Developing a successful product also means planning to sustain it over time and helping it grow steadily.
There are instances of apps becoming an overnight success, as millions of users download it in a single day. However, due to a lack of a proper road map or plan for the future, the same users uninstalled the app within two or three days. The popularity plummeted and there was no way of getting back those users.
Such instances show that it is as important to retain customers as it is to attract them to your product. So, below, we discuss a few pointers that you can follow to retain your users.
Developers often concentrate the most on the building phase of an app and the technical fine tuning of the product. And, those looking after the retention metrics only consists of a tiny team, while the bosses or inventors are busy with other metrics, such as customer growth and the number of users signing up.
But, retention should be your key performance indicator (KPI). It is critical to understand that the customer retention phase should receive the same consideration as the building phase and requires a lot of effort. Retention metrics should be an important factor that needs attention from all departments of an organization.
Organizations and teams are hung up on the Monthly Active Users (MAU) metric and the speed of growth. It has even become an industry standard to check the MAU to determine the progress of an app.
Unfortunately, this metric only shows the number of users who used your app or maybe simply opened the app by mistake. It does not indicate whether the users found the app valuable or whether it was successful in engaging the users.Images by Christophe BENOIT, Paul Downey
All teams have an aha moment that they can be proud of and you have to take advantage of this moment. You can highlight it for your employees and users as an example of what should follow. Doing so could help employees determine the appropriate action items to achieve user retention goals.
Now that you know that user retention is important, you must also understand how to retain users.
On average, about 77% of users uninstall an app within the first three days. And, to avoid your app’s users dropping off, you can take advantage of the “onboarding” phase to get them hooked. The best way to attract users during the onboarding phase is by motivating them to install the app and continue using it.
While ads and excellent copywriting can really help you motivate the users, providing social proof is your best bet. You can show users how their friends and family have used the app successfully and thus establish the belief that the app could work for them too.
Another strategy is to display your success rate to a potential user. Facebook shows how you can find seven friends in ten days, while you are busy signing up. To keep their promise of finding your friends, it springs to action in the next step by asking you to send an invite to all your email contacts.
Once you have moved beyond the onboarding phase, you need to focus on long-term retention. To succeed in the long run, it is important to keep repeating your core actions for success. As soon as you have established those actions, you can start focusing on providing benefits for your users.
Again, a classic example of a business using this strategy is Facebook. Since 2006, when Facebook became public to users all over the world, it has been reinventing itself by changing layouts, adding features, and making the experience more convenient for the users. The company has clearly established itself as a brand which is value for money, thus making the users loyal.
In conclusion, we would like to reiterate that user retention is as important as attracting users to your product. Once you understand the importance of retaining users, it should not be too difficult to incorporate a strategy to do so in your mobile product roadmap for the future.
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