How to Reduce Your Mobile App Churn Rate? The success of a mobile app is not defined by the number of users downloading and installing the app but rather by the app's retention.
According to Zipdo, only 4% of users remain active on the app after the first month of downloading. Also, in 2021, around 81.9% of users uninstalled/churn the app within the first two weeks of installation.
How to Reduce Your Mobile App Churn Rate?
Losing users can negatively impact the revenue goal of a business. So, in this blog, we will understand why users uninstall the apps so fast and how to stop that.
What is Mobile App Churn Rate & Why Does it Matter?
Also known as the abandonment rate, an app's churn rate is the number of users who stop using an app over time or uninstall it. Typically, this metric is measured on the 1st day, 7th day, and 30th day after users first install the app.
App churn rate is the exact opposite of the retention rate as app retention shows user loyalty over time, and churn rate reveals when the number of users starts dropping.
Monitoring the mobile app churn rate helps understand whether you are spending too much on user retention but not getting the envisioned ROI from the user. You can efficiently improve user acquisition and revenue by identifying and rectifying the factors contributing to high churn rates.
To calculate the churn rate, you can use the following two formulas:
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Churn rate = 1 - (# of monthly active users / # of monthly installs)
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Churn rate = (Lost Customers ÷ Total Customers at the given time) x 100
Remember, having a negative churn rate is a positive result as it means the app has made more revenue from existing and new customers than it has lost through churn.
Read More: Why Invest in Mobile App Development for Your Business?
Factors Contributing to Churn & Strategies to Reduce Them
Some of the main reasons that make the churn rate higher are:
Attracting Wrong Audience
Most often than not users sign up for the product or service without understanding if it meets their needs. As soon as they feel you are not what they were expecting, they often deactivate their accounts or uninstall the app for a competitor.
How to Fix it: To overcome the churn caused by poor customer-product fit, you will have to understand the needs of your target audience and ensure that the content shows the problem you are solving instead of its features. You can also integrate new trial questions for the customers from the beginning to help prospects understand how your service can help them.
Read More: Top Mobile App Monetization Strategies
User Experience Issues
Another common reason for the increased churn rate is bad user experience (UX). Some of the problems that your users might be experiencing are too much text, inaccessible designs, lack of responsiveness, pop-up problems, poor navigation, confusing call-to-action buttons, and disorganized UI.
How to Fix it: The first step towards resolving UX design issues is identifying them. You can use different methods to detect and resolve UI/UX problems, such as usability testing, user interviews, user shadowing, and UX audits.
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Complicated Features
Users are more likely to get frustrated when they don’t find the features they are looking for or if those features are not working right. Also, if there are a multitude of features the system is likely to become highly complicated, making it impossible for users to understand what to use and when.
How to Fix it: To overcome this problem, you need to minimize features and opt for simplicity at all costs. Also, avoid early frustrations by having an analyzed and well-tested tour that settles the users into the app. Overall, ensure customers understand what key features are going to suit their needs, and how these features can be found and used to their advantage.
Performance and Loading Time
App performance has a large impact on customer retention and churn rate. The faster the page loading speed, the better the retention rate. Slower apps are more likely to cause high churns as users want the app to load quickly and respond to their requests.
How to Fix it: You can improve the app performance and loading time by reducing the number of third-party integrations, optimizing its code, improving database query speed, optimizing image size, lazy loading, and minimizing network usage.
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Lack of Good Customer Support
Customers are more likely to run into problems while using your app but small problems can convert into big conflicts when they keep the customers from interacting from doing what they intend to do.
In such scenarios, customers often search for real people to solve their problems rather than chatbots or confusing knowledge bases. If your app is not providing them with good customer support, the chances of churn get higher.
How to Fix it: To overpower this problem, you will need to make customer support a priority. Make sure you set clear expectations about when support will be available if you don't have a dedicated call customer support team.
Read More: Selecting the Right Mobile App Development Services
Your Products Seem Too Expensive/Cheap
Pricing your product effectively plays a vital role in retaining customers. Your product's price can significantly impact the customer's perception of its value. If the price is too high or too low, the customer may switch to a competitor or lose faith in your ability to meet their needs.
How to Fix it: The best way to reduce churn due to pricing issues is to strike a balance between the value provided and the cost to avoid losing customers. Retaining customers for the long term requires you to price the product according to the willingness of the customers to pay. To come up with the right pricing strategy, you can always analyze your competitors.
Read More: How to Hire a Dedicated Team of Mobile App Developers
Conclusion
Understanding user behavior is crucial to reducing churn. The more you understand the reasons why users abandon and uninstall your app, the more you can boost engagement and retention.
Other than that, ensuring that the app design, features, and functionality meet the user's expectations also plays a civic role in improving customer retention.
When seeking to develop an app that can help you attract and retain customers, our seasoned professionals might be the right choice for you. Our team of experts has years of expertise, skills, and hands-on experience in app development. So, what are you waiting for? Get in touch with us now!
FAQs: How to Reduce Your Mobile App Churn Rate?
What is the difference between churn and retention rates?
App churn rate is the exact opposite of the retention rate as app retention shows user loyalty over time, and churn rate reveals when the number of users starts dropping.
How do you calculate the churn rate of an app?
To calculate the churn rate, you can use the following two formulas:
-
Churn rate = 1 - (# of monthly active users / # of monthly installs)
-
Churn rate = (Lost Customers ÷ Total Customers at the given time) x 100
What is an acceptable churn rate?
The acceptable churn rate that can work with is between 2% and 8%, anything above that needs to be minimized.