gradually but total revenue kept on declining in the past the months, try increasing ARPU by push notification, in-app purchases, etc.
2. Not enough app downloads
A decline in revenue itself won’t show you the complete picture. Therefore, you have to look at other factors to figure out why your app is failing.
A decline in the app download is one of the biggest reasons that will ruin revenue and will negatively impact your app. Getting people to download your app is challenging.
Why?
Because the app industry is huge and your users have a lot of options to choose from.
There are several ways to increase app downloads. Some of the best ones are discussed below.
Price drop — If your app is paid, the best approach is to reduce its price. A study revealed that games that reduced the price for a week had their revenues increased by a whopping 437 percent in a week.
Simply reducing price won’t work but you have to promote your app during price drop to boost downloads. It’s an awesome strategy but use it with extreme caution as it can backfire.
Influencer marketing — Asking an influencer to promote your app is a cost-effective and powerful technique to increase downloads (exponentially). Influencer marketing delivers 11x higher ROI than any other form of digital marketing.
Bejeweled hired top Instagram influencers for promotion. Influencers posted their pictures playing the game with hashtags and asked their followers to download the game.
This one campaign moved Bejeweled from 545 to 135 position in top-grossing iPhone games chart in the US and it jumped to 182 top-grossing apps in the Apple store.
Try hiring a few influencers to see similar results.
Guest post — You can publish high-quality guest posts on a few famous sites to increase app downloads. This won’t cost you any money but it’s sure to work.
You need to make sure that you publish guest post on a website where your primary target audience hangs out. For instance, if you’re promoting a game, publish a guest post on a site where gamers hang out such as PC Gamer.
A mediocre guest post on a highly relevant website is way better than a killer guest post on an irrelevant website. Relevancy should be your top priority.
3. User inactivity
Statistics show that the average app retention rate jumps to 22 percent by the third month while retention rate for the first month stands at 37 percent. This means users will stop using most apps with the passage of time (for several reasons known and unknown).
User inactivity is known as churn and is defined as the number of inactive users who don’t return or use your app in a specific time period — which is normally 30 days. This means if a user doesn’t use your app for 30 days, he will be considered an inactive user (known as churn).
Churn is directly related to your app and user experience. Why?
Because a user…
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