App Conversion Rate

A successful mobile app conversion strategy involves turning casual visitors into devoted customers. Understanding app conversion rate optimization is crucial to achieving this goal.

We created this guide to provide you with actionable insights into measuring and improving mobile app conversion rates effectively. Read on to find out how you can capitalize on each visitor and make your marketing efforts count.

What is an App Conversion Rate?

An app conversion rate represents the percentage of users who take desired actions, such as installing the app, exploring products, adding items to their cart, or making in-app purchases. Always remember that app conversion is a journey and can mean many things for different businesses. And measuring app conversion rate benchmarks provides useful information about your app marketing strategy.

Why is Mobile App Conversion Rate Crucial?

Mobile app conversion rate is important for every app-based business for the following reasons: 

Reduce your app’s customer acquisition cost (CAC)

The cost of mobile app customer acquisition includes everything from the marketing team’s salary to the ad budget, social media marketing, etc.

CAC = total marketing cost / total number of customers acquired

For example, say the cost to acquire each customer is $50. If each paying customer spends less than $50, the CAC metric indicates a problem with your app conversion.

Identify your app conversion goals

What does app conversion mean to your business? While profit is an end proof of conversion for many companies, there are more conversion metrics to consider. 

A mobile app conversion rate could mean:

• Organic mobile app conversion;
• Push notification interaction rate;
• Lead conversion rate;
• Cart abandonment rate;
• User retention rate;
• Average order value;
• Stickiness ratio;
• Daily active users rate;
• Customer lifetime value (CLTV).

Get a good grasp of the bigger picture

Generally, app marketers run the risk of making their strategy way too busy with useless metrics and unrealistic goals. Understanding what app conversions are and having systems in place to track them gives you enough data-driven information that can improve your marketing.

How to Calculate App Conversion Rate?

App Conversion Rate = Total Conversions / App Store Impressions OR App Store Product Page Views

For example, if 2,000 users visit an app’s product page and only 200 install it, the app conversion rate, according to the formula, will be 10%.

Other important app conversion indicators include:

• Add-to-cart conversion rate = Number of completed transactions / Number of shopping carts opened multiplied by 100
• In-app purchase conversion rate = Number of in-app users / Number of users who complete an in-app purchase multiplied by 100
• Promo offer to sale conversion rate = Number of leads that converted into sales from the promo / Total number of qualified leads your team has received multiplied by 100

What is a Good Mobile App Conversion Rate?

Sources vary on the average app conversion rate, but most put the app conversion rate benchmark at about 1% to 2%. This is not a hard and fast rule, especially when other factors like app vertical, demography, location, mobile device, and many more variables come into play. For instance, iOS users tend to reach for their wallets more readily than Android owners. 

A good mobile app conversion rate is a testament to a robust and effective marketing strategy. It reflects a good data point to avoid overspending your marketing dollars. The bottom line is that it’s good to identify your conversion goals, determine how many new customers you’re gaining over a period, determine your retention rate, reconcile it with your daily active users, accurately estimate your business profitability, and reasonably allocate your resources.

How to Increase App Conversion Rate: 5 Actionable Tips

Looking for ways to improve app conversion rate? Here are practical tips to follow. 

1. Prioritize personalization

In today’s competitive app market, personalization is crucial. Tailoring each customer’s experience to reflect their interests and preferences is key to making your app stand out.

Ways to personalize your app include: 

• Personalized content: Make all the difference with content that is short, simple, and targeted to satisfy user preferences and interests. For example, an ecommerce or retail app might showcase content about related products users frequently purchase;
• Push notifications: Personalized mobile push notifications, such as sending a discount notification to a user who recently browsed about a specific product category, are an effective way of improving your mobile app conversion rate. You can segment audience based on app user behavior, preferences, and location; 
• Personalize push notifications with rich media: Including relevant images, videos, and sounds in your app marketing campaigns, as well as special promotions, can increase app conversion rate. 

2. In-app positioning and product recommendations

Pay attention to in-app events, messaging, and product personalization, such as suggesting a product based on the user’s purchase history. At every stage of the in-app funnel, always consider what users really want and devise a data-driven strategy to drive sales, increase conversions, and create a strong relationship with your customers.

3. Data-driven analysis of customer behavior 

Getting to grips with customer behavior trends highlights patterns in the way consumers make in-app purchases. Such data will give you insights into your app audience. Do they buy seasonally or at certain periods? Are there value propositions and marketing campaigns that have proven effective? What stage of the customer experience or journey drives churn, and what could fix it and raise the mobile app conversion rate? 

4. Geo-specific localization

This strategy involves providing content, offers, promos, and experiences to users based on their geographical location. So, it’s a personalization technique that opens new possibilities for location-based marketing. When talking about ad methodologies for improving mobile app conversion rates, pay attention to geotargeting, geofencing, and geo-conquesting.

5. Be obsessed with user experience

If your app user engagement is dropping like a rock, poor user experience may just be the culprit. What you can do to save your mobile app conversion rate? 

• Optimize onboarding; 
• Conduct UX research and reduce friction; 
• A/B testing;
• Comb through your app reviews and take necessary actions;
• Access performance issues;
• Leverage push notifications, in-app messages, and product recommendations.

Final Take

Knowing your app’s mobile app conversion rate and how to calculate it is a must-have, not a nice-to-have for increasing customer loyalty. Bring Reteno onboard and watch push notifications and omnichannel messaging work magic for your app.