10 High IQ Strategies on How to Increase App Retention in 2023 • Slash

Knowing how to increase app retention is one of the keys to making a successful digital product. While some people believe that adding tons of features to a mobile app is the only way to improve retention, there are more things to consider. So, what is mobile app retention? And how do you engage users to use the app more frequently while attracting new users? This article will show you the 10 tips to increase user retention on mobile apps so you can generate more revenue in 2023 and the coming years.

Table of Contents

What is App Retention?

App retention means the ability of any mobile application to keep its users active and engaged over a long period. When you know how to increase app retention, you are able to measure the percentage of users who are actively using your application after downloading it for the first time. When mobile app retention is high, it means the application has been a success since it is encouraging users to stay active. Contrarily, a low retention app signifies user churn.
Remember, increasing app retention is necessary for businesses and developers because it ensures:

Enhanced user lifetime value
Powerful branding
Increased revenue and profit

Also Read: 5 Steps to Increase Engagement with User Retention Design

When users often come to your app, it creates a great impact and indicates long-term success in the world of competition. Therefore, it is essential to keep increasing retention by crafting a winning mobile application. But the question is how to increase app retention. And what is the formula to calculate the app retention rates?

What is App Retention Rate?

Before knowing the methods to magnify your app user retention, you must determine the app retention rate.

Formula to Calculate App Retention Rate

Retention Rate = [(Number of App Users by the End of a Period – Number of New App Users Gained During that Period) / Number of Users at the Begining of the Period] x 100

So, for example, you have a health app, and at the start of a month, you have 4000 users. During the month, your app gained 2000 new users. And, by the month’s end, you are left with 5000 users. Therefore, the retention rate will be:

Retention Rate = [(5000 – 3000) / 4000] x 100
Retention Rate = (2000 / 4000) x 100
Retention Rate = 0.5 x 100
Retention Rate = 50%

How to Choose the Best App Retention Strategy

Gather feedback from your current users on the existing app features. This will bring more clarity to your plans, and you will be able to make effective app retention strategies. When picking an app retention strategy, it is vital to consider several factors to ensure that you engage and retain users effectively. Keep in mind that app retention is important for user satisfaction and long-term success. So, here are some vital key points you must work on before knowing how to increase user retention.

a. Competitive Analysis

Learning about your competitors and their strategies can answer most of your questions about increasing app retention. Find out what methods they use that have been fruitful to them and adapt those ways to your app.

b. Defining User Segments

Understand the type of audience you have for your app and categorize them based on their preferences, demographics, and behavior. This will help you create strategies on how to increase app retention according to your app users.

c. A/B Testing

In terms of retention strategies, A/B testing means experimenting with multiple methods for app retention and figuring out which one impacts the most. This will permit you to optimize and iterate your approach.

d. User Lifecycle

You must remember that users undergo different stages when interacting with your application. Your platform will be shared with active, churn, and new users. Your goal should be tailoring strategies for all three of them.

e. Determining Mobile App Performance

Users don’t like apps that hang, get stuck, or provide an incomplete experience. So, before making any strategy, ensure your application is bug-free and has no performance issues. It should run smoothly to eliminate the genuine factors of uninstalling the app.

Also Read: 6 Important Things to Follow in Your Digital Product Strategy

e. Tracking Retention Metrics

Determine the current statistics of your app retention. You can do that by defining and tracking important retention metrics, such as Monthly Active Users (MAU), Daily Active Users (DAU), Retention Rate, and Churn Rate.

g. Survey and Feedback

10 High IQ Tips about How to Increase App Retention

If you want to know how to improve user retention, here are the 10 mobile app retention strategies.

1. Keep Your App’s Onboarding Process Simple

Users don’t like complicated applications. Try to create an interface that users find easy when they first open the app. You can add navigation at the beginning. Or add a short tour of your app to explain its basic controls. Also, keep the signup process less interrogative. Don’t make users feel insecure by any means. Keep in mind that improving the onboarding process is necessary to increase mobile app user retention.

2. Make Your App Reasonable

Why will someone spend time on a product that does not provide benefits or solve problems? So ask yourself how useful is your mobile app to users as soon as they install it. Let the app show them the great advantages it can do and ways to solve users’ issues.

3. Personalize the User Experience

Remember how we discussed the survey and feedback points in the previous section of this article? So, this is the reason. Gather what users prefer and what they don’t. Try to make each user’s experience with your application of high quality. To do that, you must pay attention to the likes and dislikes of your users. Then, make the application according to their desires.

4. Email Marketing

Another great tool to create a high-retention mobile app is email marketing. Make a list of all the users on your application and send them updates about new happenings on your app, product recommendations, and friendly checkout reminders if they have something in their carts, depending on the industry and the users you are serving.

5. Push Notifications

Well, this retention meme explains a lot about push notifications.

Believe it or not, push notifications can play a great role when it comes to engaging the audience and bringing back inactive or lost users. However, you must know when and what to send in the push notifications. At this level, content also has a vital role. You must know what to pitch in the right way that makes customers tap the notification.

6. In-App Messaging

Another best strategy related to how to increase app retention is in-app messaging. This method can increase user retention by helping you stay connected with your current app users in several ways, including:

Announcements
Surveys and polls
Targeted messages

7. Gamification

Users love connecting with game-like experiences, which is why gamification is a great way to increase retention. Gamification is not necessarily a game but the idea of adding game-like elements to your application to make it more competitive and fun to use.
Some of the best ways to include gamification in your app is through:

Creating fun challenges for users
Using scoreboards and leadership boards
Giving rewards and points upon successful task completion

8. Give Social Access

Is your app social media-friendly? If not, then it is time to make it. Let your app allow users to share information from it with their friends and family. Enable users to sign in to your application through their social media accounts. This will make your application popular among potential users and prospects without any effort.

9. Have their Back

Are there ways your users can look up to whenever they need help regarding your app? You should add options like a help center or customer chat support so users can get quick answers to their questions. Of course, you can automate this entire process because the point is to be available whenever a user is troubled using your app and looks for rapid solutions.

10. Improve Regularly

Try to update your application daily because users like seeing improvements. Modify the interface, make it more user-friendly, add speed and more useful features, and tell your users about the new updates through in-app messaging or push notifications to boost their excitement.

Conclusion

The art of knowing how to increase app retention lies in various strategies. This includes simplifying the onboarding process, personalizing the user experience, using correct communication tools, and enhancing your app’s quality.
At Slash, we build mobile apps using the winning formula to ensure increased user retention. From smooth onboarding to attractive features and tailored experiences, our experts have your back. Contact us to let our product development team skyrocket your app’s retention rate.

FAQs – How to Increase App Retention

Q1. How can we increase retention in the app?

You can increase retention in the app through a seamless boarding process, email marketing, gamification, and regular improvements to ensure a great user experience.

Q2. How do I increase user retention?

To increase user retention, you must apply effective user retention strategies.

Q3. What is good user retention for an app?

In 90 days, if user retention is 20% or more, it is considered a good retention rate.

Q4. What is a good day 1 retention for an app?

A good day-1 user retention rate for an application is usually above 25%.

Q5. Is 50% viewer retention good?

50% is a great retention rate for an app.