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KPIs Every Mobile App Should be Tracking in 2023

In recent years, the use of mobile applications has increased dramatically, and the competition is tough! Monitoring app performance has never been more crucial, but there is not only one formula for victory.

Most businesses are now active online to reach a wider audience. With this in mind, we’ve outlined the top-most app metrics in no particular order every mobile app should track to have a better user experience.


What are KPIs?


Key performance indicator, or KPI, is an abbreviation for a metric that assesses how well projects, people, departments, or organizations perform in relation to their strategic goals and objectives. KPIs give stakeholders a method to gauge the growth of the company.


What are mobile app metrics?


Mobile app metrics are indicators of an app’s performance. In the end, it’s imperative to keep track of them if you want your app to have the maximum user engagement and conversion rate.

It’s reasonable to say that keeping an eye on your app’s metrics is essential to your success. It does not only give you the ability to assess the general performance of your app but it also can be used to spot possible problems, enhance user engagement, and improve overall app performance.


Crucial KPIs you should be tracking

 

In the paragraphs below, we have outlined some of the crucial app metrics you should track to improve your user experience.

Low-level KPIs may concentrate on departmental activities like sales, marketing, HR, or support, whereas high-level KPIs may concentrate on the overall success of the company.


User Engagement Metrics


  • Active Users

The people that regularly use your app on a daily, weekly, or monthly basis are known as active users. You cannot underestimate the importance of this app metric because it shows the success of your app and affects your revenue in a positive manner. Three definitions of Active Users are provided below:


  1. Daily Active Users (DAU): This is the total number of people who actively use your app on a given day (24 hours).
  2. Weekly Active Users (WAU): This is the total number of users who actively interact with your app over a week.
  3. Monthly Active Users (MAU): This is the total number of users who have been active for the past thirty days. When subscribers don’t need to visit the app as often, like with B2B or banking apps, this one is more typically used.
  4. Views per Session: You can determine the number of times an average subscriber views the same screen while using your app by looking at their views per session. You’ll benefit from knowing which screen and at what time subscribers are most active. You may, for instance, evaluate your product screens against your category screens.

  • Time spent

This is an incredible app metric for figuring out which screens users spend more time on and figuring out whether or not this was expected. You might discover abnormalities and unexpected usage behaviors by monitoring this measure; maybe there is a screen that users are spending more time on than they should. It’s essential to take note of the purpose of the screen or app when analyzing time spent. You want this to be low for booking flows and checkout screens. But you want high-quality content when you consume it.

The time spent is a crucial performance indicator since it shows whether a user interacts with an app long enough to take significant action. If the time spent doesn’t last long enough, something is wrong and needs to be fixed.


  • Bounce rate

The app metric known as bounce rate keeps track of users who only open one screen at a time. A bounce doesn’t occur even if a user scrolls, taps on pictures, and reads content, but they never see a second screen.


  • Exit rate

Since an exit can occur at any point during the app user journey, exit rates on apps are considerably distinct from other apps KPIs. Exit rate measurement can be used to find problematic screens that may be driving users away from an app. An order confirmation screen, for instance, should have a high exit rate, but if it does so on a particular product page, it may be a sign of trouble.


  • Funnel CVR

CVR stands for conversion rate – this is the percentage of website visitors out of all website visitors who complete a particular goal (a conversion). All stages of your application’s customer lifecycle funnel need to be tracked to identify any drop-offs in user engagement and address them. Analyze the points in the funnel where users are abandoning, identify the causes, and make the necessary changes to boost conversions.


  • Retention rate

The most crucial app metric is this one. All seasoned users of mobile apps mention this as a KPI that must be measured.


There are various forms of retention that may exist:


  1. Unbounded retention – Users are active before or after a specific day. Additionally known as rolling retention at times. 
  2. Bracket retention – Users who remain active for a specific time are known as bracket retention.
  3. N-day retention – This is the percentage of users still using the application days after downloading it. It is equivalent to traditional retention

User Acquisition Metrics

  • Cost Per Thousand 

In online marketing, Cost Per Thousand Impressions—more commonly abbreviated as CPM—means “Cost per thousand.” There were a thousand impressions; therefore, that is how many. Thus, CPM stands for cost per thousand views.


The primary benefit of CPM is that publishers clearly understand the revenue (or expenses). You can view the number of times a website has been visited where a banner advertisement is placed, and you can also instantly see the number of times the ad has been seen.


  • Cost Per Install (CPI)

The cost to get a new consumer from paid ads is known as the Cost Per Install (CPI). Contrary to organic installs, this measure only includes paid installs.


According to Artyom Dogtiev, the content editor at Soku Media, “Cost Per Install remains one of the most important metrics for mobile app owners to measure. For companies that extend their existing business on mobile, CPI is a real indicator of investment they need to make to include mobile into the mix of channels they use to reach out to their customers.”


  • Cost Per Click (CPC)

The amount an advertiser pays a publisher for each time a link is clicked is known as the Cost Per Click (CPC). Every time an advertiser’s ad is clicked, users are often taken to their site by the publisher, commonly a search engine (search advertising) or the site owner (display advertising).

The objective of a PPC ad campaign is to lower the CPC and raise the CTR (click-through rate).


  • Return on Ad Spend (ROAS)

Return on Ad Spend, often known as ROAS, is a prevalent financial term, particularly in digital marketing, and is a closely related alternative metric to ROI. In eCommerce companies, ROAS is frequently employed to assess the success of a marketing campaign.

Other costs must be subtracted before estimating a firm’s net profit margin; therefore, having a high return on ad expenditure does not guarantee that the business is profitable. Nonetheless, this indicator demonstrates the current correlation between advertising efforts and sales.


  • Conversion rate app metric

Conversion remains a primary concern for digital teams, particularly those wanting to generate income from their app. Although, the conversion rate is another tricky measure to describe user experience app metrics. This is so because depending on what you view, app CR is linked to a particular behavior that can vary from views and taps to a straightforward checkout. However, a vital sign for keeping up your App Store Optimization (ASO) is tracking the performance of your App Store page.

Business Growth Metrics


  • Cost of Customer Acquisition (CAC)

The main goal of CAC is to specify the expenses related to acquiring a paying customer. It may also take into account expenses other than just paid user acquisition. For instance, you could include the cost of hosting your website and the fee of your graphic designer in the estimation since they are necessary for bringing in new clients. 


CAC can be a fluid formula, so it’s crucial to establish and adhere to your version for your company. It could be challenging to measure the real growth being made if you choose to often flip between various versions.


  • Lifetime value (LTV)

The lifetime value is the average user monetization for the entire time they use your application. Based on your company model, this measure may be difficult to evaluate. Still, it is crucial to understand what kind of consumers you attract and if your business model is viable.

Formulaically analyzing it will lead us to the realization that:

LTV = avg $ per purchase* avg # of users annually *# of years users use an app

However, it’s common not to have access to all three(3) of these data; perhaps your application is still in its infancy. So, to provide you with an estimate, it is advisable to use a distinct metric.

LTV = ARPU * 1/Churn Rate


  • ROI (or LTV: CAC Ratio)

The LTV: CAC ratio, often known as your return on investment (ROI), for an application needs to be higher than one(1) even to pay the cost of your marketing expenditures. An ideal ROI is three(3), which will give you enough money to reinvest in your company and expand it.


Customer Success KPIs


Customer success needs to be tracked and monitored regularly. Highlighted below are some of the best customer success KPIs.


  • Customer Churn Rate

Customer Churn Rate, often known as customer turnover, is one of the most crucial CS KPIs utilized in recent times because it measures the rate at which consumers discontinue using the service. It may be determined relatively easily by dividing Lost Customers by Total Customers (at the beginning of the appropriate time) and multiplying by a hundred. CSMs must recognize not only churn fluctuations but also discern their causes.


  • North Star Metric

The North Star Metric attempts to assist businesses in bringing teams together around a crucial metric that gauges the delivered value as a sign of advancement. The North Star serves as a Single Source of Truth to unify the entire organization with the shared goals and increase cross-departmental visibility. At the same time,  the Sales, Product, Marketing, Support, IT, and Customer Success teams are each concentrated on their sub-metrics and sub-goals.


A decent NSM should be capable of: 

Measure Product Worth: This feature should be able to monitor the “aha” moment when a consumer realizes the value of your product.

Be a Major Indication of Revenue – Instead of being a slow business indicator for your organization, it should become a dominant business indicator.


  • Net Revenue Rate (NRR)

Net Revenue Rate (NRR) is a measure that gives Customer Success Managers (CSMs) an overview of positive and negative revenue changes throughout a specified time frame. The overall percent of recurring revenue from existing consumers, taking into account things like upsells, downgrades, and the thing Software as a service (SaaS) organizations fear the most—churn—is calculated to attain this. Careful and regular calculations of the NRR metric are required.


  • Customer Health Score (CHS)

Customer success teams frequently utilize a customer health score to assess whether a consumer is healthy. Selecting a scoring system is an individualized process that varies from organization to organization. In any case, it ought to make it easier for the product and customer success teams to predict if a customer would stick around or churn.


  • Relationship Score

By examining how your customers interact with the content you give them, the relationship score is a fantastic tool for helping you assess the success of your marketing initiatives.

With many stakeholder relationships engaged with your business, the relationship score assists firms in identifying relationship-based risks and benefits.


You must assess how robust your relationship with the consumer is after mapping out your relationships. You should ideally employ a Relationship Intelligence system to provide honest feedback because human evaluations can be skewed.

Final thoughts


KPIs are essential for tracking, analyzing, and improving your business. KPIs have many advantages, including the ability to detect a company’s or campaign’s deficiencies, monitor its growth, and choose new tactics for development.

It is worth noting that if your key objective on social media is to make money, you must track and evaluate the effectiveness of your campaigns and profiles to ensure that you place the proper emphasis on the right things.

From the preceding, you should know what KPI is all about and the KPIs you should be tracking. 


We hope you find this article helpful.