Getting Users Is Hard
There’s now millions of apps in both app stores, watches to pull attention away from the phone screens and terrifying increases in cost of customer acquisition. It is clear that the key to retention is user satisfaction.
Keeping Users Is Harder
Tapstream put together the data and we’ve seen brutal drops in day one retention. Day seven and thirty weren’t nearly as dramatic, but day one is where everybody is falling off the cliff. What makes day one such a challenge? Here’s four reasons you might be bleeding out users and three ways to plug the holes.
1. Because You Have a Registration Form
Mobile screens are awesome for crushing enemy clans. Also matching three candies. Registration forms – not so much. They cause a very real frustration.
We hate filling out forms in real life. Even with full sized sheets of paper and tactile analogue input methods that don’t autocorrect our last names. Make those mobile and the pain becomes excruciating.
If you have to have a registration form before users see value in your app, make it as short as possible. And if you want them to make it to the submit button at the bottom, you better make it bloody easy.
The Fix: Fill out the form for them using Onboarding Links.
2. Because You Have a Rat’s Nest of an App That’s Harder To Navigate Than Rush Hour Mumbai Transit
You think your design is innovative. It’s probably opaque.
You think your menu system is cutting edge. It’s probably unintelligible.
You think your onboarding flow is helpful. It’s probably claw out my eyes enraging.
Connect users (new and old) with the content that drove them into the app. Don’t make them search for the value.
The Fix: Use Onboarding Links to connect new users to their desired content.
3. Because It’s 2015…
…and your average smartphone-owning consumer has the attention span of a gnat peaking on unnameable orally-ingested stimulants
Prove the value. Immediately. There was nearly zero barrier to downloading your app in the first place, and the same can be said for the next shiny thing that comes along.
If you know your user has a friend in the app, connect them. Immediately.
If you have a personalized promo or a deal for a user, offer it. Immediately.
If you know your user has specific tastes or interests, dress accordingly.
The Fix: Use Onboarding Links to mainline value directly into the veins of new users.
4. Because Your App Is Stoopid
We all stumble. Sometimes we even fall. Maybe that was you. Maybe you just made a really stupid app? Not the end of the world, but all the app marketing magic in the world can’t fix a bad product. At this point what you’re looking for is a miracle and those just don’t exist in the the app ecosystem of 2015.
The Fix: This one’s on you friend. Good luck.
User Satisfaction For the Win!
Bear in mind that the most important thing is to keep user satisfaction positive; there is no need to deliberately annoy them with obscure registration forms or confuse them with complex designs. As always the customer is always right and a happy customer will remain loyal, engage and connect with your app.
*all GIFs are from giphy.com
