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When was the last time did you uninstall an app on your phone? Did you ever think twice before deleting it or just delete it instantly for some reason?

Most of the time, mobile apps that are not adding value to you anymore get deleted to make space for new ones, and sometimes when a better app is published on the market with better UI/UX than your app chances are your app is gonna be ignored or totally uninstalled. And the thing is it’s very quick to do and if you annoy your users with bad experiences or annoying pop-ups oh boy let me tell you that your app will go straight forward to the bin.

So that’s what I’m gonna cover in this week’s newsletter, I’m gonna give you some tips to avoid your app being uninstalled. But first, let's tackle the reasons why an app is being uninstalled in the first place.

Why are users uninstalling a mobile app?

In order to prevent your users from uninstalling your app you must first identify the reason. Here are some common reasons why are users uninstalling mobile apps

Too many notifications

This is one of the main culprits why an app is being uninstalled especially back in the day when there was no easy way to manage app notifications. But even though there’s a way now not all smartphone users use this feature maybe some of them but not all so notifications are still an issue when not delivered properly and smartly.

Horrible user experience

UX is very important because it tries to make the user’s life easier when interacting with your product. Having a slow app, always interrupting your users with ads, hard-to-use navigation, confusing onboarding, or undiscoverable core feature is very bad for your product.

Design issues

Having a design issue on your product can lead to uninstall as well. This is what your user sees on your product. This is what they interact with. Bad UI leads to bad retention and that’s not what you want on your product. At the same time, customer satisfaction is very important, your customers will not be satisfied with bad UI. Whenever you have a new competitor on the market with a great UI, be ready for a fight! That can cause your app to be ignored or uninstalled.

Not respecting user privacy

Mobile apps become an integral part of our lives, providing us with convenient access to information and services. However, they can also be a source of concern when it comes to invasion of privacy. Many mobile apps collect data such as location, browsing history, contacts, and usage habits without user consent or awareness. This is wrong and you must always tell the user why and what data you’re tracking. When users discovered that you’re collecting information without their consent that will lead to trust issues and potentially affect your product and brand.

App crashing issues

Mobile app crashing is an issue that many user experiences. It can be incredibly frustrating, especially when your users are trying to accomplish an important task or it has important information stored on it. If you don’t resolve it fast, definitely your users will uninstall your app.

Battery drain issues

Mobile app battery drain issue is a common issue faced by smartphone users. It can be caused due to highly intensive tasks running in the background. In order to reduce battery drain, users usually stop the application, or worse if the issue persists users uninstall the app that drains the battery of their device.

Now that you now know the common reasons why an app is being uninstalled let’s prevent it with these tips.

7 ways to reduce uninstalls

Gather and collect feedback

This is one of the important things you need to do. As a mobile PM in order to make your product succeed you gotta listen to your users. How else are you gonna find out what your user think about your product? By listening to what our users have to say, we can gain valuable insight into how they use the app and identify areas for improvement. This helps us refine our design and provide an even better user experience.

Here are some ways you can collect feedback from your users:

1. In-app feedback

2. 1:1 interviews

3. Focus groups

4. User forums

5. Analytics

6. Surveys

7. Social media

8. App Store / Playstore

Knowing this, the important thing to remember here is as much as possible avoid assumptions and make data-informed decisions instead. By the way, there are a lot of ways you can collect feedback on your product, not just the list mentioned above. If you’re interested more in this topic let me know in the comments.

Provide a great experience

Having a great UX will keep your user satisfied and possibly increase your engagement. This increases customer loyalty as well. By providing users with an intuitive, easy-to-use interface and smooth navigation, they will find it easier to complete tasks quickly and efficiently. By properly executing this it might lead to increased engagement with the app, more conversions, higher retention rates, and ultimately more revenue for the business.

Managing how you show ads on your app falls in this category. Avoid annoying ads, and place them on your app strategically. If you bombarded your users with ads or keep interrupting them doing a specific task on your app you will lose your users.

One more pro tip. Constantly reloading the whole screen and making it unusable to fetch new data is a bad practice. It basically interrupts your user experience. You can resolve this by caching the data so that when new data is available all you have to do is append the new data with the existing one.

Delight your users with a great experience that’s the key!

Use notification smartly

Using notifications can make your app a hero or a villain. If used smartly it can help keep users engaged and informed about important updates, new features, or offers. This helps to ensure that users are aware of the latest changes and encourages them to remain active in using the app. Additionally, notifications can be used as a way to remind users of upcoming events or deadlines, helping to ensure they don’t miss out on important information.

But always remember don’t spam your users with notifications and as much as possible make it configurable on their side so they can set which notification only they want. Send notifications that have value only.

Metrics

Tracking user behavior in an app can help you gain valuable insights into how users interact with the app, allowing you to make better decisions about design and functionality. By understanding how users interact with the app, you can identify areas for improvement, create more intuitive navigation pathways and ensure that features are tailored to meet user needs. This data is also essential for optimizing marketing campaigns by identifying the most attractive features to customers.

Remember every person is different, and every person behaves differently, knowing this helps you segment your users to really understand their behaviors.

Here are some key metrics that you need to be familiar with:

• Downloads

• Active Users (Monthly, Daily)

• Session length

• Session interval

• Ratings

• Time in app

• Conversion rate

• Churn

• Retention

• Download revenue (For paid apps)

• Lifetime value

These are just some metrics that you need to be familiar with in order to make better decisions about your app. Of course, you need to be focused on metrics that matter to your product. If you’re interested in a more in-depth explanation of this let me know in the comment section. I’ll be happy to explain this further in a future post.

Keep privacy concerns in mind

Users value their privacy more than you think. When privacy issue is raised it spreads like wildfire so you gotta be careful with their privacy. Privacy is important to protect the personal information of your users. Your users entrusted you with their basic information as well as sensitive information about them and it’s your duty to protect their data and respect their privacy.

Be transparent when collecting information on your users, on where you’re gonna use the data that you’re collecting, it’s important to let your users understand the purpose of why you’re collecting specific data on them. And you must accept that not all users are willing to share their data with you even if you already explained to them the purpose of it. Just remember, the key here is to respect their privacy.

Reduce battery consumption

Apps that consume a lot of battery life tend to make your users abandon your app or worst it might be uninstalled immediately. This affects the user experience not just your app but the whole device. If an app consumes too much battery, the device will run hot, and users will be forced to constantly recharge their devices. This is not the experience we want to keep your users happy and engaged.

In order to prevent this from happening the first thing you need to do is identify what’s causing this issue. Check your background processes, and run your background processes efficiently. Location request is one of the main issues of battery drain you might wanna double check your implementation with it before you deploy it. It might cause headaches in the future.

Android and iOS show if your app is consuming a lot of battery, you gotta prevent your app from showing from the top apps that consume battery.

Keep iterating

Make data-informed decisions to ensure the best user experience. By regularly testing and updating the app, you can make sure that it works as intended and is easy to use. Don’t be afraid to fail, do experiments and keep iterating.

Learn quickly, fail quickly, and keep iterating

Conclusion

One last reminder, there’s no silver bullet to stopping your users to uninstall your app. The tips above will help your product to be used continuously and stay valuable to your users to avoid uninstalls. The competition is very tough knowing that smartphones nowadays have limited storage and small screen space, and there are a million apps in the market, with these tips you’re equipped with knowledge that can help you grow, increase your engagements, and lessen the uninstalls.

That’s it for this week's newsletter if you have questions or suggestions or if I did miss something let me know in the comments. Feedback is very welcome. Until then thank you for reading.