The internet in general, and apps in particular, have long way since become an inseparable part of the marketing tools, used by business owners and managers to promote the company, recruit new customers, and of course - maintain the existing ones.
The problem is, that with competition getting more intense, and exciting new apps popping up all the time, customer retention becomes more difficult every year. In fact, recent studies show that, on average, over 50% of users will desert an app within 1 month, and roughly 70% of users will desert it within 3 months.
The good news is that with a little bit of time and proper focus, your can certainly beat these daunting statistics and significantly increase your customer retention rate.
Tips for Effective Customer Retention
1. Define Your Goals
User Retention in an application is defined as the number of users who still use the app X amount of time past the first time they used it.
Therefore, if, for example, 100 people installed the app yesterday, and today 34 of them used it again, your retention rate is 34% for 1 day. If 12 people are still using the app by the end of the month, then your monthly retention rate is 12%.
While most of us naturally strive to maximise our retention rate as much as possible, in order to measure your success, you should first define a specific goal - for example, increasing your current retention rate by 3% within a month…
2. User Friendly Onboarding
The onboarding process is designed to display all your apps benefits, tools and advantages as well as how it works. This is your first encounter with the potential users that can determine whether they choose to keep scrolling or leave the app.
Therefore it is vital to create a good first impression by planning a high quality onboarding process that highlights all the tool, services, and solutions that your app offers.
3. Intuitive User Experience
Once you’ve created an appealing onboarding process, you should follow up with a smooth, convenient and easy to use UI (user interface).
Keep in mind that any bug, slow page loading, unclear text or un-clickable button, are causing you to lose customers (that you spent a great deal of effort to attract in the first place), so it’s important to provide a user- friendly app, and keep track of any new issues that emerge.
4. Tracking Analytics Data
As mentioned in the previous tip - In order to prevent your users from deserting the app, it’s important to understand how they use it, and keep track of any bugs, problems or ineffective content.
Checking in with google Analytics is the best way to discover your users’ behavior and difficulties while using the app, and make improvements accordingly
5. Smart Use of Push and in app Messaging
In app messages are all those reminders, alerts and updates that pop up within the app itself, while push notifications are used for communicating with users offline, usually for the purpose of drawing them in.
Both are extremely useful, focused tools that can helps improve communication with users, increase engagement, call to action and of course, prevent them from leaving.
However, it is important to avoid over using these messaging tools since all those little updates can quickly become nuisance, that ultimately drives your customers away rather than help keep them.
Comments