When developing a mobile product understanding how to innovate after the product launch will make or break adoption.
You’re excited! The product is finally in iTunes and the Android Play Store, the team did a great job delivering this to the marketplace. Legal, Marketing, Finance and IT all came together for a successful launch. But wait, you’re actually just starting! The time is now to make changes not lean against old assumptions.
Knowing what to measure is as important as having the initial vision of what product to launch. New business development and growing new revenue channels is about continual innovation. As Peter Drucker once said, “What gets measured, gets managed.” It’s vital to measure what matters.
There are hundreds of metrics you could focus on but they won’t result in additional new business unless you rally your leadership team around only a handful of core metrics. Pick 5-10 metrics you feel most reflect the desired behavior you want to influence. Below are 10 metrics that will help your team make fact based decisions and drive positive consumer moments leading to new business growth.
Metric 1: Benefit Session time
The average amount of time spent on a mobile site helps determine if the website is meeting established goals. This metric measures network traffic for mobile apps and usage from existing customers. Do you want customers to navigate to what they need in the least amount of time or send them to a different website? If the goal is to engage them with content so they stay on the website as long as possible, you are still watching this metrics but with a different desired outcome.
Metric 2: App Users
This shows the number of unique app users over a period of time. The benefit here is this tracks how many people actually use the app after downloading. Downloads is nice, but usage drives behavior. Did we influence a behavior change or not?
Metric 3: Active User Rate
The ratio of the number of app users to the total downloads. Understanding active user rate, illustrates and helps explain the gain or loss of audience over time. In short, are people downloading the app one time checking it out, then uninterested, never going back?
Metric 4: Average Revenue Per User
The total revenue divided by the number of users compares the average revenue per user with user acquisition cost to determine the profitability of the app. In the health insurance marketplace this centers on new enrollment linked to number of users.
Metric 5: User Acquisition Cost
The business cost to acquire a new user helps track the effectiveness of mobile advertising and marketing efforts. This looks at total cost spent against overall net return. Rarely does this break even, but it will show trending if marketing campaigns are ineffective and not even attracting new users.
Metric 6: Usage Rate
How many people are using the site over a period of time uses mobile website metrics to determine the effectiveness and ease of use of the mobile app and to measure the level of interest. The usage trend highlights behavior over time. Do users behave different within the 1st 30 days verse the 2nd 30 days after a download? If they do, how do we tailor that experience to acknowledge that change in consumer need?
Metric 7: Click-Through Rate
The number of clicks divided by impressions measures the success of an online or mobile campaign for a particular website or advertisement. Did the marketing pay off? Understanding if and when potential consumers took action if a direct factor of effectiveness.
Metric 8: Retention Rate
A real-time view of actual usage provides a sense of whether an app is engaging users over the short and long term. Awareness of how does engagement changes over time enable re-alignment to different desired consumer experience. For example, if on the 1st interaction with the website the consumer signed up for healthcare coverage, the second time they access the mobile application they are likely not going to sign up again. More likely they are looking for notices or messages or need to make a change. Understanding this behavior pattern shift, enable a tailored approach to addressing consumer moments, during that moment.
Metric 9: Total Downloads
Number of times your app is downloaded from an app store. This is a general metric, totally agree. It also is an effective global measure if interest is growing based on new product enhancements or new releases.
Metric 10: Depth of Visit
How interested is a consumer? How rich is the content you are delivering? The average number of screens viewed compared to number of visits shows how engaged customers are with the site. If you are interested in measuring the effectiveness of specific pages that have a defined purpose (e.g., content campaigns or transactions), this metric is critical. For example, your website is launching an awareness campaign with key content on the home page. Because visitors can view multiple pages within the same visit (e.g., home page and others), it is essential to know how much time was devoted to each visited page to measure effectiveness.
Analyze your mobile product. Collect metrics that will increase your understanding of consumer behavior. Finally, you must go beyond the data and take action. Learn from the results and trending of those metrics, make a plan and take action.
Adapting to behavior change will drive innovation and strengthen adoption of your new product.