The Top Mobile App KPIs You Need to Know

By The Zype Team on August 22, 2019

If you have a mobile app business, you went through the hard (or easy) part of developing, designing and launching an app. Now, what KPIs (key performance indicators) should you be tracking in order to measure your app’s performance and progression over time? 

Don’t have an app? Consider your options here.

Here at MAZ, we’ve empowered hundreds of small businesses and legacy brands to launch mobile and OTT apps. Here are the main key performance indicators (KPIs) that we think are the most important to focus on:

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Downloads – The pioneer metric. Put effort and thought into your App Store listing, searchable keywords, and supporting screenshots. Make sure your profile is optimized to help people find you, and include enticing screenshots and descriptions to showcase your app’s utility. Are you driving downloads from emails or mobile web? Add in your App Store buttons!

Install/Uninstall – Monitor how many downloads lead to installs, or how many installs lead to uninstalls. What is the time period in which you are losing people, and how can you make that time period stickier with onboarding sequences? Make sure your value prop is clear.

Open Rate (Sessions) – How many times is a user returning to your app? The more the merrier applies here. To achieve more opens, consider utilizing push notifications or email marketing.

Session Duration – When someone is using your app, how long are they there for? Be mindful that super short sessions could equate to glitches or bugs. Investigate using a tracking integration beyond Google Analytics to monitor any technical difficulties.

Retention Rate – How many people return to your app? This is the most important metric in our opinion, and what people refer to as stickiness. How sticky is your app? This is also one of the hardest KPIs to succeed at.

Daily or Monthly Active Users (DAU / MAU) – Within retention is understanding the granular data within retention. Are people returning multiple times a day, once a week, once a month? Creative push notifications, exclusive content boosts, and emphasis on social sharing can go along way for users to return.

Customer Acquisition Cost (CAC) – While having and keeping users around is a huge component of your app’s success, it’s incredibly valuable to understand the cost of acquiring new customers. Is that cost sustainable? Are the users you’re bringing through the funnel via advertisement “good” users

Average Revenue per User – Whether you are driving revenue through advertisements, sponsorship, or subscriptions, be in the practice of calculating what revenue the average user is bringing you. What are ways to include in-app purchases, locked content, or create pop-up exclusivity to drive monetization creatively?

Net Promoter Score – How likely are your users going to recommend your app to their friends? Definitely one of your most important KPIs in the list – recommendations and referrals are free forms of advertisement, known as flywheel marketing. Can you create a community out of your app? Try offering ambassador programs or incentivize referrals.

Lifetime Value (LTV) – Between the CAC and the revenue that you produce from a user, you can calculate the lifetime value of a customer. You want to ensure that your return on investment (ROI) is sound and going in the right direction.

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There are few great first steps you can take to set up your infrastructure to track KPIs in your app:

Organize through a spreadsheet or CRM – your paid efforts, your organic efforts, and your referral traffic, which you can do track simply through Google Analytics. More robust tools, consider Insightly or mParticle.

Add in-app tags and targeting built into your app, something you need to do through development or with the help of a third-party data integration site like Hubspot or Mixpanel.

Utilize push notifications and set up an email marketing campaign. Target push notifications by location or actions taken in your app. Here at MAZ, we offer geotargeted push notifications alongside your app development.

Track WoW and MoM to understand your user trends, and what aspects of your marketing strategy lead to engagement and conversions.

Be creative. The app real estate on peoples’ phones is volatile. Don’t get hidden in a folder and eventually deleted, we encourage out of the box marketing strategies that make users remember you.

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If you’re considering creating or revamping your existing mobile or OTT app, talk to an expert here at MAZ about your options. 

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