Top 10 mobile app KPIs for every product manager to measure

Mobile internet users are increasing steadily all over the world, and users are spending more time on mobile apps every year. in 2016, 140 billion mobile apps were downloaded where this number rose to 218 billion in 2020. There are 3.15 mn apps available on the google play store while this number is 2.09 mn in AppStore. Considering this fierce competition, it is very important to make your mobile application provide engaging and useful content to the users. Once you have launched a mobile app in the market, you need to proactively measure its performance to identify areas of improvement and update it to increase user engagement and satisfaction. In this article we will look at the top 10 mobile KPIs which every product manager needs to be aware of and measure consistently. These KPIs are the foundation for creating a product roadmap for your mobile app enhancements.

List of top 10 mobile KPIs

1.Stickiness

Stickiness is the ability of your mobile app to bring back the users because of the value it offers to the users. This mobile app KPI can be measured as below: DAU/MAU where DAU is Daily Active Users and MAU is Monthly Active Users. For example: if your app’s stickiness ratio is 30% that would mean that the average user is using it 9 days out of 30 days in a month. The average product stickiness is 13% in the SaaS industry. Daily Active Users and Monthly Active users are also mobile app KPIs that indicate the number of active users over every day and month but alone that can not help you arrive at any conclusion and their ratio is a relatively better indicator of user engagement.

2.Retention Rate

Retention Rate mobile app KPI indicates the percentage of users who are still using your mobile application after a certain number of days from install. It indicates how happy your end users are with the app. The retention rate varies by industry. Check out industry benchmarks here to understand how your app is performing. The average retention rate for mobile apps is around 20% over 90 days. Anything more than 25% indicates that your app holds good value for the market. Apps belonging to news, weather category generally have a higher retention rate. Insights into when the users are churning can help you strategize marketing activities to help increase the retention rate.

3.Average Revenue per user

Average revenue per user (ARPU) is a mobile app KPI to indicate how good your app is in monetization. It measures the average revenue that your app can generate per user. You can calculate ARPU by dividing the total revenue generated over a period of time by the total number of active users over the same period. You can use ARPU to measure how your app is performing when compared to its competitors. In the SaaS industry, ARPU for different levels of users helps to understand if pricing needs to be changed.

4.User Acquisition Cost

You must analyze the channels through which users are getting acquired. Additionally, where the target market resides can help you understand how to acquire users quickly. Email Marketing paid advertising and referrals are some of the approaches that can be used to increase user acquisition. This mobile app KPI helps in indicating the cost spent to acquire one user. It is calculated by total money spent over a period of time on marketing/campaigns devided by the total number of new users acquired during the same period.

5.Ratings

App reviews are a direct source of end-user feedback that is available to you. App review ratings of more than 4 on google playstore and appstore indicate that users are getting the desired value from your app and users want to keep using the app. However, most of the time if you do not prompt your users to leave reviews when they are using the app then it is very likely that unsatisfied users are going to leave a bad rating for the app. You need to analyze the reviews and try to get rid of the most common problem conveyed by the users. App reviews are also another way to explore new features if you are looking forward to enhance your application.

6.Churn rate

This mobile app KPI indicates the percentage of users lost over a period of time. It is the number of churned customers / total number of customers. For a mature SaaS company, 5-6% annual churn rate is the ideal benchmark. But it can be closer to 5% per month for early-stage startups or SMBs. A linear decrease in the churn rate indicates good potential growth for the organization.

7.App Open Rate

This mobile KPI indicates the percentage of devices on which the app is installed, that open the app atleast once in a given period over the total number of devices with the app installed. Higher app open rate is an indicator of higher user engagement.

8. Crash reports

You build an app and test it thoroughly before launching. You might be under impression that your mobile app is working as expected after launch. But, sometimes there are some user actions that can cause the app to crash. You can not anticipate all these end-user actions when you are building the app. To make sure, that your users are not experiencing any crashes you can use tools like Firebase. It provides a very good report of all the crashes happening in your apps. Bugsnag is another such tool to help you identify bugs instantly before they can impact a large number of users.

9.Session Length

Session length indicates the time spent by a user on the mobile app from open to exit. High average session duration is a good mobile app KPI of user engagement. Deeper relationship with the user is beneficial in long term for increasing revenue.

10. Active users demographics

Active user demographics indicate the gender, age and location of the user. For mobile apps with global users, this would be an interesting metric to monitor. It can bring out insights about the users of your app which you might not be aware of.