App Uninstall Rate 101: Ten Tips to Control Your App’s Uninstall Rate

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Businesses do their best to keep up with the latest market trends and deliver up to customers’ expectations. The current trend is digitalization, in which businesses are adapting digital technologies to meet the growing customer requirements. However, adapting to these latest trends does not guarantee success. For instance, once a business has developed and launched a mobile application, there are numerous things that can go wrong such as with the app uninstall rate.

If your mobile app is not at par with the market’s expectations, then users are quick to remove it from their mobile phones. This will contribute to the uninstall rate of your app. Let us take a closer look at what this app uninstall rate exactly is and why it is important for a business.

What Is App Uninstall Rate? Why Is It Important?

In simple terms, app uninstall rate is the percentage of users that uninstall your application after using it for a certain time. This is a critical metric for businesses investing in app development and is a ranking factor in the app store.

Moreover, a high uninstall rate is an indication of users’ dissatisfaction with using the application. This makes the app uninstall rate a crucial factor and a must-know for every business.

You must know that every application has a certain uninstall rate. While a 0% uninstall rate sounds appealing, it is a target that is difficult to achieve. Therefore, a business must aim to minimize the uninstall rate as much as it can.

Here is how you can calculate the uninstall rate of your mobile application:

Generally speaking, the recommendation is to check your application’s uninstall rate every 30 days to keep an optimum track of your app’s success. This uninstall rate is even important when it comes to startup app development, as without a track of uninstall rate, a startup business can be potentially wasting its investments.

Now that you are aware of the importance of app uninstall rate, you must be wondering, why do users uninstall apps, right? In the next section, we discuss the top five reasons for app uninstall rate.

Why Do Users Uninstall Apps?

High Load Time

It is commonly known that a mobile app that has a high load time will deliver a poor user experience. The more time each screen on your app takes to load, the poorer your app’s UX will be.

Moreover, many times the users perceive the image of your brand with the quality of your application. Naturally, applications with high load time will not only increase the uninstall rate of your app but will also degrade your brand’s value.

Consequently, your target users will be quick to uninstall your application from their mobile phones if it has a high load time. Moreover, there are high chances that your app will be replaced by that of your competitors, resulting in a loss of business.

Poor Quality UI/UX

UI/UX design is the founding stone of your application’s success and is the initial stage of your app’s development cycle. Therefore, it is challenging to achieve success in the market if your app has a poor-quality UI/UX design.

Users are quick to abandon a mobile application that has a poorly designed user interface. Moreover, other aspects of UI/UX design also include extreme complexity, difficult navigation, unappealing design, and hard-to-reach elements.

All these factors are a part of the UI/UX design of a mobile application that contributes to its high uninstall rate. Therefore, the recommendations are to provide simple and easy-to-understand designs and enhance the app’s functionality.

Too Many Updates

Updates are an essential part of enhancing an application’s performance and quality. However, updating your application very frequently can hinder the user experience to a great extent.

Frequent updates are uninvited by the users and are highly disliked. Owing to this factor, users are quick to uninstall applications that require frequent updation.

Therefore, it is recommended to provide periodic and less-frequent updates to retain users on your application. Moreover, you can make certain less-important updates optional and the more important ones mandatory. This will enable the user to choose when they wish to update the application.

Security Concerns

Several applications, especially the ones in social networking and e-commerce categories require users to share their personal information. Moreover, certain apps require access to the mobile’s software and hardware.

However, users are skeptical about trusting sketchy applications. Once the users realize that the app does not provide optimum security to their data, they are quick to uninstall it from their devices.

This results in not only the application but also the brand losing its creditability in the market. As a result, it is essential for a business to develop a highly secure and reliable app to gain market trust and retain the users on the application

Excessive Notifications

Notifications are essential for a business to communicate with its target market. They act as a promotional tool through which businesses can make the market aware of the latest offers, deals, and other important aspects.

However, one should know that excessive notifications can totally hinder the user experience of a mobile app. Speaking factually, 52% of users dislike push notifications in a mobile app. These users often end up muting the app notifications or even uninstalling the app completely. This defies the purpose of using notifications and makes them a bigger harm than good for a business. Therefore, we recommend optimizing notifications to reduce the uninstall rates of your mobile app.

This is it for the top five reasons why users uninstall mobile applications from their devices. Now that you are aware of the reasons behind the app uninstall rate, you must be wondering, how can I avoid my application from being uninstalled, right? Here are the top ten tips and tricks for controlling app uninstall rate.

Ten Tips to Reduce App Uninstall Rate

Offer Seamless Onboarding Process

The first interaction of a user with your application is through the app’s onboarding screen. Generally speaking, users dislike applications that have a tedious and lengthy onboarding process.

Consequently, users will uninstall applications that have a lengthy onboarding process that requires them to enter a lot of information. One can overcome this challenge by optimizing the onboarding process.

Offering guest login and social media login are two ways to achieve this objective. Moreover, one can reduce the number of steps in the initial onboarding process and ask for more details later. This will help retain the customers on the application and will decrease the user uninstall rate.

Use Latest Features

Users install the application with high expectations. These expectations are built on the basis of the app’s marketing and promotion campaigns. However, when users realize that the app is not up to the mark with their requirements, they are quick to remove it from their mobile phones.

For this purpose, we recommend adding advanced and high-tech features to your application. These features will not only retain the users but will also add a USP to your app and will give a competitive advantage to your business.

To find out the best features to add to your application, you must conduct thorough industry research, market research, and competitor research. Through this, you can understand what exactly the customers are looking for and can deliver up to their needs.

Optimize App Performance

We discussed before how slow-performing apps are disliked by the users and often end up getting uninstalled. Factually speaking, applications that take 3 seconds or more to load have high chances of getting abandoned by the users.

Slow app performance is one of the leading reasons for an application’s high uninstall rate. Therefore, by optimizing the application’s performance, a business can largely control the uninstall rate in the long run.

One of the most popular ways to optimize the app’s performance is by eliminating distracting elements like auto-playing videos, pop-up ads, etc. This is one of the most essential aspects of reducing uninstall rate and, therefore, should not be overlooked.

Conduct Thorough App Testing

Testing is a critical aspect of the app development process and ensures high app quality. By thoroughly testing your application, you can make sure that you are delivering a seamlessly performing and bug-free app to your target users.

As a result, apps that are not tested well often result in crashes, security breaches, poor UI responsiveness, and ultimately, a low-quality user experience. Therefore, we recommend conducting thorough app tests to deliver a seamless UX and retain users on the app.

One of the most popular app testing techniques is beta testing. This involves the testing of a mobile app by the end users in different environments. This enables a business to test its application on different types of devices, network connections, and operating systems and get market validation on the app’s features.

Consider User Feedbacks

User feedback is the key to finding out whether or not your application is meeting the target market’s expectations. By requesting user feedback and reflecting on it, you can understand how your target users perceive your application.

Moreover, this user feedback is an essential part of providing user support and, therefore, is essential to control your app’s uninstall rate. Users can provide their insightful inputs by using your app and communicating it to your business.

This feedback often includes reviews and information on crashes, bugs, and errors. You can work on rectifying these issues, which in turn, will enhance the quality of your application and will deliver a high-end user experience, further reducing the app’s uninstall rates.

Improve UX with UI

We mentioned before that a poor-quality user interface is one of the most well known factors for a high uninstall rate. By working on creating an efficient and functional design, a business can significantly control its uninstall rate.

Some of the best designing practices are facilitating easy navigation, avoiding excessive complexity, using minimalistic themes, and maintaining design consistency.

By following these tips, you are certain to create a visually appealing design that compels the users to stay on the app, therefore decreasing the uninstall rate. Moreover, this will also ensure higher use time of the app and increased traffic.

Use Correct Technologies

A large part of how your app will perform will be determined by the tech stack of your application. Therefore, it is recommended to choose the right technologies while you develop your business’s mobile app.

Native development and cross-platform development are two app development approaches. Generally speaking, applications developed with the cross-platform approach prove to have slow performance and a higher crash rate. This is because cross-platform apps require integrating various third party APIs, which hinder the app’s performance.

Native applications, on the other hand, are known for their seamless performance and high-end UX. Naturally, native applications have a lower uninstall rate than cross-platform apps due to this factor.

Therefore, you must be careful while choosing the technology for your app development project. Our tip is to go for Native MVP development to give your business a great kick-start in the digital world without incurring high development costs.

Personalize User Experience

Personalization is highly essential for a business to deliver a great buying experience to its users. Therefore, it is vital that you as a business must focus on delivering a personalized experience to your users to retain them in the long term.

Mobile applications offer highly detailed analytical information on the app’s users, which is useful to deliver up to these needs. You can use the admin panel to find out how your users are spending their time on your app and use this information to personalize each user’s experience.

One of the best implementations of this strategy is on e-commerce applications, with personalization utilized in numerous aspects like product suggestions and promotional offers.

Attract Relevant Audience

One of the most common reasons why your application has a high uninstall rate is that you are unable to attract the right type of users for your applications. Consequently, the wrong users are not in need of your application and will uninstall it in no time.

You can overcome this challenge by taking measures to attract the right type of users to your application. ASO (App Store Optimization) is a practice that facilitates this need.

ASO ensures that your app is reaching the right type of users and is attracting them to install your application. Moreover, efficient ASO practices also improve the market visibility of your mobile app. Naturally, once you successfully deliver your app to the right users, your app will have a low uninstall rate resulting from irrelevant users.

Ease Push Notifications

It is important for a business to define the boundaries between optimum notification and excessive notification. By easing the notifications of your app, you can ensure that your app is not overly bothering the users from time to time.

Moreover, the recommendation is to add a feature that gives the users a choice on whether or not they wish to receive push notifications. This practiced app strategy is very popular in the present time.

Therefore, by working on balancing your app’s notifications, you are certain to deliver a high-end user experience to your target market. Moreover, you reduce your app’s uninstall rate to a great extent.

This was it for the top 10 tips to reduce your mobile application’s uninstall rate. You can use these tips to create a high-end mobile app with a low uninstall rate.

Final Thoughts

We hope that the blog provided you with clarity on your question, “What is the importance of app uninstallation rate, and how can one reduce it?” Now that you are aware of why it is necessary to focus on app uninstall rate, you can go ahead and create a high-end application with a low uninstall rate.

By following the tips mentioned in the blog, you are sure to create a high-quality mobile application for your business. This will also ensure that you deliver a top-notch user experience to your clients. Nevertheless, you must focus on various aspects of app development and follow best development practices to get high-end results at the end.

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