Every quarter, we here at Liftoff analyze the app engagement data we collected over the last quarter and publish our findings in the Liftoff Mobile App Engagement Index. For our new Q2 2015 report, we analyzed more than 39 million app installs and 910 million post-install events to uncover some fascinating trends in six major app categories: Shopping, Social Media, Travel, Dating, Utilities and Financial apps.
Imagine you’re the owner of a hot new restaurant. You’ve spent countless hours refining the menu, adjusting the décor, and training your staff. Everything is perfect, so you spend the remainder of your budget on advertising and marketing to get new customers in the door… and it works. Every day, hundreds of new customers walk into your restaurant to enjoy a meal. You expect full tables and can’t stop thinking of the buzz that will come from your satisfied customers. But there’s a problem: 25% of the people that walk in your door turn around and walk right back out, never to be seen again.
Admit it. ASO is boring! And every app marketer worth their salt knows the basics of optimization to get their app discovered in the app stores. You have your favorite ASO tool to monitor your app’s keywords and your competitors’ and rank them for competitiveness and search volume. You stuffed in a few keywords that you hope will take some traffic from your competitors. You even did some link-building campaigns to increase traffic to your app’s Google Play page.
Any time Apple changes anything about the App Store, app publishers worry, and they worry most when the changes affect the editorial layout of the App Store and the highly coveted feature positions.
It was no surprise then that app marketing forums started to throw up flags when Apple adjusted the way they handle the launch of new apps earlier this month, and removed Top Apps from the AppStore.
With app marketing, the best way to go forward is to start by working backwards.
Today’s app market is incredibly crowded. There are an overwhelming amount of options in every category, and building a great product is no longer enough to attract and retain users. At the same time, the stakes (and opportunities) have never been higher.
Digital dating is big business, to the tune of over $2 billion dollars in revenue per year. As the New York Times points out, more and more consumers are using mobile as the primary way to interact with dating services. Match.com president Amarnath Thombre went on record saying that in 2014 the site had a “35% increase in the people who use Match through the app each month, and a 109% increase in the number of people who only use the app to reach Match every month.”
Pop quiz! Name a major travel site or hotel chain that does not have its own mobile app in both of the major app stores. If you’re struggling, it’s because the travel industry already recognized that mobile devices and travelers are a match made in heaven, and has gone mobile fast. 2015 is shaping up to be a banner year for travel apps; travel-focused research firm PhoCusWright estimates mobile will account for one quarter of all US online travel sales this year, driving over $40 billion dollars in revenue, with much of that revenue coming in the peak travel booking season between July and August.
Want a quick way to get insights from our Q1 App Engagement Index, our infographic provides visual highlights of post-install CPAs and conversion rates. Or download the complete report for a more in-depth look at Q1 mobile engagement performance.
Today we’re excited to release the latest Liftoff Mobile App Engagement Index. The Index examines mobile CPA and engagement rates for Q1 2015, providing benchmarks for app install campaigns seeking to boost post-install events and answering questions on engagement across categories, platforms and – for the first time in our Index – gender.
Ah yes, spring has arrived. The snow is melting, the birds are singing and people are sneezing all around. All the signs of spring we’ve come to expect and love, depending on where you live of course.
And with spring comes the effervescent ritual of spring cleaning. If you’ve got an app you are looking to grow, there’s no better time to do some spring cleaning of your own. We’ve pulled together some quick tips to help you get more users clicking and converting.
