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Ask HN: What methods and tools can I use to decrease my app churn?
51–60 of 65 posts
Re: Ask HN: What methods and tools can I use to decrease my app churn?
#52Earlier quoted context omitted.
I think it would help to provide a questionaire form instead. People really really really don't like talking to strangers on the phone.
Speak for yourself. I would prefer a human interaction over a list of questions. Also you'd have more of a chance to get elaboration on things you find interesting.
It depends on the audience the app is targeted at. If it's a geeky thing, phone calls might not work.
Re: Ask HN: What methods and tools can I use to decrease my app churn?
#53I think you are fundamentally asking the wrong question. Instead of trying to understand why 80% of the people are leaving, try to find out why 20% are staying. Instead of contacting the people who are uninstalling the app, contact the people who install it and stay with it. Ask them why they are buying and what they are using it for. The people who are uninstalling are not your customers. The people who install and…
>Instead of trying to understand why 80% of the people are leaving, try to find out why 20% are staying.
That's a survivorship bias. You have to analyze both groups in order to improve the ratio.
Re: Ask HN: What methods and tools can I use to decrease my app churn?
#54> Currently my app has a couple of issues with a few crashes a day which I am working to resolve but I don't think that is the culprit. How sure are you about this? Speaking personally, if I installed an app that was otherwise good but crashed that often, I'd likely uninstall it.
Well it obviously has a negative effect but the reports are giving me 10 crashes per day and there are 100 more uninstalls so even if 1 crash = 1 uninstall, why are the other 90 ppl uninstalling...
Or maybe 100 crashed, but only 10 made to report it.
Re: Ask HN: What methods and tools can I use to decrease my app churn?
#55Summarising what other people have said & adding my 2 cents:
a.) Adding MixPanel, Amplitude or other Analytics is must.
b.) Understand your customer - Are you getting 150 organic downloads? I believe - you are running an ad campaign. Try to make few changes to make your app do organic downloads.
c.) Hire a good UX Designer - Run your analytics & fix the Leakage.
There are agencies who provide consulting on App Growth & Churn - Speak to them. phiture.com, prolificinteractive.com are my favorite ones.
I also consult apps for organic growth & downloads.
Re: Ask HN: What methods and tools can I use to decrease my app churn?
#56I think you are fundamentally asking the wrong question. Instead of trying to understand why 80% of the people are leaving, try to find out why 20% are staying. Instead of contacting the people who are uninstalling the app, contact the people who install it and stay with it. Ask them why they are buying and what they are using it for. The people who are uninstalling are not your customers. The people who install and…
>Instead of trying to understand why 80% of the people are leaving, try to find out why 20% are staying. That's a survivorship bias. You have to analyze both groups in order to improve the ratio.
Agreed. If a minority of people like the app and you want to appeal to the majority, don't ask the minority what they want because those might be reasons the majority don't care about/dislike.
Re: Ask HN: What methods and tools can I use to decrease my app churn?
#57No idea what your app is, but do you know if the uninstall is happening right after the first open? I’m asking because I usually uninstall apps either: - Months later after I notice I’m not using it - Minutes after opening it for the first time If you just launched your app, I imagine your uninstall is happening right away. As an app user, let me tell you what usually makes me uninstall right away. - App permissions…
If I had to guess, he might be gating the app with a login. Yes some people might be willing to sign up for a new service, but for me if the app doesn't allow me to check it out before signing up, I almost always uninstall
Re: Ask HN: What methods and tools can I use to decrease my app churn?
#58No idea what your app is, but do you know if the uninstall is happening right after the first open? I’m asking because I usually uninstall apps either: - Months later after I notice I’m not using it - Minutes after opening it for the first time If you just launched your app, I imagine your uninstall is happening right away. As an app user, let me tell you what usually makes me uninstall right away. - App permissions…
If I had to guess, he might be gating the app with a login. Yes some people might be willing to sign up for a new service, but for me if the app doesn't allow me to check it out before signing up, I almost always uninstall
^ This. You are most likely asking too much of your user and providing little value in return.
The next thing is the user installs it, but finds out how shallow and useless the content / app is for their own use case. You need something that keeps users coming back, what is it?
Re: Ask HN: What methods and tools can I use to decrease my app churn?
#59I think you are fundamentally asking the wrong question. Instead of trying to understand why 80% of the people are leaving, try to find out why 20% are staying. Instead of contacting the people who are uninstalling the app, contact the people who install it and stay with it. Ask them why they are buying and what they are using it for. The people who are uninstalling are not your customers. The people who install and…
>Instead of trying to understand why 80% of the people are leaving, try to find out why 20% are staying. That's a survivorship bias. You have to analyze both groups in order to improve the ratio.
Their comment wasn't directed towards improving the ratio. They were suggesting that the focus should instead be on the current users. I imagine this is a result of everything being so new, they think it makes sense to take some time and figure out why people are actually using the app before trying to tackle more directed problems like the uninstall ratio.
In that context, it's really not a survivorship bias. If you want to know about the survivors, it's not wrong to consider the surviors only.
Re: Ask HN: What methods and tools can I use to decrease my app churn?
#60> Currently my app has a couple of issues with a few crashes a day which I am working to resolve but I don't think that is the culprit. How sure are you about this? Speaking personally, if I installed an app that was otherwise good but crashed that often, I'd likely uninstall it.
Well it obviously has a negative effect but the reports are giving me 10 crashes per day and there are 100 more uninstalls so even if 1 crash = 1 uninstall, why are the other 90 ppl uninstalling...
Ah, I see; I was interpreting "a few crashes per day" as "a user will see a few crashes per day", which I understand now not to be the case. That being said, the sibling comment here suggesting that some crashes might not be reported is an interesting thing to think about, although I don't know nearly enough about mobile device to know how to tell if that's happening.