Your app launch is complete. Congratulations on your success!
However, the journey is not over yet. The most crucial stage comes after the app launch. That is, tracking its performance based on specific metrics and making data-driven marketing decisions accordingly.
There are millions of mobile apps on Play Store and App Store. Amid the Great App Explosion, developers must keep an eye on users’ behavior to increase app retention rates. Tracking is important because mobile app users usually have a high churn rate.
Statista conducted a study in 2023 to determine the retention rate of mobile app installs. The findings indicated that the average retention rate of iOS and Android apps is 25.3% only. Another study by AppsFlyer also reported a 24.33% retention rate on day one.
Can developers increase this retention rate? Yes, by tracking users’ behavior and app performance through different KPIs.
We bring the five most critical mobile app performance metrics that must be tracked to increase the retention rate and ensure the app’s success.
What are Mobile App Performance Metrics?
Performance metrics, also known as KPIs, are measurable values to evaluate the performance of any process, organization, or application. It gives us an idea of how far we are from achieving certain business objectives.
In terms of mobile apps, performance metrics are used to analyze the app’s success in increasing the usage time and retention rate. Every developer wants their app to get more downloads and engagement time.
To achieve these goals, they must regularly monitor users’ behavior and identify potential issues. If the users are struggling to use the app, timely action must be taken to address these concerns.
For instance, if users are downloading your app but not spending much time or are uninstalling it within a day, it has two meanings. First, they have a bad user experience due to poor interface or functionality issues. The second indication is your features are irrelevant or you are targeting the wrong audience.
In either case, these insights can help you build future strategies and improve your app’s performance.
Top 5 Mobile App Performance Metrics
Consider tracking these five mobile app performance metrics if you want to increase the retention rate and achieve your desired objectives:
1. Loading Speed
Loading speed is among the most critical mobile app key performance indicators. A fast-loading mobile application creates a good impression on the user, while a poor one results in user abandonment.
Every app user expects the app to open in a few seconds. If an app is slow, users immediately close it and never reopen. An overly slow loading speed not only frustrates the users but also sets a negative tone towards the general quality and reliability of the app.
Factors Impacting the App’s Loading Speed
The loading speed can vary due to several factors, such as:
- Size of the application
- Coding efficiency
- Server response time
- Loading elements like images, videos, and animations
How to Optimize Leading Speed?
Developers can optimize the app’s loading speed by:
- Making their code more efficient
- Leveraging CDNs in asset distribution
- Lazy loading
- Regular performance testing
2. Network Issues
Network issues also significantly influence the performance of mobile apps and user retention. Most mobile apps require a stable and fast internet connection for optimal performance. Any kind of disturbance in network connectivity may result in poor performance that could ultimately result in dissatisfaction and abandonment.
Network problems could include slow data transfer, dropped connections, or even high latencies. All these factors lead to delays in the loading of content, interrupting media streaming.
Factors Causing Network Issues
Network issues usually arise from factors including:
- Poor signal strength
- High traffic on the server
- Inefficient data handling
- Poor server infrastructure
- Large data requests
- Non-optimization of APIs
How to Address Network Issues?
To reduce network issues, developers should:
- Ensure optimum data use and app handling during network outages
- Use data caching and data compression before being transmitted
- Take initiatives to increase performance under bad network conditions
- Utilize background data sync
3. Crash/Bug Reports
Regardless of how good an app may be in terms of design and quality of features, frequent crashes or bugs remain a huge threat to mobile app development. Frequent crashes can cause users to reject the app. Therefore, developers must regularly monitor the crash and bug reports to understand key issues and fix them accordingly.
Once an app crashes, it obstructs the overall user experience. As a result, app users prefer to look for alternatives due to frequent crashes.
Factors Causing Crashes/Bugs in Mobile Apps
Mobile apps usually crash due to:
- Memory leaks
- Unhandled exceptions
- Compatibility issues with devices and the operating system
- Poor resource management
- Coding or logic errors
- Inappropriate testing
How to Reduce Frequent Crashes?
Developers should take the following steps to prevent their apps from crashing frequently:
- Implement robust testing practices in the form of unit testing, integration testing, and UAT.
- Use automated crash reporting tools like Firebase Crashlytics
- Conduct pre-release beta tests with some small user populations.
- Fix critical crashes and bugs in the subsequent updates.
4. Mobile App Latency
Mobile app latency includes the time an app takes to respond to a certain action made by the app’s user. High latency means a user feels bad or slightly disengaged due to a bad experience.
You can determine your app’s latency by analyzing how complex the app’s processes are, how quickly the server can respond, or how well the app’s code is optimized. For instance, querying a search with a high latency will cause a delay in fetching the search results and displaying them.
Factors Contributing to High Latency in Mobile Apps
Common reasons behind high latency in mobile apps are:
- Inefficient coding practices
- Inadequate server infrastructure
- Large data transfers
- Network issues
How to Reduce Mobile App Latency?
To reduce latency in mobile apps, developers should:
- Optimize the frontend and backend
- Reduce complexities of UI elements
- Optimize database queries and server response time
- Implement asynchronous processing
- Use cloud servers with changeable server solutions
5. Battery Consumption
Battery consumption shows how much power your app consumes when running on the user’s device. High power consumption would deplete the battery quickly. Users don’t like such apps that drain the batteries faster.
Usually, apps that access a mobile’s hardware parts like a camera, GPS, or storage drain the batteries in less time. For example, an app that regularly requests location updates from the GPS will consume a lot of battery power.
Unless users get so much value from these apps, they don’t get high retention rates.
Factors Affecting Battery Consumption
Several factors are at play when it comes to battery consumption. Major factors include:
- Inefficient background task management
- High data synchronization rate
- Poor hardware resource utilization
- Poorly optimized code
- Inefficient sensor and network resource usage
How to Optimize Battery Consumption?
Developers should take these steps to reduce high batter consumption of their mobile apps:
- Optimize background processes so that they activate when necessary
- Reduced usage of features like GPS, sensors, and background data synchronization
- Optimizing UI elements and animations
Final Thoughts
The global mobile app marketplace has become more competitive than ever. Thousands of mobile apps are uploaded to the App Store and Play Store every day. However, only 25% or 1 out of 4 apps retain in users’ devices after one day.
Developers must, therefore, closely monitor certain mobile app performance metrics to improve session times and increase retention rates. We have discussed five such metrics that should be tracked to get the desired results. These include app loading speed, network issues, crash/bug reports, response times, and battery consumption.
Optimizing mobile apps against these KPIs can engage app users and contribute to the success of the app development company.
