It may take hundreds, thousand hours to develop an app, but for the end user side, it can take only a few days, sometimes seconds, to delete applications .The numbers showed us that more than 10 billion apps are downloaded by the smartphone users in 1 year and the average lifetime of an app in the hard disk of a smartphone is only 5.8 days.
There are many reasons for deleting an app from phones. Before analyzing the “why” we start with looking at user behaviors. Maybe, you developed a perfect application which has the most beautiful user interface combined with great user experience but people still delete it after some days of usage. In this case we have to check engagement rather than retention.
Are you ready for learning why people delete applications ?
Let’s focus on some questions you should ask yourself:
What kind of app did you develop?
People tend to keep long-term apps more in their phones. What do we mean by “long-term”? Apps that we tend to use more in daily life like music, movie, video streaming, social media, weather etc.
On the other hand people tend to erase the temporary need apps, when they meet their needs. Think about the times when you need to search for some health topics or photo-video apps. Most obviously you downloaded the app, solved your problem, and you deleted it from your phone until the next time. We don’t say everybody has this habit but it is a widespread behavior in the smartphone world.
If retention numbers are low but the engagement is still high you don’t have to worry. You can still improve your retention numbers sure by some promotional activities but then you don’t have to look at the reasons which we wrote below.
You can position your app according the diagram of Forbes. For example, you can see that retention of social games is not high as travel apps but the engagement level is the highest. Or half of us don’t delete the weather forecast apps but we don’t use them as much as dating apps.
You did everything, but you still suffer from retention and also engagement… Than you have to answer these questions people to not delete applications including yours.
1. Why People Delete Applications ? Do you show too much questions during sign up?
People are no longer patient. We are living in a fast consuming world and don’t have too much time to deal with unnecessary questions and we can easily get bored and ignore you. People tend to erase the apps that have too many forms to fill, sometimes they don’t want to sign up at all. There are some practical solutions for this case, for example you can use Facebook account sign up and make that process really quick.
2. Do you choke your users with the ads?
One of the most hateful user experience about the apps is facing with the pop-up ads every second. Of course main reason for developing an app is to earn money, but being too greedy may cause you to loose your users. Try to optimize your advertising plan and let people to use your app more in the healthiest way that is possible.
3. Why People Delete Applications ? Is your app is hard to use?
Maybe your users find your app difficult to use. While designing an app, always think about the person who is the farthest away from technology. People should find their way in your app by their instincts. For the best user experience and interface process, you can search the internet and find thousands of sources which explains this issue in depth.
4. Are you making too many updates?
Maybe you are interrupting your users too much by making too many updates. Make your test carefully before launching an update to avoid new updates again and again. People can get bored by seeing too many “Please Update” messages. So they want to delete applications .
5. Are you bombarding the users with too many push messages?
It is clever to remind yourself by sending some push messages to your users but it can become annoying if you send too many of them. So remind yourself, do not exaggerate. Have a solid plan for your push messages and consider your users’ behaviors, their active hours, their limits and expectations as well.
6. Do you meet the expectations of the users?
You are writing too many things and offer many features in your App Store and Google Play page, but you are not offering them inside the app? If the answer is yes then you can find a quiet and peaceful place for your app in the cemetary of the digital world. Also you may have some problems with the keywords that you choose. People may not exactly look for the app that you made with that keywords. Try to optimize them and choose more relevant ones. For example, do not put “selfie” as your keyword if you have a weather app, just because selfie is a very popular keyword and people can take better selfies in good weather. It’s not relevant. Believe us.
7. Does your app has too many technical problems?
Think about a normal physical shop on your street, always kicking you out with no reason, if it happens over and over, would you still keep shopping from there? Of course not. So apps are also like that. Examine and test your app carefully and randomly, try to detect bugs and fix them immediately.