Predictors of Mobile App Success

Predictors of Mobile App Success

We’re often asked by merchants whether a mobile app would be good for their business.  One of the top predictors is whether they have a strong base of repeat customers.  Mattress firms are probably not a good example of a product category, whereas hot apparel companies would be great candidates.  

Many merchants we speak with are struggling to understand the rapidly evolving mobile commerce trends and do not know the size and shop/purchase frequency for their top customers.  For this reason, the graphic shown here is a useful metric to use.  An Adobe study across retail channels found that 8% of customers make up 41% of sales for a typical merchant.  The graphic rounds off these numbers to 10% / 40%, to make it more memorable and to connect it to the familiar “80/20” rule.

 

App

For most retailers, the average customer who buys once or twice a year is probably not going to download their app — unless there’s more than shopping involved here, which is the subject of an upcoming post.  Instead, the app should focus on the top 10% of customers who are frequent shoppers, who generate the most sales and who – if you can move the needle – can generate the greatest ROI.

Does your company have a strong base of repeat customers?

Or are you interested in building a strategy to deliver elite service to your special customers?

If so, we’d be glad to help you assess what an app could do for your business.

Contact us

How Do You Measure the Success of an App

measure

How do you measure the success of a mobile app? There are several common metrics that should be examined when considering the success of an app. I’ve laid out a few of them here:

Metric

Definition

Number of downloads Number of people who have downloaded the app
Number of daily or monthly active users People who have downloaded the app and use it for its intended purpose
Number of loyal users Number of people who open an app a designated number of times
Average time on an app Can include average time in a section of an app
Number of items users engaged with For publishers: number of items readFor  video distributors: number of videos viewedFor e-commerce apps: number of products viewed,  put in shopping cart
Transactions Number of items purchased, subscriptions, or registrations
Retention rate Percentage of users who installed an app during a specific time period and are still active users of the app for a designated time period

We built the EasyApp platform from the beginning with analytics in mind. We give easy access to the data outlined above so you can always objectively evaluate the performance of an app and how to use it to grow your or your client’s business!