User stickiness for mobile apps – how to engage more users

Developing and maintaining an enthusiastic user community within your app can be challenging. However, by gaining a comprehensive understanding of the concept of user stickiness, how you can assess it, and, most crucially, what are the best ways to enhance it, you can overcome this challenge.

What is user stickiness?

User stickiness is a metric that indicates user engagement and the app’s ability to retain its audience. It measures the frequency with which users revisit an app. In order to calculate it, you must compare the number of active users within a shorter time frame and their engagement within a longer time frame. This way, it’s possible to assess the app’s ability to maintain user interest over time.

Improving user stickiness will not only contribute to the broadly understood popularity of your application but also to your monetization efforts, as you will be able to display more ads to users over the same period of time, thus increase the final ad revenue.

DAU WAU MAU

When discussing user stickiness, it’s necessary to mention the following metrics:

• DAU – Daily Active Users – a total of users who have been active in the past 24 hours;

• WAU – Weekly Active Users – a total of users who have been active in the past 7 days;

• MAU – Monthly Active Users – a total of users who have been active in the last 30 days.

Importantly, these metrics are a significant part of the user stickiness formula:

User stickiness Google Analytics

In Google Analytics 4, it’s possible to track the changes in your app’s user stickiness. In order to see the data:

1. Log into your Google Analytics account;
2. Go to the “Reports” section;
3. Choose “Engagement” and then “Overview”;
4. At the bottom of the “Engagement overview” page, you will find the “User stickiness” line chart.

In the chart, you will be able to see 3 lines representing the following ratios (all of which are expressed in percentages):

• DAU to MAU – Daily Active Users to Monthly Active Users;

• DAU to WAU – Daily Active Users to Weekly Active Users;

• WAU to MAU – Weekly Active Users to Monthly Active Users.

By tracking the ratios of these three metrics, you can see how user engagement within your app has been changing in approximately the last month. For instance, if the ratio DAU to MAU is 100%, it means that all active users in the last 30 days visited your app also on this particular day you verify. On average, the optimal user stickiness ratio is about 20%.

Churn rate vs. retention rate

The churn and retention rates are metrics that measure different aspects of customer behavior. The churn rate is the percentage of users who stopped using your app over a certain period of time. Whereas the retention rate is the percentage of users that continued to use your mobile app over a certain period of time.

Usually, apps with high stickiness ratios have good retention rates and low churn rates. It’s important to note that stickiness and retention are two different things, even though they’re related. Retention rate measures how many users keep using an app over time, while stickiness measures how frequently and intensively users engage with the app.

How to improve user stickiness

With the improvement of user stickiness of your mobile app, the number of ads displayed to the users will also increase, and so will your generated ad revenue. You can improve user stickiness in the following ways:

• Pay attention to User Experience and User Interface. Putting the users first will help you understand their problems and act accordingly to minimize them. By examining the path users take in your app, you can identify ways to make your product more user-friendly and help them reach their goals. When it comes to UI aspects – visually pleasant apps are also perceived as more usable, so it’s also vital to put a mind to it and simply make your app look good and neat;

• Add simple descriptions in your app store of choice that illustrate the application’s worth and the value of its features;

• Incorporate push notifications, served in moderation, informing about important events, upgrades, and new features. Such reminders can successfully encourage users to return to your application;

• A good strategy is to personalize the app, for instance, by adding an option to set an avatar or profile picture. From a psychological point of view, the more “personal” the application becomes, the more the user will become attached to it emotionally and will want to visit more often;

• Try gamification – the use of tasks, badges, difficulty levels, prizes, or points, may serve as elements encouraging to visit the app and make app-related progress;

• In the case of e-commerce apps, many users will also appreciate loyalty programs, collecting points for orders that can later be exchanged. You can also consider making new products available earlier to the app users;

• As regards mobile games, rewarding the most persistent gamers is also a clever idea. Giving them extra points, special badges, new armor, and new features might help them stick to the game even longer;

• Another tactic that might help mobile game developers is considering multiplayer mode; playing with friends or even strangers can increase a sense of rivalry, thus encouraging them to come back for more;

• Some gamers might feel that they waste time playing games; a remedy to this situation might be to introduce some information and fun facts about the advantages of playing games (or your game in particular), like improving cognitive skills when playing logic games;

• Many players are fond of character and landscape customization features. This way, they can feel more in the game as they are adjusting it to their preferences;

• Listen to your user’s problems. Often, they may spot various glitches and issues before the developer, so it’s crucial to provide a way for users to contact you, for instance, through a contact e-mail or surveys with targeted questions. This can help you better understand their experiences, improve the usability of your app, and ensure that fewer users will stumble upon a bug;

• Don’t forget to update your app so that it adheres to current standards, policies, and even laws. When implementing noticeable changes, it is worth remembering to communicate that to your users;

• Users also often appreciate incorporating seasonality themes in mobile apps. It might make them use your app more often, for example, by adding Christmas graphic elements to the app’s logo in the pre-Christmas period.

Stick to the right solutions

User stickiness is essential. After all, you can’t monetize content that is not received. Yet, to boost your app’s monetization outcomes, it’s essential to focus not only on enhancing the app’s quality and user stickiness but also on optimizing the overall monetization process. By doing so, you can maximize your earnings generated through displaying advertisements within your mobile app. If you need help with ad monetization solutions, contact us – we will gladly provide you with automated ad mediation, premium ad inventory, and more!