Mobile marketing firm Swrve has published data on how usersinteract with the applications on their smartphones. The average retention
rate shows 26% of users returning to an app for a second time within a
forty-eight hours of first opening the app, although over a third of
activity with a mobile app lasts less than one minute.
Gathered during
May 2014 through data collected by Swrve’s marketing platform, and
the data in this survey covers “over fifty applications, with tens of
millions of users and billions of mobile events.”
Looking first
of all at the retention data, Swrve starts the clock as an app is opened
for the first time. Previous data suggests that straight away, twenty-four
percent of those who installed the app are not coming back at all. Of the rest,
roughly another quarter will be back the next day (within 24-48 hours of the
first session), and after seven days the retention rate drops to 13%.
Over the month,
the average user starts 13.69 sessions. This isn’t broken down by app type
(games will take up significantly more sessions over a month) but if users are
engaging with the average app every other day there are monetization and
personalization opportunities here that can be counted on.
Google Play Store (image: Google.com)
As for the most
effective method of engaging during those sessions, Swrve’s data suggests
that in-app messages will generate a click-through rate of 37%. Even with the
option to dismiss such a message, it is a very high rate, and of course again
this is spread over 50 apps, so with targeting and better understanding of each
user this rate could easily be increased. Push messaging gathers around 0.6%,
which is higher than your standard mobile a banner ad, but still much
lower than many would hope for.
The modern app
landscape has placed a huge emphasis on freemium revenue streams, and it is
important for developers to maximise the opportunities they have.
Christopher S.
Dean, CEO of Swrve summarises the data for developers, “this
data confirms that building relationships on mobile is hard. Retention is
a challenge, as is the need to make an impression within a short space of
time.”
Every app is
different, and will require careful examination of the available data, but
overarching studies, such as Swrve’s study here, points to a
model that demands the application is engaging and impactful in the first
sixty seconds capture the user. It has to do enough to bring the user back to
the app within a short timescale, and there are engagement opportunities that
provide high click-through rates that, if monetized correctly, will create a
significant and sustainable revenue stream.
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