Member Article

Forget downloads; now re-engagement drives revenue

It’s no secret that nowadays people invest most of their time on mobile devices using a mobile app. Owing to this companies stresses on delivering a great user experience on mobile devices as well as within mobile apps. After all users never enjoy digging their way around for content and they are more impressed.

When it surfaces in such a manner that it enables them to take easy decisions and make purchases in real-time. Thus re-engagement is certainly going to be the number one metric for mobile app developers in order to attain success making in-app sales and monetization. Now do you know the measures needed to be taken for re-engagement?

Downloads matter most

Since the arrival of apps, downloads are the top metric that enable developers to measure success and this is the ultimate deciding factor for mobile application revenue. This is the reason that click-bait and extensive advertising on social focuses on generating downloads; however soon this metric will be of no use with most apps becoming free. Instead of apps, users are required to pay for activities within the app. This way download metrics are not used for revenue measurement anymore.

Noting the fact that developers optimize their metrics on the basis what is significant to the outside world, it’s vital to shift the focus from downloads to re-engagement in order to find out the way user experience is evolving in mobile application development.

APIs are of great help

There was a time when apps were just software residing in your phone, whereas today apps are a service while the actual app is just a way to enter to the service that’s being offered. For instance, OpenTable is a service within varying apps so that restaurant’s availability can be checked and make dinner reservations. Now the user need not to download the OpenTable app in order to make most of the service. Through APIs, developers allow their app services to live in multiple locations, thus it’s crucial for the developers to focus more on getting a service instead of just downloading the app.

This way the connection is evident between re-engagement and the rising use of API. Developers are keener on extending their APIs and making the most of them instead of standalone app. This way you can reach your target audience at right place. Like, Uber focuses more on the number of rides ordered per day instead of the number of people downloaded the Uber app. This is the reason they are trying to integrate Uber into various other apps and thus apps are turning more transaction and usage based. The metrics must be optimized in order to deal with this shift where you optimize your app and software for placements, re-engagement and prediction.

Re-targeting is vital

Indeed there has been rise in the marketing spend used for re-targeting campaigns as the users as well have made evident their expectations from an app. Now a user is less certain to download an app in case the content is likely to be found somewhere else. Like, Facebook facilitates you to read an article in an app without having to download an additional app so you can access the content. Thus, users are being trained for instant gratification enabled to access content with functionality from one source instantly. Now for instance, if you don’t share your content within the Facebook app, will you get new users? The answer is no, as social media distribution is the key to success. Now as we talk of re-engagement, it’s not easy to get a new user download an app; however, you can easily reach a user who is familiar with the UI and has come across content through another familiar app. Thus developers are mainly focusing on re-engagement and targeting users who are much at ease with the experience.

This way it’s clear that this year the focus is going to be on re-engagement instead of old metrics like downloads and this is certain to bring massive shift towards the metric of revenue. Besides, presenting the content in front of the right audience is the sure shot way of revenue optimization. So as you plan to increase revenue, just remember that the mantra for 2016 is going to be re-engagement and not downloads. Keep visiting the space for more updates.

This was posted in Bdaily's Members' News section by Octal Info Solution Limited .