14 DAY TRIAL // Google’s Play Store hosts over 2 million applications, while developers offered 1.5 million apps to iOS users. Considering the diversity of applications available, the fact that 80% of people use only 5 applications on their smartphones is quite baffling. Analytics firm Localytics conducted a study on retail apps and found some really interesting results.
The study by Localytics found that user retention has increased slightly year-over-year from 34% in 2015 to 38% this year. The increase isn’t really encouraging, as it means that 62% of users use an app for less than 11 times.
23% of users launch an app only once, which is a slight improvement from 2014’s rate of 20%. Slight improvements were recorded on iOS, as the percentage of users who opened apps for just one time dropped to 24% from 26% last year.
Applications that have more than 50,000 monthly active users recorded the strongest lift with retention and abandonment.
The study attributes the numbers to the fact that such applications have push notifications, in-app messages and emails. Push notifications were found to improve user retention to 46%.
Google spotted this trend and launched Instant Apps feature which allows users to open content from apps on Google Play, before installing them.
The Instant Apps feature was launched during this year’s Google I/O and could help developers of up-and-coming applications to promote them better and thus improve their rates.