Essential Mobile App KPIs and Metrics to Track for Success

Creating a mobile is a big accomplishment. But your job isn’t over once the app launches.

How is your mobile app performance doing? Are you getting the most out of your app? What’s the average user costing you? How many users are profitable?

The only way to answer these questions is by tracking mobile app metrics and KPIs. Key performance indicators will paint a clear picture of what you’re doing right and what needs improvement. 

Regardless of your app type or industry, everyone should be tracking the KPIs below. We’ll cover mobile app marketing KPIs to mobile app performance metrics and everything in between. This will help mobile app marketers and mobile app developers alike improve app performance and increase user engagement. 

1. App Downloads

Downloads are one of the most important mobile app KPIs to keep an eye on. It’s one of the easiest ways to tell if your mobile app marketing efforts are working or not. 

If your app isn’t getting downloads, then there are likely other issues with your marketing funnel. 

For those of you who weren’t marketing your app prior to launch, you can’t expect a huge number of downloads on day one. So you need to set realistic expectations for this metric and try not to compare your download metrics to Facebook or Twitter. 

It’s important to track your downloads over time and see how this app metric trends in correlation to your marketing efforts. This can help you pinpoint which marketing campaigns are driving downloads.

2. Retention Rate

For your app to truly be successful, people need to do more than just install it on their device. That’s why the retention rate is so important. 

User retention tracks how many users come back to your app after their first session. 

Studies show that 25% of mobile apps are used once and never opened again. So the steepest drop-off in user retention occurs in the first 48 hours.

So it’s important for you to take steps during these key hours to ensure users have a pleasurable experience. Make sure you’re giving them a reason to open the app again and keep coming back for the long term. 

It’s in your best interest to measure user retention over daily, weekly, and monthly segments. This can help you determine whether or not the metric is tied to specific known issues in the app, like crashes or downtime. 

The key to success with high retention is optimizing the user experience. Having a great UX/UI design goes a long way to high retention. 

3. Active Users

Active users take downloads and retention a step further. This key performance indicator measures how many people are actually using the app. 

You can segment this metric into two main categories—daily active users and monthly active users. The daily active user count is a key sign of engagement. What’s causing people to come back and use your app every day? 

Your monthly active user count is also an important metric. As people in this category could be opening your app several times per week—they’re just not opening it every day. 

4. Mobile App Stickiness Ratio

Stickiness ratio is calculated by taking your daily active users and dividing it by the number of monthly active users. 

This KPI represents your chances of getting an MAU to become a DAU. 

Taking advantage of push notifications and updating your app on a regular basis are two ways to improve the stickiness of your app. You just need to come up with ways to encourage your existing users to open the app on a more frequent basis. 

5. Session Length and App Session Intervals

Session length is a mobile app KPI that tracks how long app users engage with your app in a single session. App session intervals measure how frequently people return to your app.

Both of these are key signs of engagement. I like tracking these because they take your retention rate to another level. If your app has long session lengths and low session intervals, it tells you that people are using your app for a long time and re-opening it on a regular basis. 

Research shows that mobile users spend 77% of time on their favorite three apps. 

96% of app usage is spread amongst ten apps. So if you’re not in the top ten apps used on someone’s phone, you likely won’t have satisfactory session length or session interval metrics. 

6. App Store Rating

Your app store rating is a quick and easy way to see what existing users think about your app. When your rating is high, this metric can be a key part of your mobile app marketing strategy.

The reason why this metric is so important is because it can be directly tied to your app downloads. Most users won’t consider downloading an app if it doesn’t have a four or five-star rating. 

One way to improve your rating is by giving existing users an incentive to rate your app. Most people won’t go out of their way to do this unless they had a really great experience or a really terrible experience—and the average user usually falls in between these two extremes.

7. In-App Purchases

An in-app purchase is pretty self-explanatory. It’s a metric that shows you how often users are spending real money in your app. 

Obviously, you need to have purchases and app monetization enabled to track a metric like this. But it’s important to track this number over time to see if certain events or campaigns lead to more purchases. 

For example, in-app purchases may increase for ecommerce apps during the holiday season. Or maybe you have a gaming app that saw an increase in purchases after a certain marketing promotion went live. 

8. Mobile App Churn Rate

Churn rate is essentially the opposite of your retention rate. It tracks the percentage of people who stop using your app altogether. 

Not all users who churn are created equally. If your low-value users stop using the app, it’s much worse than losing daily u

For example, latency could impact how long it takes for a user to click a button. Whereas speed measures how long it takes for the page to load after the action has been made. 

Frequently Asked Questions