Slashdot Mirror

← Back to Stories (view on slashdot.org)

Nearly 1 In 4 People Abandon Mobile Apps After Only One Use (techcrunch.com)

Posted by BeauHD on from the diminishing-returns dept.

An anonymous reader writes from a report via TechCrunch: According to a new study on mobile app usage, nearly one in four mobile users only use an app once. TechCrunch reports: "Based on data from analytics firm Localytics, and its user base of 37,000 applications, user retention has seen a slight increase year-over-year from 34 percent in 2015 to 38 percent in 2016. However, just because this figure has recovered a bit, that doesn't mean the numbers are good. Instead, what this indicates is that 62 percent of users will use an app less than 11 times. These days, 23 percent launch an app only once -- an improvement over last year, but only slightly. For comparison's sake, only 20 percent of users were abandoning apps in 2014. On iOS, user retention saw some slight improvements. The percentage of those only opening apps once fell to 24 percent from 26 percent last year, and those who return to apps 11 times or more grew to 36 percent from 32 percent in 2015. In particular, apps in the middle stage of their growth (between 15,000 and 50,000 monthly active users), saw the strongest lift with retention and abandonment, the report also noted. This is attributed to these apps' use of push notifications, in-app messages, email, and remarking. While push notifications have always been cited as a way to retain users, in-app messages also have a notable impact -- these messages improve users retention to 46 percent, the study found. 17 percent will only use app once if they see an in-app message, but those not using messages see 26 percent of users abandoning the app after one session.

7 of 141 comments (clear)

  1. In other news by OzPeter · · Score: 4, Insightful

    25% of mobile Apps are crap, and proof of that only becomes obvious when they are used for the first time.

    --
    I am Slashdot. Are you Slashdot as well?
    1. Re:In other news by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Insightful

      You just have to look at the product descriptions in the Apple or Google store to see this.

      Many apps don't even bother to tell you anything about how the app works, instead the descriptions often are just pull quotes from reviews and lists of awards it won. Even when they're describing the app, they tend to be full of nebulous fluff and buzzwords. If you're lucky you'll get a few (non-fluff) sentences about what the product does, but absolutely no sense of how it is to use, or what benefits it has over competing products. Screenshots tend to be worthless as well, as they'll show the graphically pretty splash screens, but no shots of the app in actual use.

    2. Re:In other news by realmolo · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Hell, man. I would say 90% of mobile apps are crap.

      Most of the games aren't fun, and most of the ones that ARE fun throw so many advertisements and notifications at you that it's ridiculous, so they get uninstalled immediately.

      As for productivity apps...they're even worse. There are precious few truly USEFUL apps on a phone. The vast majority of them fall into the "treadmill in your basement" category - meaning, they SOUND useful, but you'll never actually bother with them.

  2. Re:Hardly suprising by Harlequin80 · · Score: 4, Insightful

    And SMS is still king because every single person with a phone has access to SMS. If I want to send a message to someones phone SMS is the only system where I know they will get it.

    This is made more so if you are in a country where most mobile plans have unlimited SMS included.

  3. Re:Hardly suprising by BoberFett · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Why would a person use anything other than SMS/MMS? It's universal.

    "I need to let my poker group know that I have to cancel tonight. I'll just WhatsApp Jim and... Oh shit, Dave is on Facebook Messenger. OK, I think they might both have... Oh wait, Bob uses that stupid app with all the goddamn anime pictures, whatever the fuck that is. And Tim still uses that shitty dumbphone. Guess I'll use SMS."

  4. 90% of everything is crap (Sturgeon). Also, one-ti by raymorris · · Score: 4, Insightful

    A well known quote called Sturgeon's Revelation or Sturgeon's law is "90% of everything is crap". It's certainly true of the software code I've seen, and of the (small) sample of accounting work I've had reason to examine.

    In addition, two other factors are probably are work.

    If I intend to use an app for something I do often, I frequently click to download the top two or three, trying out each one as the next one downloads. If I'm going to use it often, I may as well select the one I like best. This is more true on Android than iOS, because iOS has fewer free apps. I'm unlikely to BUY three apps in order to compare them.

    On the other hand, if I download an app for something I do NOT do frequently, I may well use the app for the task at hand and be done with it. It's not that I didn't use it again because it sucked. Maybe I only used it once because I only need to build one set of stairs, or fix one ipad, or whatever. It may have worked perfectly well, so the job is done and I don't need it anymore.

  5. Re:Hardly suprising by Alumoi · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Forgive him, he's from US. You know, the country where people are charged for everything up to the maximum ammount they can bear. Then charged some more if they want NOT to be charged. It's all for they convenience, you know :P