Some of the most significant events in history can be subjectively described as one-hit wonders: the discovery of penicillin, the asteroid that killed the dinosaurs, the 1966 World Cup Final and even Chesney Hawkes’ The One and Only. For app developers, however, being a one-hit wonder is not a unique group by any respect. According to research, 20% of all mobile apps are used only once. Although this is an improvement on the 26% of 2011, there are still too many apps that fail to resonate with mobile users longer than it takes to swipe left on Tinder.
So how do you avoid being an app one-hit wonder? As is the case for most businesses, the key is to understand what your customers want so you can fulfill their needs. By following these five strategies, you can successfully engage and re-engage your mobile app users.
Collect and analyse user data
In any business, it is difficult to understand how a product or service is performing without user data. This data can come in many forms, from sales and customer service data, to logistical and staff costs.
The same principles should be applied to mobile apps. Who is your audience and how do they behave on your app? Where are your existing users coming from? How long are they using the app and what features interest them the most?
Before brands and developers can understand what changes to make or what audience to target for marketing communications, they need to look at and understand why people use, or don’t use, their app.
Set goals and measure success
Measuring user behaviour on the web is a given for brands and app developers alike. Mobile analytics show how users are finding, engaging with and purchasing through an app and help the brand owner make informed decisions on how to engage and re-engage mobile users. However, many brands stop measuring success after the initial application download.
In order to fully leverage your media investments, understand your KPIs. Is the app purely an engagement tool, or is it also a sales tool? Is it an awareness tool, do you need users to find to other potential fans? Or all of the above?
Without knowing your end goal, is it worth building an app in the first place? And, if the goal of the application isn’t clear to you, then chances are it’s not obvious to users.
It is of equal importance to use analytics to track how the user moves through the purchase funnel on your app. Once you know what users are doing you can make more informed decisions about how to re-engage in-app. For example, if a large group of users log out of an app every time a specific feature is used it could indicate that that feature isn’t working and requires a fix.
Engage inactive and infrequent app users
Almost all mobile users have purchased or downloaded some of their apps on a whim and maybe used them once or twice before forgetting about them.
Use audience insights to send a push notification to all users when an app is updated, letting people know about the changes to the app.
This can act as a catalyst for increased usage of the app. In addition, audience insights can be used to segment users by where they are along the customer journey. Use updates, in-app messaging and push notifications to encourage engagement for low activity users.Look at the traits of your most valuable users and target low activity users that look the most like them. Understand and focus energy and effort on your most valuable users.
Maximise scale
Although figures released in January found that Apple iOS is still the dominant mobile operating system in the UK - 42% to Android’s 29% of market share - nearly half of all Android apps are opened 11 or more times, whereas only a third of iOS apps are.
One contributing factor could be that compared to Android, iOS users have a larger number of apps installed on their devices so competition for time increases and can affect retention. Either way, if you want your app to be opened more frequently, it’s advisable to create an Android and iOS compatible app.
Constant content
Social networking and weather apps have the smallest percentage of apps only used once. These apps mostly rely on outside content that is constantly updated. If you can emulate these regular content updates, integrate a community aspect or become a utility for your users you will be most successful.
By David Barker, Managing Director of EMEA at Amobee.
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