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Nearly 1 In 4 People Abandon Mobile Apps After Only One Use (techcrunch.com)
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.
25% of mobile Apps are crap, and proof of that only becomes obvious when they are used for the first time.
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What would be lots more useful to me in understanding this data is how many of the apps abandoned after one use, had some kind of registration screen as the first step - I'm pretty sure that MANY apps are shedding users like mad simply because they ask for ANY information about you up front instead of just letting you use the app for a while before committing.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
I'm an iOS user. (just so we're clear that I don't play in the Google ecosystem)
At first (2009) I was app-crazy and tried out a large array of things. But within a year, I found I had settled on a core set of apps:
1. Games. Old games, like PacMan, Battleship, Sonic, Centipede, etc etc etc). Hell, the folder they're in is called "Time-Out" (Anyone remember Time-Out arcades?)
2. Audio utilities: DB meter, DB grapher, spectrum analyzer
3. Timekeepers -- a clock utility to detect and correct problems with clocks - mechanical, pendulum clocks, an addiction of mine, a watch log, to keep time of how my windup watches are doing
4. Creative: Painting, animation, not that I have any talent for this at all. And iBooks and Kindle, both which see much use, moreso in the ipad than in the phone. Also a video editor, video effects, and in the ipad, imovie. One can make a passable little movie with just a phone. An app to put speech balloons and make multi-panel photos out of many other photos.
After that, just a smattering of weird stuff like a Roman to Arabic number converter, a useless light meter that reads in foot-candles, crossword / anagram app, and ookla's speed test.
I haven't bought or downloaded a new app in more than a year. Why? I got all I need! Oh yeah, my first real nice app was Calcbot, because i like having a paper tape like in the old days.
The "Civilized World" jumped the shark ca. 1973.
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.
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."
Thank you for an illustrative example of crapp.
Ezekiel 23:20
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.
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