It can be tempting to think of your web-based and mobile products as two sides of the same coin. But in reality, they’re incredibly nuanced.
Your users engage with your web and mobile products in different ways, at different times, on different devices. Even your users’ attention spans and tolerance for delays differ markedly on web vs. mobile. And while your product and brand identity should feel cohesive across your web and mobile apps, it’s important to treat your web and mobile experiences as distinct offerings—and to optimize them for their respective delivery methods.
A core aspect of optimizing your users’ experiences is understanding what’s going on inside your product and gathering insights about how users are really leveraging it. Product analytics helps you move beyond assumptions and anecdotal feedback, so you can back up your decisions with data and deploy features and updates with confidence. Heeding insights from product analytics can help drive competitive advantage—particularly in the mobile space, where the market is heavily saturated (flooded with hundreds of thousands of new Android and iOS apps each month) and where your users can easily jump ship from apps that don’t live up to their expectations.
Mobile product leaders need to keep tabs on the right key performance indicators (KPIs) so they can assess how their app is performing, understand how their users are engaging with it, and get ahead of any issues that might signal larger problems down the road.
Here’s our list of the top ten mobile KPIs you should have on your radar.
1. App launch and load speed
The amount of time it takes your app to fire up is the first opportunity to show your users how well your product performs. It’s indicative of a great (or not so great) user experience, and can be a useful tool to help your developers identify bugs or improve code execution speeds.
2. App versions
A not-so-fun reality that mobile product leaders have to contend with is the need to support multiple versions of your product at once. Knowing the spread of users across the various versions of your app can help you predict the impact of upcoming updates, create targeted messaging, and save on support and development resources.
3. Battery and network consumption
Your users are less likely to open your mobile app on a regular basis if they know it’ll zap their battery and bandwidth. Having an understanding of how much of each your app consumes can help you identify opportunities to reduce your app’s footprint or configure more device-friendly network settings.
4. Crashes, uninstalls, and active users
Knowing when your app crashes unexpectedly or when it’s uninstalled by your users can help you spot recurring problems and give you a sense of how valuable your users think your product is. And measuring Daily Active Users (DAU) and Monthly Active Users (MAU) over time is a clear indicator of your app’s stickiness and appeal.
5. Feature adoption and Core Events
Feature adoption helps you understand which elements of your app your users engage with most (and get the most value from). In Pendo, Core Events are another customizable way to evaluate the unique key actions users perform in your app. Both metrics are invaluable for identifying feature gaps and optimizations.
6. App store ratings
Your app store rating isn’t just a vanity metric—it influences how easy (or difficult) it is for people to discover your app. Tracking your rating over time can give you good insight into your users’ overall sentiment, particularly following feature launches or updates.
7. Retention rate
Retention rate is the percentage of users still using your app after they initially install or start using it. It can help you uncover potential issues with your app experience early on in the user journey, and has a direct impact on your app store ranking.
8. Product Engagement Score (PES)
Product Engagement Score (PES) is a composite score made up of three elements: adoption, stickiness, and growth. PES gives you a balanced view into your product’s overall performance (and what your users think about it), and is a great metric to report on at regular intervals.
9. Net Promoter Score (NPS)
Net Promoter Score (NPS) is one of the most popular metrics for measuring customer loyalty and happiness. Measuring it at both the user and account level can help you contextualize usage behaviors and identify users at risk of churning.
10. Poll and survey engagement
While polls and surveys aren’t true KPIs like the rest of the metrics included in this list, they’re often part of a more robust Voice of the Customer (VoC) program, and are highly effective standalone methodologies for gathering both qualitative and quantitative user feedback.
Want to dive deeper into each of these metrics and learn why you should track them in your mobile products? Download the full e-book here.
