From your experience,
Suppose after first month I reach 50K downloads with retention rate of 60% so Its like I have 30K current installs.
Now lets say the “NEW APP” period is over.
From your experience and your successful apps, Do you have a good indicator of how much % from the current installs I should get daily downloads in order to proceed growing?
I mean, what is the MINIMUM percentage from current installs I need to have daily installs so my app wont die.
I know that each app has its own stats, but is 2% growth enough? means 600 daily downloads is enough for me to keep on growing and get better results in the search etc…
The reason I ask is, I know that people will keep on uninstalling and my fun “new app” period will be over, I’m afraid that the rate of uninstall will be equivalent or even higher than new install rate.
Since that’s your first post I will assume your about to publish your first app and your asking a question thats supposed to help you feel more confident.
What your asking is stuff that depends entirely on your app and your marketing efforts, so there is no simple answer.
Some apps are installed and uninstalled same day. Some after few days. Some after months. It all depends. It’s hard to predict anything without data, so my advice would be: hakuna matata.
Just realise your app, promote it, see what can be improved, improve, test and so on. It will be ok.
Youre note going to have retention of 60%, and “new app” list will not get you many downloads anyway. Go for keywords and search results, that is your best bet
As long as your have current installs chart growing daily, you will be ok.
My question is, I know that after 30 days period I will be facing with difficulty of discoverabilty, Means that the app can be found mostly with search.
I know that I will be tweaking my description and keywords but I wanted to know is there some kind of threshold that I need to reach so in long term I will have more active installs than my first day as non-new app.
When having 30K active installs, Is there any rule-of-a-thumb of how many daily installs I need in order to maintain the growth from your expereince? There will be always uninstalls, but when you know that its ok to leave the ASO as it is?
your aso will affect downloads, not active installs. its never ok to leave aso if you’re not #1 for your keyword search.
if your active installs start decreasing daily, thats when you will start slipping ranks. if you continue having steady downloads, your active installs will keep increasing daily if you say your retention is at 60%.
There are many sources of information in internet about average retention rate for apps, games, etc:
They all sound like 50% retention after one month, 30% after 3 months, 10-15% after a year for a game.
And all the real games developed by a single developer I observed are not far away from those numbers.
However, deeper insights can reveal a lot of (even shocking) facts and help the developer to improve its apps a lot.
Let me share my experience with retention rate of my first game. It was very similar to the numbers from above: 50% after a month, 25% after three months, 15 % after a year. With total of 100 downloads a day on average I was quite happy at that time considering it a well-performing game. Also the total active users were growing with a reasonable rate. Then I analyzed my users’ behavior and discovered the following:
Around 10% of the users have never ever started the game after downloading. Most probably most of those were automated sites mirroring Google Play and automatically downloading apps. Who knows…
About 50% of all users played the game a single time, failed at level 1 for several tries and then never started it again. My first conclusion was, the game was quite complex for the average smartphone user. Immediate action is to consider easier entry levels.
Less than 10% of users ever reached level 7 (out of around 30 levels) confirming the previous hypothesis.
More than 90% of the users were gone after 3 days (meaning they played one or two days and never appeared again).
For 1 year I had only about 200 users in total who ever reaching the second half of the game (level 16) and almost all of them played up to the last level. These were really engaged users, we can assume them potential buyers.
So, this picture is much more promising for a developer to take a decision - whether to invest more time in a game, what can be improved, are there enough potential buyers, how many are they, and so on.
And the other experience I can also share is with a non-game app, but a route planner I have developed. It has far less downloads per day, but the active users were around 40% after one year. In addition, around 10% of all users still use the app after one year.
So, to recapitulate, have a look at Google Play statistics, but also keep in mind, that user behavior is much more important for improving your app as well as revenue, ratings, etc.
To measure your retention you use the retention rate, which is the measure of active users versus new users. For example, if your app has 100 downloads one month and after 30 days you have been able to retain 80 of them, then your retention rate is 80%.
As an Entrepreneur establishes, the retention rate is important because it is a good indicator of how engaging your app is and in the long run, engagement is what will indicate success. A good way to increase retention is through collecting and responding to user feedback.
