You’ve developed, launched and marketed your mobile app. It’s visible, easy for users to find and generating plenty of buzz. Your install base is getting larger every hour and the app — at least at first glance — is a certifiable success.
There’s one problem: although people are installing your mobile app, they just aren’t using it. Why?
People install and quickly forget about mobile apps for a number of reasons, from advertising that doesn’t match reality to usability issues. Below, we’ve listed four reasons people might not use your app after they find and install it.
Your app just doesn’t deliver enough value
What is your mobile app’s value proposition? If your mobile app is earning installs but just isn’t used frequently, it could be because it doesn’t deliver enough value to its target audience.
Every successful app is built around some form of value. Social networking apps like Facebook and Twitter provide value in the form of direct social communication. Uber provides value in the form of convenient, affordable transportation.
Apps that fail to provide value might get installed, but they’ll rarely get used more than once. If your app isn’t retaining users, it could be because it isn’t delivering enough value. Focus on the big question — How can your app help people? — and you’ll notice an uptick in user retention.
Your app is buggy, slow or poorly optimized
Even if your app offers a great deal of value to its audience, your retention rate will suffer if it’s buggy, slow or poorly optimized.
Google survey data shows that the most common reasons for users to uninstall apps are related to performance and stability:
- 50.6% of users uninstall apps because they use too much storage space
- 33.8% of users uninstall apps because they freeze too frequently
Since more than half of all users have uninstalled apps because of performance issues, it’s vital that your app is thoroughly tested before its release. Optimizing for efficient use of space, stable performance and security don’t just improve user experience — they also improve retention.
Your app has usability problems
Is your mobile app hard to use? Testing doesn’t begin and end with bugs and performance — it also involves testing your application to find out how users interact with it, and why they use it a certain way.
The Google survey data we cited above lists another interesting uninstall reason: 26.8 percent of users have uninstalled apps because they were poorly designed and/or overly difficult to use.
Mobile users waste little time with apps that are confusing or difficult to use. If your app’s design is ineffective, far more users will uninstall your app and replace it with a competitor’s application than will learn to use it.
Just like bugs and performance, usability is an aspect of app design you master through regular, consistent testing. After you’ve QA tested your mobile app, carry out usability tests to make sure it’s 100% intuitive and user friendly before its release.
Your app isn’t as good as the competition
Did you know that 78% of smartphone users spend the majority of their app-focused time in just three applications? Contrary to popular belief, most people don’t use a huge variety of apps — in fact, most people use a select few apps heavily and others somewhat rarely.
If you’re competing against other applications for a similar audience, it’s important to be the best in your category. Mobile users are infamously fickle, and a single missing feature is frequently all it takes for a user to replace your app with a competitor’s offering.
The more competitive your vertical, the more important it is to deliver value beyond any of your competitors. Users reward the best app with almost all of the spoils, even if means giving all of the other apps within its category very little.
Improve user retention with MyCrowd
Bugs, performance problems and poor design can all cost you dearly when it comes to retaining users for your mobile app. Our powerful crowdtesting platform lets you find and fix bugs, design issues and more before they start to hurt your user retention metrics.
