The competition for customer attention in app stores is intense, to say the least. With 2.3 million apps on Google Play for Android users to choose from and 2 million on the Apple App Store for iOS users, user engagement is being pulled in a million directions (literally).
Plus, with over 42,000 new Android apps and 39,9000 more iOS apps launched each month, how do you even compete?
The only way to have a fighting chance is by focusing on the user experience within your mobile app. Try to understand what the in-app user journey is like. Why aren’t app users engaging with it more? And how can you turn them into active users?
This is where these 10 key mobile app engagement metrics come in, helping track user behavior and preferences to answer all these questions and boost user activation.
Get The Insights!
The fastest way to learn about Product Growth, Management & Trends.
What is app engagement?
App engagement refers to how users interact with your mobile app, beyond just downloading it. It includes interactions like how often users open the app, how much time they spend within it, and what actions they take.
The goal is to understand app users better to drive more meaningful interactions and nurture long-term relationships.
What are app engagement metrics?
App engagement metrics provide quantitative insights into user interactions with your app. These metrics help understand user behavior and gauge your app’s performance.
For instance, metrics like average session length or sessions conducted give you an idea of user interest. So, the higher the engagement, the more value users derive from your app, and the more interested they are in continuing to use it.
Ultimately, this greater engagement can translate into more in-app purchases and a better likelihood of referrals, helping you grow organically.
On the flip side, low user engagement highlights opportunities for improvement. For example, metrics like low feature adoption might show that users aren’t utilizing key features. Based on this insight, you could redesign the feature or offer more in-app guidance to increase feature interaction.
What can tracking app engagement metrics tell us?
- Product market fit: If user retention is strong and the DAU/MAU ratio is high, it means users frequently engage with your mobile app because it effectively meets their needs.
- Growth opportunities: If certain features in your app show high engagement, it’s a sign that users find them valuable. This presents an opportunity to boost retention using those features by refining, expanding, or optimizing them.
- Monetization potential: If users spend significant time within your app but don’t convert, that might indicate that your pricing or checkout flows need rethinking.
- Measure user satisfaction: Metrics like session length and frequency of use evaluate if users are happy with the app experience. Higher engagement often signals users are satisfied, enjoying your app, and, therefore, less likely to churn.
Whatever these metrics tell you, the good or the bad, that’s only half the story. What matters now is how you act on this data.
To bridge this gap between quantitative insights and action, look for comprehensive product growth platforms that can help. One highly-reviewed option is Userpilot, an all-in-one solution for driving user engagement across channels. It allows you to customize onboarding, in-app messaging, and push notifications, and collect user feedback all within a single platform.
Also, with Userpilot’s cross-platform analytics, you can track user behavior across your web and mobile apps. This means real-time analytics and user engagement trends, without having to juggle between multiple tools and fragmented data.
Start Tracking Your App Engagement Metrics Today!
The top 10 app engagement metrics to track
I’m not looking to show you a long list of fancy metrics you’ve never heard of before. The goal is to keep it simple, only discussing the 10 common app engagement metrics that really matter. And even within these 10, I’ve divided them into three must-track, absolutely non-negotiable metrics for those pressed for time.
3 Primary app engagement metrics to track
If you could only track a few metrics, these would be the ones: DAU and MAU, feature adoption, and NPS scores. These 3 reveal everything you need to improve the user experience and app success by tracking user satisfaction, retention, and which features drive engagement.
1. Daily active users (DAU) and monthly active users (MAU)
What it measures:
- DAU: Unique users active in a day.
- MAU: Unique users active in a month.
- Stickiness ratio: DAU/MAU.
How to calculate it: Daily active users (DAU) / Monthly active users (MAU)
Why it matters: The ratio calculates the percentage of monthly users who use your app daily. This helps assess user engagement depth i.e., how frequently and consistently users interact with your app. A higher DAU/MAU ratio indicates that users engage more often, reflecting strong daily stickiness.
For example:
- DAU: 1,000 unique users who log in daily.
- MAU: 10,000 unique users who log in monthly.
- Stickiness ratio: 1,000/10,000 = 0.1 or 10%.
This means only 10% of monthly users engage with your app daily, showing infrequent usage and poor user retention.
2. Feature adoption rate
What it measures: The percentage of users who actively use and keep returning to (i.e. adopt) a specific feature within your app.
How to calculate it: (Users engaging with the feature / Total active users) × 100
Why it matters: Feature adoption tracks user interactions and usage patterns with specific features. As a result, it helps understand how users interact with these features, identifying which functionalities resonate with users and which need refinement. In other words, it effectively gauges how successful a feature is at meeting user needs.
For example: Your mobile app launches a new collaboration feature. 2,500 users out of 5,500 total active users start using it regularly, resulting in a 45% feature adoption rate.
3. NPS and user sentiment
What it measures: User engagement with your app doesn’t just mean activity, but also level of satisfaction. That’s where NPS and user sentiment come in. They measure customer loyalty along with user opinions and feelings about interactions with your brand and app.
How to calculate it:
- Net Promoter Score (NPS): Survey with a single question, “How likely are you to recommend this app?” Respondents score on a rating scale from 0 to 10. Based on their scores, they are divided into Promoters (9 or 10), Passives (7 or 8), and Detractors (0 to 6).
- Final NPS calculation: (% of Promoters) – (% of Detractors).
- User sentiment: Analyze app reviews on app stores or third-party review sites like G2 and Capterra. Look at customer support tickets, set Google Alerts, and deploy social media listening to track any mentions of your app.
Why it matters: NPS provides qualitative insights into user satisfaction and advocacy, complementing quantitative metrics. And user sentiment analysis explains what users want from your app, helping identify areas for improvement and personalize interactions.
For example:
Suppose you have an NPS of 20%. This suggests that you have some loyal users likely to recommend your app. However, a significant portion of users are neutral or dissatisfied. After analyzing user reviews, you see many users are frustrated because of the reporting feature. This feedback helps the product team prioritize improvements to address this pain point.
7 Important additional app engagement metrics to track
Remember that app engagement is multifaceted, including aspects beyond adoption and user stickiness. That’s where these remaining 7 valuable engagement metrics come in to refine your understanding of user engagement, likes, and dislikes.
4. Average session duration
What it measures: Quantifies the length of time users spend actively engaged within your app during a single visit.
How to calculate it: (Total duration of all sessions) / (Total number of sessions)
Why it matters: Session length is useful for measuring user interest in your app. So, a longer average session duration generally indicates that users are finding value and engaging deeply with your app.
However, take this metric with a grain of salt, because a long average length isn’t always good. Longer sessions in apps like Jira make sense where users are deeply engaged in planning projects. In contrast, for analytics apps, longer times can be a sign of poor user interface or complex user journeys.
5. Session frequency
What it measures: Tracks how often users return to your mobile app within a given timeframe.
How to calculate it: (Total number of sessions) / (Number of unique users)
Why it matters: Useful for understanding how much value users derive from your product. The greater the value, the higher the session frequency, meaning your app is becoming a regular part of users’ workflows.
6. Churn rate
What it measures: The percentage of users who stop using your app within a defined period.
How to calculate it: (Number of churned users during the period) / (Total users at period start) x 100
Why it matters: Monitoring churn helps identify and address problems before they lead to significant user loss. If the churn rate continues rising, that reveals a problem within your app, such as insufficient onboarding, lack of accessibility, or overall poor app performance.
For example: Suppose you make changes to your app’s UI. Before the update, the churn rate was 22% (220 churned users out of 1,000 within a month). After the changes, churn increased to 25%. This rise suggests that the UI improvements may not have had the desired effect, highlighting a need for further revisions.
7. Conversion rate
What it measures: The percentage of users who complete a specific desired action within your app. Typically, this desired action is when trial users turn into paid customers. However, other conversion examples could include populating an account, completing onboarding, or signing up for a webinar.
How to calculate it: (Number of users who completed the desired action / Total number of users) x 100
Why it matters: Conversion rate directly reflects how effective your app is at driving users towards meaningful actions that contribute to specific business goals.
For example: Suppose your free trial-to-paid conversion rate is 8%. This means your app is only converting 8 out of every 100 trial users into paying customers. Now, what if your company’s goal was to increase paid subscriptions? An 8% conversion rate would mean your mobile app isn’t doing a good job at driving trial users toward upgrading.
8. Session depth
What it measures: The number of pages or actions a user navigates through within a single app session.
How to calculate it: [Total number of pages viewed (or actions taken)] / [Total number of sessions]
Why it matters: Session depth is useful for tracking how far users get in their user journey before ending a session. This way, you can pinpoint drop-off points where app engagement falls and make targeted improvements accordingly.
For example: If a new user visits 3 pages during a single onboarding session, their session depth is 3. Suppose the same user ends the session before finishing the account setup page. This indicates friction in the onboarding flow, that you can fix by improving in-app guidance or reducing onboarding steps to keep users engaged.
9. App crashes
What it measures: Tracks the frequency and severity of unexpected app failures or errors that disrupt the user experience.
How to calculate it: Crash rate per session = (Number of crashes) / (Total number of sessions) x 100
Why it matters: Regularly monitoring the crash rate helps you spot problem areas, leading to quicker resolution and improved app stability. This proactive approach to bug fixes also means fewer users reaching out for help, reducing support ticket volume.
10. User retention
What it measures: The percentage of users who continue to use your app over a specific period.
How to calculate it:
[(Total paying users at period end – Users acquired during the period) / Total users at period start] x 100
Why it matters: User retention is a key indicator of long-term user engagement and satisfaction. High retention means users find ongoing value in your app, leading to better engagement and higher lifetime value.
Keeping an eye on retention also helps reduce acquisition costs. Because optimizing your app to retain users is cheaper than acquiring new ones.
Top tools to track app engagement metrics
Here are the top 3 mobile app analytics tools worth considering to help measure your app engagement.
1. Userpilot
Userpilot is a no-code product growth platform designed to help product teams improve adoption, re-engage users, and gather valuable feedback.
Key features:
- Unified user tracking: Maintain a single source of truth for tracking user behavior across web and mobile channels. Useful for optimizing the entire user journey and providing an omnichannel experience.
- Mobile onboarding: Create customized carousels and slideouts to onboard users and announce new features without any coding required.
- Deploy mobile-first features: Deploy mobile features without technical support and mobile-optimized UI, reducing developer dependencies.
- Mobile surveys: Reach a wider audience by collecting feedback directly from mobile app users through surveys like NPS, CSAT, and CES.
- Push notifications: Send targeted push notifications to drive users back to your app, increasing retention and engagement.
- Mobile analytics: Build custom analytics dashboards to keep track of app engagement metrics, such as top screens, drop-offs, and active users.
- Advanced segmentation: Personalize each user interaction by segmenting based on user actions, job titles, plans, or language preferences.
Start Tracking App Engagement Metrics with Userpilot!
2. Google Analytics for mobile
Google Analytics is a famous free analytics tool for tracking traffic and events across your websites and mobile apps.
Key features:
- App navigation: See how users flow through your app, what they engage with, and any friction areas they run into.
- Engagement metrics: Track important metrics like session length, retention rate, and churn rate.
- Custom events: Define specific user actions you want to track in-app for deeper insights.
- Segmentation: Create basic user segments based on demographics, user behavior, mobile type, action taken, etc.
3. Mixpanel
Mixpanel is a product analytics tool meant to help developers understand user behavior and interactions within apps.
Key features:
- User journey tracking: Capture and analyze every step of the user’s journey for insights into user behavior and app performance.
- Segmentation: Segment users based on behavior, preferences, and demographics for targeted marketing and product development.
- Conversion optimization: Identify and focus on the most profitable users to optimize conversion rates and drive desired user actions within the app.
Turning metrics into action
Tracking these app engagement metrics is just the first step. What you do with the data matters most. So, use these metrics to discover usage trends and see where users find the most value or where they run into problems. But then take action.
For example, if your DAU/MAU is low, refine onboarding to boost retention. Similarly, if feature adoption is lagging, improve in-app guidance. High churn? Analyze user feedback to see why and make changes accordingly.
This is the only way to truly stand out in the crowded app market, turning data-driven insights into improvements by optimizing your app to drive user activation.
Looking to track engagement metrics for your mobile app? Book a Userpilot demo and explore its mobile analytics, in-app surveys, and no-code onboarding flows to boost adoption and engagement.
Start Tracking Your App Engagement Metrics Today!
FAQ
What is a good engagement rate for an app?
The definition of a “good” app engagement rate varies depending on the app type, audience, and purpose. Instead, focus on improving app engagement metrics that are relevant and important to your goals.
For example, a project management app might have a higher engagement rate due to daily task tracking. In comparison, an accounting tool may have lower engagement because users typically interact with it only during billing cycles. However, that doesn’t make the accounting tool’s engagement rate “bad”.
How do you measure app engagement?
You can broadly measure app engagement through:
- Quantitative data: Analyzing metrics like DAU/MAU, session length, frequency, retention, churn, conversion rates, and app crashes using analytics tools.
- Qualitative data: Gathering user feedback through surveys, reviews, and social media to understand user sentiment and satisfaction.
How do you measure the success of an app?
There are several ways to gauge if an app is successful or not. You can track user engagement metrics, like retention rate, session length, frequency, etc., and user satisfaction levels through NPS and CSAT surveys.
Or measure how the app’s performance has helped achieve business goals, like driving revenue growth or reducing churn. Technical performance is also another measure of success, looking at the frequency of crashes, load times, error rates, etc.
About the author
