APP operation: How to improve user retention rate?

There is an important data indicator in the product operation process - user retention rate ! Improving user retention is a problem that every product needs to solve. Whether it is controlling the quality of new users in the channel or promoting user activation in the later stage, operations personnel are required to conduct data analysis , understand users, and implement operations plans to improve user retention based on their own APP business scenarios!

What are the key points of APP user retention rate :

User retention rate refers to the proportion of new users who continue to use the user within a certain period of time.

1. Understand user behavior data:

1. New user acquisition channel retention rate: refers to the retention of users brought by the APP new user acquisition channel; channel promotion focuses not only on channel traffic , but also on channel quality; paying attention to channel retention rate can help choose new user acquisition channels;
2. N-day retention rate: the proportion of users who have used the app on the Nth day after the new users were added on a certain day. N-day retention rate = users who have used the app on the Nth day after the new users were added on a certain day / new users on that day;
3. N-week retention rate: the proportion of users who used the app N weeks after the week that added new users on a certain day. N-week retention rate = number of users who used the app N weeks after the week / number of new users in that week;
4. N-month retention rate: the proportion of new users in a natural month who have used the app in the Nth natural month after that month. N-month retention rate = number of users who have used the app in the Nth natural month after that natural month / number of new users in that natural month;

2. Understand the three time nodes of user retention:

From the picture you can see:

1. User churn period: In the first three months after a new user joins the app, user churn is relatively serious, affecting the overall user retention data of the app;
2. User distillation period: After experiencing a large amount of loss at the beginning, the loss rate will drop slightly. For example, April/May/June;
3. Retention stability period: After several months of distillation, the APP user retention rate presents a stable state, which is relatively stable;

Why is your APP losing so many users?

1. Impact of APP application market environment

APP development is easy, there are many homogeneous APPs, and there is a leader in every field!

With the continuous advancement of technology, the threshold for developing an APP is getting lower and lower. At present, the APP market is highly saturated and APP product functions are highly homogenized! Of course, this is also a problem for decision makers. Before developing an APP, many people just follow the trend without doing a good job of positioning the APP and without providing anything valuable to users!

2. Hasty launch of the APP

When a successful product is first launched, it will definitely give priority to acquiring seed users rather than pushing it to the market on a large scale. There is no need to worry about bugs after the APP is launched, as long as the main process of the APP runs smoothly. Through the continuous accumulation of seed users, various bugs are improved and additional functions are developed:

If the APP is not perfect at the beginning and is launched into the market with various bugs, users will feel a sense of resistance after downloading your APP! Such a crappy APP, what’s the use! uninstall! The APP user churn rate will be very high, and of course, no valuable suggestions will be given to your product!

3. There is no perfect user incentive mechanism and user operation is not done well.

Today’s users are rather arrogant and difficult to please! Failure to provide good user service will have a significant impact on user churn!

4. Poor user experience: functions, UI, etc.

1. Function: As mentioned above, after the APP is launched, it needs seed users to give valuable suggestions to your APP, so as to lay a good foundation for rapid updates and iterations in the future. If your APP is still as bad as shit after being launched for a long time, why should users stay? If you don’t pay attention to it, why should your crappy product occupy the mobile phone memory?
2. Interface design: A UI design that is accepted by users does not require to be cool or creative. Those who study it carefully will find that the interfaces designed by good UI designers are simple and easy to understand! Personalization does not mean non-mainstream!

5. Too many pushes, turning into harassment of users

I'm a bit weird. Except for WeChat , I have turned off the notification function of other apps. Push was originally intended to provide better services to users, but current operators are not pushing messages properly, and the content of the push is rather random! Therefore, the number of users is also increasing!

6. Lack of data support and inadequate data analysis

In the era of big data , we need to speak with data. Without data analysis, you won’t realize the real reasons for user loss. Without data analysis, you don’t understand your users and can’t create content that users like!

If you want to improve app user retention, pay special attention to:

1. First impressions are important

When dating someone, many people think that first impression is the most important thing! First impression, isn't it about seeing the face first, feeling a liking for it, and then getting to know it more deeply?

The same goes for APP. If you want others to have a good impression of your product and want them to stay, the first impression you give to users is very important!

APP brand awareness

Build a good brand, maintain a good brand image, and increase brand awareness. Why would others use your app? In addition to your promotion , it is nothing more than recommendations from friends, high evaluations in the app market, etc.; the latter two are because the APP has a relatively high level of awareness, so it is very important to lay a good brand foundation!

Provide good guidance for new APP users

It is very important to guide new users, especially for games , shopping, finance, financial management and other apps, which are relatively complicated to use; therefore, user guidance is needed to help users use your app well.

Optimize product performance

Although the performance of mobile phones of many brands is constantly improving, APP still needs to do a good job of performance optimization to avoid problems such as APP crashes, memory occupation, slow operation, etc. Today's users are willful and there is a serious phenomenon of homogeneity, and the substitutability of APP is very high. To sum up, it is to make users feel comfortable.

Channel screening to improve channel conversion quality

User quality is an important part of improving user retention. The new users mentioned above will be seriously lost in the early stage; therefore, in terms of promotion, user quality control and channel screening should be done well!

2. Promote user activation and cultivate user stickiness

Activity operation to stimulate user desire

Event operation is one of the most effective ways to activate users. For e-commerce apps, use festivals to conduct promotions and coupon giveaways. For financial management apps, use events to encourage users to bind cards and invest . For educational apps, invite influencers to give online lectures and hold offline salon events.

Of course, you can also use user operation scenarios to operate activities. The user scenarios of apps in different industries are also different.

1. E-commerce APP user scenarios: registration, login, adding to shopping cart, favorite products, completing payment, etc.
2. Financial APP user scenarios: registration, login, card binding, account opening, transaction completion, etc.
3. Social : login, post updates, share, etc.

You can use third-party event operation tools to carry out refined event operation management. After setting up SDK points according to the business scenarios required by your own APP, you can trigger an H5 lottery event when the user completes registration, payment, sharing, etc. You can also trigger and push activities based on the user's basic attributes and tags, so as to achieve event operations that are tailored to each individual.

Do push properly

Push is a double-edged sword! I mentioned above that too frequent push notifications will cause user loss, but reasonable and timely push notifications can help awaken users. To make push notifications precise, you need to understand your users and manage their tags. Push different content to users with different tags to improve user experience.

Sign-in function to improve user stickiness

The sign-in function is very helpful in improving user stickiness. Signing in can earn points, and continuous sign-ins and point accumulation are actually similar to the first point of triggering activities based on user operation scenarios. They are all aimed at increasing daily user activity and improving user stickiness.

Classic cases: Sign in on Taobao to get Taobao coins, sign in on JD.com to get JD beans, and sign in on Baidu to get experience.

3. Understand users and provide good user services

To do a good job in user operation is a bit general, so let’s briefly talk about the following aspects:

1. There needs to be good customer service who can promptly answer users' questions and feedback.
2. Complete user reward system.
3. Operators can pay attention to users' comments on your APP in platforms such as the App Store, Weibo, Zhihu, Baidu, etc. Understand what users like about your app, what value it brings to users, what they are dissatisfied with, etc.; collect user feedback to optimize the product.

Summary: If an APP wants to survive longer, it is very important to do a good job in user operations, improve the APP user retention rate and extend the user life cycle . Now the competition among APPs is getting more and more fierce, and it is difficult to operate a product well! The only way to ensure that users like your APP is to constantly observe users, understand users, and serve users well during the operation process!

Mobile application product promotion service: APP promotion service Qinggua Media advertising

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