According to a recent survey, 80% of consumers are more likely to patronize a company that provides a tailored experience. This statistic buttresses the importance of personalization during app conversion optimization.
But conversion optimization goes beyond personalization. You must find the right balance of strategies that bring immediate results while driving long-term product growth. This means addressing both surface-level and more extensive issues.
In this article, we discuss techniques from both divides and how you can implement them. First, though, let’s explore what app conversion is and how you can determine a good conversion rate for your mobile app.
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What is an app conversion?
A mobile app conversion rate (CVR) tracks the percentage of your app’s users who took a desired action, such as:
- Downloading your app.
- Subscribing to your product (converting from a trial user).
- Upgrading a subscription (converting to a higher plan).
With this in mind, app conversion rate optimization (CRO) refers to any action taken to improve the percentage of users who complete a specific action within your app.
Successfully optimizing app conversion rates helps reduce customer acquisition costs while increasing revenue.
What is a good conversion rate for an app?
The concept of “good” conversion rates varies widely by industry, target audience, and app type.
However, there are some general benchmarks you can use to establish a baseline. For example, here are some general benchmarks for different conversion goals:
- App store conversion rate (store visitors → downloads): ~30-40% (iOS) & 25-35% (Android)
- Trial-to-paid conversion rate (freemium model): 5-15%
- In-app purchase conversion rate: 1-5%
Following these benchmarks, for example, we can conclude that a 7% CVR for in-app purchases is excellent for in-app purchase conversion, but the same mark is poor for app store conversion.
Top 10 app conversion optimization strategies
Achieving sustainable mobile app conversion optimization requires a mix of short-burst quick wins and long-term strategies. We’ve outlined 10 of these that you can follow.
1. Optimize app store presence
Your app’s app store listing directly impacts its visibility and eventual app downloads. Therefore, optimizing its presence in the app store drives more qualified users to your app.
Interestingly, by targeting and attracting more qualified users, you can enjoy both more app downloads and higher in-app conversion rates.
Here are some ways to do it:
- Use high-quality visuals (app screenshots, app preview videos, and other creative assets) to showcase what your app is made of.
- Write a clear, keyword-rich app title and description. Use bullet lists to break up walls of text and keep the writing engaging.
- Clearly explain how your app’s features benefit the user.
- Collect user reviews and testimonials.
2. Improve app performance
Your app’s performance (its speed, stability, and responsiveness) directly impacts its user experience, which, in turn, impacts your conversion rate.
Slow apps, for example, disrupt the user experience, leading to lower user engagement and higher bounce rates. In fact, as one study found, increasing the load times of mobile app pages by just 1 second can lead to a 27% increase in conversion rate.
Now, there are different strategies you can follow to optimize your app’s performance:
- Optimize your app’s resources: Compress your app’s images and videos and streamline its code to reduce load times.
- Implement local caching: Cache data locally to speed up content delivery after the first load.
- Address bugs: Bugs suck the fun out of your app’s user experience, so ensure you identify and fix them promptly.
3. Simplify the onboarding experience
As first-time users pour into your app, your conversion rate optimization strategy should shift focus to your onboarding process.
Now, there’s just one trick to good onboarding: keep it short and simple. Lengthy onboarding processes extend a user’s time to value and tests their patience. In contrast, you want to shorten that time while educating your new mobile users.
This means you need to offer value from the start, making it easy for users to reach the activation point. And for that to happen, you need to know and promote your most valuable features for each user during onboarding.
You can do that by launching a quick welcome survey to help you understand users’ JTBDs.
Once you’ve got your response, segment the user by their product use case and deliver a targeted walkthrough for the segment. This walkthrough should highlight what the user needs to do to begin extracting the value of your app immediately.
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4. Leverage contextual in-app messages
As users settle into your app, deliver targeted messages based on the user’s ongoing activity. These messages can serve different purposes, including:
- Helping users identify and understand the app’s features and functionalities.
- Prompting users to complete a desired action, such as making a purchase, updating the app, completing a profile, etc.
- Providing real-time assistance to users as they encounter difficulties or show signs of confusion, and so much more.
For maximum impact, display in-app messages based on in-app user interactions and behavior or according to a user’s segment.
For example, after a user adopts a primary feature (and by that, I mean they’ve performed an action that indicates an adoption conversion event), you can then introduce them to a new feature using contextual messages.
Therein lies the power of contextual messages… By ensuring your messages are relevant to the user’s needs and experience, you can reduce user frustration, improve feature adoption, and boost conversion rates.
5. Use push notifications strategically
When poorly applied, push notifications can be annoying. If that’s how you remember them, you may be reluctant to use them with your app.
However, these notifications can also be highly effective, helping you to re-engage users and improve conversions. For that to happen, though, your notifications must be timely and relevant.
You can do this by:
- Segmenting users for targeted messaging.
- Personalizing notifications based on user behavior.
- Using rich media to enhance engagement.
- Allowing users to customize their notification preferences.
What this essentially means is that you don’t want to send out spammy notifications.
For example, a fitness app may send a notification saying, “You’re 50% of the way to achieving your fitness goals today.” Or, a gaming app could say, “You’ve unlocked a new level! Continue your adventure, User.”
6. Localize your mobile app
Mobile app localization involves adapting the app to suit your target market’s language, cultural nuances, and technical requirements.
From this definition, it’s clear that localization can take different forms. Technical and functional localization involves adapting the app to local situations (currency and measurement units, data privacy regulations, local payment gateways, etc.).
However, the simplest and common form of mobile app localization involves translating the language of the app’s content and in-app communications into other languages.
If that’s all you’re interested in, digital adoption platforms like Userpilot can help you do so, either automatically (as in our case) or manually.
It’s important to remember that good localization goes beyond simply translating app text. It involves analyzing and adopting cultural preferences (app icons, color schemes, layouts, etc.), local best practices, and other cultural sensitivities.
A good example of a properly implemented localization of a global product is Airbnb. The app boasts over 220 locales and 60+ languages. For each, the app has localized everything from payment methods to the app’s UI and content.
For example, former Language Manager at Airbnb, Ge Zhongjun, notes that to localize the app within the Chinese market, they did the following:
- Enabled Alipay and WeChat Pay.
- Used Chinese maps.
- Launched WeChat mini-apps.
- Set up servers in China.
- Refined hosting and listing formats to make it easier for Chinese hosts and guests.
- Adopted Chinese marketing tactics.
A similar practice was followed for each locale. The result? Airbnb became a global product by ensuring they were always a local product.
7. Offer meaningful incentives
Here’s a simple truth of life: humans love rewards. This is why offering incentives has always been an excellent mobile conversion rate optimization technique.
However, for your reward to be effective, it must be compelling. The incentive you provide should drive users to interact more with your product. So, avoid incentives like gift card offers for purchases from unrelated businesses.
Ride-sharing companies, for example, frequently offer discounts and promotions to first-time and inactive users to encourage repeat rides.
You can similarly use targeted discounts, loyalty reward programs, or other in-app rewards to encourage product usage and re-activate inactive users.
8. Implement A/B tests at different touchpoints
A/B testing is a powerful tool for experimenting with different mobile app elements to identify the most effective variations. The process here is fairly straightforward:
- Define your conversion goal.
- Isolate the variables to test.
- Use A/B testing tools to create and launch different variations of your mobile app.
- Analyze results and implement winning variations.
Now, the variable to test will largely depend on your conversion goals. For example, consider the following elements and how A/B testing could apply:
Onboarding flow
Goal: Increase the percentage of users who complete the primary onboarding process.
Possible test variables: Number of onboarding steps (e.g., 3 vs. 5 steps), tutorial copy, screen layout, interactive elements vs. static information, and timing.
CTAs (Calls-to-Action)
Goal: Increase the click-through rate of a button.
Possible test variables: Button copy (“Sign Up” vs. “Get Started”), color (blue vs. green), placement (below the fold vs. above the fold), and button size.
Push Notifications & In-App Messages
Goal: Increase the open rate of push notifications.
Possible test variables: Notification copy, text length (short vs. long), timing (morning vs. evening), personalized or generic, and inclusion of rich media and/or emoji.
9. Collect and act upon user feedback
Actively seek user reviews and opinions to gain insights for improving the app experience. You can collect this feedback via in-app surveys.
This app conversion optimization technique helps you identify opportunities for app improvement. By providing solutions to the issues behind negative feedback, you can turn a dissatisfied user into a loyal and trusting one.
10. Analyze user behavior to identify bottlenecks
The final, most important step towards conversion rate optimization is understanding how users interact with your app.
- Which screens do they spend the most time on?
- Where do they drop off?
- What features do they use the most/least?
- What are the most common user errors?
With a unified mobile analytics tool like Userpilot, you can easily track screen views, funnel drop-offs, and other custom events. This user data can help you pinpoint areas for improvement.
As you make changes to the product, you can also track changes in user behavior to measure the impact of those changes.
Supercharge your app conversion optimization with Userpilot
Like everything associated with product growth, app conversion optimization isn’t a one-time ask; it’s a continuous journey of refinement and adaptation.
Thankfully, Userpilot can help you stay ahead of the curve. It empowers you to create personalized in-app onboarding flows, analyze their performance, and deploy contextual push notifications and in-app messages.
Mobile app CRO is about understanding your users and providing them with a resonating experience. Userpilot provides the tools to help you do that. Book a demo today to learn more!
Boost Your App Conversion Optimization with Userpilot
FAQ
What is conversion optimization?
Conversion optimization is the tactics and strategies used to increase the percentage of users completing desired actions within your app.
How to increase app conversion rate?
To increase the conversion rate, there are different approaches you can take, such as:
- Streamlining your app onboarding.
- Optimizing your app store listing.
- Using in-app messages to prompt the desired action.
- Deploying push notifications to re-engage mobile users.
- Improving your app’s speed and performance.
Is a 7% conversion rate good?
A 7% conversion rate for a mobile app is generally above average. Most apps see 1–5%, so 7% suggests strong performance, especially if it’s install-to-signup or install-to-purchase. Context matters, though. For example, 7% might be on the lower end for trial-to-paid conversion.
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