Hemendra Singh
Business apps, whether they are mobile apps or web apps, are currently witnessing a massive surge in demand. With ever-growing consumer interest which has led to the flooding of the app development market with innumerable service app development companies. From established firms to new-age start-ups everyone wants a share of expanding online consumer demand. That could lead to many opportunities for web and mobile app development. It also generates intense competition between companies to outdo each other. While some apps may see huge success, others may find themselves struggling to gain consumer attention. Consumers have many options to choose among apps. Thus app development companies have to remain agile and evolving constantly.
This leads us to the questions of, how to improve performance and what are the ways to track app’s success or failure. Obviously successful apps like “Whatsapp” and “Facebook” get popular over time and find themselves on many computer screens or mobiles. They however too needed to evolve according to changing consumer demands to remain relevant in the fast-paced consumer market. So app development companies must get continuous feedback on their performance.
There are numerous ways to anticipate consumer preferences and track an app’s performance. One can ask consumers to rate the app, or they just keep an eye on the number of downloads. While these methods can certainly tell us about consumer’s choices, they obviously lack in details. Companies remain uncertain about causes of the success or failure of apps. There are also time-lag between downloads and the ratings. Thus app development companies remain clueless about the prime features that consumers liked or disliked. Not all app users are inclined to give detailed feedback to companies. They simply switch to another app if they find existing one too difficult, useless or time-consuming. Companies have no way to determine the causes and can do little to salvage their app before it is too late.
There, however, exist ways to determine and track the performance of the app for companies apart from already mentioned indicators. These are called the “key performance indicators” or KPI in short. These indicators give companies the data on users and their online behavior related to app usage. App development companies can easily foretell the app usage and its weaknesses by collecting the data and other measures on app performance. Besides they can also track the consumer behavior and improve upon their functionalities.
Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) can be categorized into six categories. There is no strict rule for it but a comprehensive loose compilation. These KPIs can be either web-based statistics or the information collected by the companies through periodic reports as well as the updates from the apps. These include information fed by users into the apps.
The numbers of downloads and installations are obvious indicators. But the numbers of uninstallations of apps also points to the user satisfaction or rather the dissatisfaction. Registrations and logins to web apps and subscriptions to services indicate the user involvement with business apps.
The other key sign which shows the continuous usage is user growth rate over a period of time. They indicate not only the number of total users but also the user acceptance for the app. in general.
User ratings are foremost indicators of good or bad performances. Though they can be given for various individual reasons, they set the tone and reputation of an app in the market. Reviews are another way of getting user feedback.
Load time is another indicator of app performance. Longer time means more frustrations for the user.
Crashes and its frequency can determine the app’s credibility. If crashes increase with usage or overtime user would definitely move on to other apps.
Response time is usually average latency time an app requires to respond to a user request or any user-interface action. It includes the time to fetch response from APIs or local services. Lastly, the data on daily active users and the average time spent by the user is a good indicator of the number of users and the performance of the app.
Most important part of any business app is to generate revenue. The revenue analysis can be done by considering in-app purchases and upgrading the app to the premium level apart from usual paid downloads or purchases through apps like Amazon.
Total revenue generated through views, clicks, shares, in-app purchases, third-party advertisements and other means per user is a good indicator of the health of an app. This forms the core of revenue for any business app.
Cost of advertisements or other paid means per user indicates costs of acquiring users to the company for every user gained. Lifetime value of a customer is total revenue generated by a customer through various means like views, clicks, in-app purchases and others against the cost of acquiring the user. It shows the net income of any business app.
Organic or natural and paid conversion rate indicates the number of customers gained against the paid advertising as well as non-paid means like word-of-mouth popularity and favorable reviews.
Retention of customers (frequent customers) over a period of time and number of customers that left the app after the first time (one-time users) is a good indicator of engagement for the app. This usually applies to web-based apps. Time spent on apps and the time lag between the multiple user sessions on the app indicates the usefulness of an app to the user. It also increases the chances of retention.
Total active users per month show engagement of new as well as old users. Social media shares involving the app on various platforms like Facebook or Twitter is a good way of telling that the user is engaged in the app.
The success of an app depends on the number of device-types used to access the app by different users. The more, the merrier such as tablet PC, mobiles, laptops and many others. The different operating systems used indicate the popularity of an app and the customer’s OS choice. Various platforms used to download the app is also important in understanding the preferential platforms of customers to download and reach the apps.
The distribution of locations and regions of the users indicates the popularity of the app according to the geographic areas. The gender and age of the user help in defining the user and his or her category. Age and gender distribution helps in creating a niche for the app in the market.
At last, there are numerous ways to evaluate the success or failure of an app among its users. Some of them are mentioned above. The app development companies can discover many other ways to assess their apps. However, they must focus on the long-term association with users which can only be assured if companies develop a better product.
My name is Hemendra Singh. I am Managing Director and co-founder of The NineHertz, a Mobile App and Web Development Company. My ideology is that a clear vision and hard...
