APP MAKERS STRUGGLE WITH USER RETENTION RATES IN INDIA
NEW DELHI: Users in India are uninstalling apps almost as fast as they download them. According to mobile marketing and analytics firm AppsFlyer’s report State of App Marketing in India, user retention rates across verticals fell by 12% between 2019 and 2020.
Seven-day retention rates fell to 5.65%, while 30-day rates were a meagre 1.65%, both falling by about 1% since 2019.
App retention rates are also falling for in-vogue categories such as entertainment, finance, and shopping.
Entertainment apps, which include short video platforms, showed retention figures of 4.83% seven days after they were downloaded.
A November report by another app marketing firm, Moengage, noted that 56% of e-commerce app users in India uninstall their apps within the first week and 23% within 24 hours.
“Many of these installations are incentivized,” said Faisal Kawoosa, founder of market research firm techARC. As much as 20-30% of these installs are not genuine users, Kawoosa said.
“When you are incentivized to install an app you’re not actually installing it for its use. You’re doing it to get the incentives. There are so many publishers and websites who tell you to download an app and get some incentive,” he said.
There’s a correlation between retention and how much companies spend on this, the AppsFlyer report pointed out.
Further, apps “rarely” come with differentiating elements nowadays, Kawoosa said.
“By now users have figured out banking, social media, entertainment, gaming, and other major use cases. So if there’s an app that’s doing something similar, you may experiment with it and then keep it dormant,” he said.