Apps fill our busy lives and make our personal and professional lives easier. However, we all have had a love-hate relationship with certain apps at some point in time, sometimes making us falling short of converting into a paid user.

Looking from a product manager’s perspective, the most critical KPI for any app is its conversions. Users have to complete the path of app conversion goals, in order to fulfil the intended goal for the app owner. Advanced product analytics tools like Apxor not only help you track conversion goals but also aid in nudging your users towards conversion. Let’s take a detailed look.

1. Identify your target users correctly:

Make sure you are driving the right users to your app through various channels. One way to identify the demographics of your target persona is by looking through comparative studies of the industry. Suppose your app is a dating app, you can check the demographics of your competitors like Tinder. Though Tinder started with more college students as users, now 4 out of 5 Tinder users are millennials, according to Globalwebindex. This kind of a competitor analysis helps narrow down your target users.

Another way is to eliminate the demographics of users with lower retention, higher D0 churn and those who only do blank sessions in the app from being targeted. One more approach is to narrow down on high performing channels and optimise your marketing efforts accordingly.

2. Improve the in-app experience:

According to Forbes, an eMarketer study shows that adults in the US spend 2 hrs, 41 minutes per day on mobile apps. The moment users think that an app is not offering what they are looking for, they stop using it (and usually uninstall it as well!). So offering a rich experience on your app is key to conversion.
The same Forbes article quotes the example of Mindclash, a trivia app. It says Mindclash offers a rich experience to its users. ‘Those interested in trivia are provided a valuable experience when they use the app—there is a clear takeaway from using the program, whether it is for the joy of answering trivia questions, winning prizes, or engaging in some friendly competition.’

Some ways of improving your in-app experience are

i. Optimise pages, maximise usability by using A/B testing:

Your app’s UI might not be providing as good a user experience as you hoped, affecting your conversions. Make changes and optimise the UI to ensure a great user experience in order to convert users. Apps with a great user experience constantly utilize A/B testing and optimising for conversion. By showing 2 or more variants of an app screen to different segments of users at the same time and comparing which variation drives more conversions, we can optimise the app. The variant which generates more conversions is chosen.

ii. Offer personalised in-app communication:

Give your users relevant information to understand the app and offer tips and support contextually. Nudge them with timely in-app messages which are non-intrusive and use personalised push notifications to provide info on offers or rewards. The easier to use and navigate your app is, the more the users will use it. Apxor helps you nudge users contextually towards your conversion goals. A bit of personalisation can take you a long way in conversion.

In the right context, a nudge toward the leading metrics has a sizeable impact on conversions. Take a look at how a contextual walkthrough can be utilised.

iii. Be cautious with the usage of ads:

Ads can be most annoying to any user. Hence, it is important to either avoid ads and use ads at specific times. Serve your user’s interest by creating a connection with the user, instead of driving them away. Give your user value through your app before you showcase ads and monetise his usage. Spotify does just that by offering a wide selection of music to listen to with ads peppered in thoughtfully until a user is nudged to upgrade his subscription.

Understanding conversions with Apxor.

Use advanced funnels to pinpoint why users drop off:

Funnels can be used to know which points along the conversion paths users are dropping off the most. They can tell you not just your conversion rates but also which users are dropping off and where along the conversion path is this occurring.

Any analytics tool can give you metrics about user conversion, but only a few can help you in understanding why users drop off and actually aid in converting your users. Apxor equips you with the right tools to understand the “why”. Apxor pinpoints the differences between users who convert and those who don’t across multiple attributes in one go.

Zoom into a user’s usage and validate assumptions.

You can deep dive into the usage of individual users from segments of users who have dropped or failed to convert. With the individual user analysis, quickly understand granular details about the user’s journey to conversion. Get a holistic perspective that goes beyond just a simple event stream of the user’s activities. You can look at APM (performance) metrics, user interactions and usability observations interspersed between the events that a user did. You can watch it in action below.

                                                                                                       Tracking User Journey on Apxor Dashboard

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Quickly launch descriptive surveys in context.

Yet another way to get to know why users drop off before conversion is to use contextual surveys that get in situ inputs from your users. This takes your qualitative analysis to the next level and can be used when you need to get critical information from your users that you cannot get otherwise.

Learn more about using surveys to understand your users better in our blog post: Contextual Surveys put your users at the core of iterating your product.

The Takeaway:

Of course, with every industry and app market category, the action or event for each conversion will vary, and so will conversion rates. The key questions to ask yourself are: Many users will probably download your app and browse through, but how many of them convert to actual customers? How to influence converted users to keep coming back to your app and do it again?

Mobile analytics tools like Apxor can provide the answers and help you track your progress against clearly defined conversion goals. Share your thoughts on the user conversion tips and if there’s anything that worked well for you in improving conversions.