Building and publishing your mobile apps is only the first step to making your business a success in the mobile app market. However, it is not sufficient to simply just launch the mobile app and expect users to download the app themselves.
If your app is experiencing stagnation, or you are making plans before launching your mobile app, this post is for you.
Even if they do, it does not guarantee success. Moreover, one of the metrics to gauge that is the app open rate which simply measures how many times your app users are opening the mobile app.
There are many times when users download a particular mobile application but still they do not open the app as many times as you would like for your business to prosper.
Also, there can be many reasons for that. Let us go over the top reasons why users are not opening the app and how we can fix them.
In this blog
#1. App-nesia
The biggest reason for people not opening your app is that they have downloaded the app but then forgotten about it. Many apps make a great first impression and succeed at converting in to app installation but fail to get the second visit.
The phenomenon of app being opened once and then forgotten later is called app-nesia.
To state the solution to this problem simply, do not let your users forget your brand and your app. And, there are multiple ways to achieve this. Moreover, the most effective way is to direct the search traffic to your mobile app.
This is a very underrated strategy yet highly effective. And can be achieved by simply re-directing your mobile users to the app from your website.
If you can direct your web users to your mobile application, they will automatically increase the app engagement rates for the mobile application.
This also results in enhanced branding, that promotes brand recognition. That eventually makes your brand unforgettable.
Another way is to prompt website users, especially the ones that are accessing the website from mobiles to access the same service via the app.
This is a very convincing pitch and can see many successful conversions since the experience of a native mobile app is always better than that of the vanilla website. Which leads to our second point of discussion.
#2. Engaging experience
Another important reason for declining rates of app engagement and open rates is that the mobile application does not offer an engaging and enriching experience.
To think of it, there are some apps that we open very frequently and the biggest reason for that is the delightful in-app experience.
Focus on offering the best possible experience to your users will motivate them to open and use your app against any other app from your competitors.
The easiest way to achieve a great and memorable in-app experience is by building a native mobile app and not a hybrid one.
Native mobile apps have proven to be a better and preferred choice for brands across industries.
#3 – Ineffective push notifications
Push notifications have proven to be a lethal tool in your mobile app marketing arsenal and when used effectively and work wonders for your app engagement rates and eventually profit the business.
Optimize your push notification strategy to not only promote your products or services but also to engage with your audience effectively.
Select the right time to schedule the push notification based on your target audience, how they respond to the stimuli and other factors like seasonality and trends.
That being said, make sure that you use this tool wisely. Your push notifications should not become spammy or annoying as it could negatively impact and lead to churn.
Here are a few top strategies that you should apply to effectively optimize your push notifications.
1. Keep it short and simple
Push notifications only allow limited characters to convey your message. iOS devices allow 120 characters, while Android lets you type up to 40 – 60 characters.
So ensure that your push notification copy is concise and precise simultaneously.
2. Maintain the tone for your brand
Ensure to maintain the tone in which you always communicate with your audience. Maintaining the persona is crucial as it builds authenticity over time.
3. Get the excited
Use words like new, guaranteed, free, promo, sale, half, and other terms that induce excitement. Your copy should aim at getting your users positively motivated.
Try to begin with action words. This has been proved over the years to bring better conversions.
4. Handhold users with a predefined path
You should link the push notification to a navigation path that leads to maximum conversions in the least number of steps involved.
5. Timing and frequency
A very important yet neglected aspect of an effective push notification. You must only schedule the push notification for the time when the user is most active on their mobile devices.
Otherwise you risk your push notification to be ignored.
#4 – Lack of enough promotions
It has often been observed that, any developers and developer-led companies fail to promote their mobile application after launching it.
This not only does no good but also negatively impacts the ranks of the app in search results. Which in turns hampers the business potential.
You can always learn about the effective mobile app marketing strategies or engage with an expert that can help you with this.
While it is true that the quality of the mobile application should be nothing short of impressive, all efforts can go in vain if the app is not promoted effectively. Marketing and branding are two of the biggest pillars in making a mobile app a success.
While it is important to market your app organically,however you should also consider running paid advertisements and promotional campaigns on social media.
This one activity can gather a lot of eye-balls and give a much-needed boost to your mobile application.
Speaking of which, re-engagement ads on social media platforms like Facebook and LinkedIn etc perform really well if optimized appropriately.
Facebook being the largest and most popular social media channel should be one of your preferences, however the choice of platform totally should depend on your target audience. An app that is targeted towards working professionals should be more advertised on LinkedIn than Facebook.
Some features of a good app re-engagement ad are as follows.
1. Attractive Visuals
Get professionally designed banners that are attractive and prompt action. It should relate well with the target audience and promote your message positively.
2. Compelling CTA
Optimize the call-to-action button (CTA) to compel users to click on the ad. Your call-to-action should be concise and compelling simultaneously that demands actions.
3. Backed by influencer
When a campaign is backed by a famous personality it automatically gets the validation and eye balls that it requires to get that boost. And with influencer marketing at its boom, it is very easy for you to engage with an influencer at any level.
Conclusion
There can be many different reasons for your mobile app not being engaged as much as you’d like. It is only a matter of investigating into what they are and how to fix them.
We went over several such reasons why you may be facing this issue. However, every problem has a solution and we discussed that as well.
For more such informational articles, check out our blog, which is full of nuggets like these.
