Losing 80% of mobile users is normal | Hacker News Reader

Losing 80% of mobile users is normal

andrewchen.co

115 pointsprostoalex31 comments

As a user that probably contributes a lot to the trends observed in the article, I think I can explain my user-behavior pretty well.

I really need about ~5 apps on my phone (browser, mail, alarm, somehow whatsapp managed to become one of those, and maybe few others I don't recall now).

All other apps I download for a very specific use case:

- Rent a bike a foreign city that I'll leave again pretty soon

- Navigate during that one trip where I don't expect to be connected to the internet

- Play a game during the single train ride where my Kindle has no more battery

- Check scores during that one playday of soccer where I have no access to my usual channels (TV, Friends, Browser)

- etc

At the moment of downloading I often know for how long I will be using that app. Most of the time it is only on that single day, otherwise for the duration of a trip. I'm not sure there's too much App makers could do to keep me as a user (aside from sending me a brand-new phone). I don't really like my phone and I really prefer using my laptop or even desktop, whenever possible.

I agree!

An app developer needs to be mindful of if their app is a daily/weekly/monthly/annual use case.

I have plenty of apps on my phone that I purposefully keep around but will probably only use when I do that big trip once year: TripAdvisor, AirBnb, WhatsApp, GoPro, EpicMix etc.

Other apps: Amazon, Shazam, Bank(to cash checks) I also keep around but use rarely.

Under a conventional definition I've probably been marked as a "churned" user many times over for Shazam. It keeps sending me notifications for random things (Click here to find out the trending new hot single from Shakira!) so I've turned them off.

I also hate when companies force you to download their app to do something. United wouldn't let me check-in and print my boarding pass from my computer. I had to download an app and scan my passport with my camera.

> I also hate when companies force you to download their app to do something. United wouldn't let me check-in and print my boarding pass from my computer. I had to download an app and scan my passport with my camera.

I have a family member who still uses a dumbphone, so he's just SOL. These arbitrary restrictions must be maddening, especially when they clearly have an HTML/JS implementation already with a cross platform wrapper around it, and they've deliberately chosen that nobody should ever be able to use it from a computer.

> Each of the scenarios above can have both a qualitative activation goal, as well as quantitive results to make sure it’s really happening. Whatever you do, sending a shitload of spammy email notifications with the subject line “We Miss You” is unlikely to bend the curve significantly.

> I hate those, and you should too.

For this reason, I hope he's right and Android developers pay attention. Sometimes one upvote is not enough.

Alas, I expect that by the time you're in the long-tail of that curve, you have simply nothing to lose by going the vexatious notification route.

Also nothing to gain.

The time spent on implementing notification spam can be spent better on analysis of what went wrong in the first days.

That may not be first thing on the mind of people trying desperately to keep the dream alive.

Still, it's bloody irritating.

> Whatever you do, sending a shitload of spammy email notifications [...]

Yeah and thanks for that pop-up to prove your point.

Is there a uBlock filter to block subscription pop-ups?

Isn't it funny how an article talking about user retention keeps throwing annoying pop-ups in your face?

I would say he is just as unconvinced about the quality of his content like the guys he's talking about. And this is the forceful, desperate result.

I use uBlock and didn't see any popups.

The notification spam is affective on bending the curve for mysefl. Most of the times I get them I uninstall the app within minutes.

I've had to ban some unfortunately good games from my phone because the developer thinks that 2am is a good time to make my phone make a retention noise or beg me to buy in-game currency.

I also note the dev studio and never download anything from them again because these things are rarely one-offs.

Did you really post the link including the campaign-parameters? Oh will will so screw his analytics ^^.

Kudos from an analyst.

I post via bookmarklet, so yeah, whatever's in the address bar. hn sometimes trims most common parameters.

I, on the other hand, always trim urls when sharing them. Sometimes I break them :)

There might be a certain amount of 'flag-planting' going on too. Especially with a new social network, people can register, grab their favourite username, then ignore the network for a while; only coming back when it has gained enough traction for others to join. Ok, a small set of people, but a set nevertheless.

Wouldn't 50% retention of the top 50 apps imply most people use well over 25 apps? That is a figure that shocks me. Maybe there's a raw data problem?

The methodology claims to exclude popular preinstalled apps so my gmail, my wifes facebook, and my son's youtube use wouldn't be counted, so its 25 apps other than the popular ones.

I don't personally know anyone who uses more than about 10 apps on a daily basis...

Some other conclusions can be determined financially, like 20% of top 100 retained implies installing and ignoring 80 apps per month? I think I installed one or two?

50% retention of people who download them in the first place. Not 50% retention of the entire potential market.

Apps I have used today.

1) Google 2F Authenticator 2) KanDroid - to manage my todo (daily) 3) Yahoo Mail 4) Google Mail 5) Whatsapp 6) Calendar 7) Waze 8) Google Voice 9) Chrome 10) Meetup 11) Spotify 12) Up 13 & 14) My Banking Apps

Apps I'm likely to use before the end of the day The Weather Channel NPR News Quora

Will use in a week Evernote Pomodoro App Amazon Kindle pdf reader Yelp

I think about 15 apps on a daily basis, and I'm not even a mobile power use, I don't instagram, snapchat, twitter, uber,etc ...

This is normal but that doesn't mean it's good... or bad. Retention of 20% can be good for some industries like education apps, but is low for social media apps.

It's bad in many cases. If you do mobile games with IAPs for instance, 20% retention during the first 7 days, with the ever rising user acquisition costs we have today, pretty much means you can't be profitable unless you explode virally. And since in 99% of the cases this does not happen, this effectively means the vast majority of developers doing mobile games now will be out of business in maybe a year or two. Which is a pretty depressing thought.

My own experience leads me to guess that the retention curve on iOS would look quite similar. Its overall form (≈ 1/x) is no surprise.

No doubt the mobile app bubble will pop very soon. There are way too many apps released that no one is using. I personally tie much of my activity to my mobile web browser, unless I'm using Email/Twitter or Geo.

It's becoming a terrible idea to build a startup entirely on a mobile app.

There are about 1.5 million apps in Google's and Apple's app stores. People can only install on the order of 100 apps on a phone. Even if the devs would implement techniques to capture users in their first days, on average, apps can't possibly get much use.

> The key to success is to get the users hooked during that critical first 3-7 day period.

FOAD. The key is offering something useful, so you don't have to think like a crack dealer. OSMand never lost me as a user.

So the top 100 Apps don't offer something useful? I think the point is that regardless of how useful the app is, there is decreasing engagement right away. It's best to not be demoralized by it and think through your onboarding.

The goal is not to shift the slope because that is similarly negative regardless of how useful your app is. Rather, focus on day 1 where the downslope starts at 75% vs. 50% vs. 25% retained users.

It's not an either or discussion is it? I think the OP is objecting to the whole "growth hacking" tricks you can do to keep users engaged approach, but it's just a guess.

The top 100 apps as defined by which corporate entity? I would say the lists provided to me by the system I'm invested in is almost completely useless in determining quality and usefulness. I look at the list on my phone of the "top" apps and almost all of them seem completely useless crap to me. Of course, I understand they are useless to me and everyone's mileage may vary.

I would agree and think it's equally important to focus on flat lining retention well within 30 days. Most products that fail, fail because retention falls and falls until it hits 0. If you find product-market fit that establishes a flat line of say, 10-30% retention within ~30 days, it likely means you've found a user who actually values, and continues to value, using your product. Just my 0.02

Sheesh, that's harsh

This is shop talk, a term of art. He's talking about making your app pleasant to use and easy to understand quickly, not literally.. puff

This reminds me of the time everyone was up in arms about some article where US intelligence cryptographers were calling people "adversaries." You gotta take these things in context.

Of course, making useful things matters if your goal is to have people use your things. No sane person will argue with that. there are also people who blog about that. Also good.

This article is about when/how people drop off, given some level of inherent usefulness. How they decide whether your app is useful. It's saying most apps loose most users immediately, most of the rest shortly after then it stabilizes after a week or so. So, you need to convince users that this app is useful fast.

Obviously, in a lot of cases users download an app, see that its not useful and get on their way. Everything is a function of usefulness. No amount of attention to user on-boarding will make an app that gives you constipation popular. An app that makes gold drizzle out of the headphone jack will show you exactly how sophisticated all these supposedly tech-illiterate "late adopters" can be when properly motivated.

If your app falls in the range of apps that people might get some benefit from but don't drizzle gold, you are probably losing some potential users needlessly and to the benefit of no one.

The most obvious take away is "focus on what happens when users first open your app and make it nice." Give people a reason to come back" Why be angry about that? You'd think he was talking about a coffee shop where employees say see tomorrow, Jim. Those creepy neurolingocerobronic manipulators. I'll see you if I see you, OK! I know what you're up to and it won't work on ME! I'm on to you!!!!

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