Practical Tools and Benefits of Tracking Mobile App Uninstalls
After your mobile app is launched, you usually concentrate on attracting new users and increasing the numbers of downloads, but you need to make sure that your app is really a success.
A good way is to track your app uninstall rate and monitor user experience — if you spot that a number of users drops quickly after the installation, use such data to figure out what triggered users to uninstall your app.
Gaining insight into uninstall data will give you a chance to improve vital features and overall user experience within your mobile app.
Some of the top reasons for users to delete mobile apps are poor performance of the app, too many ads, large app size, finding a better solution and more.
Benefits of Tracking App Uninstalls
Since app uninstall tracking is not intrusive, it is wise to use such analytics as it can help everyone from developers to product managers and other team members.
Product Feedback
Analyzing your app uninstalls within a time limit (weekly, monthly, etc.) can help you identify the friction points in your app leading to uninstall. Remember, even the smallest tweaks can help your app offer more value to users.
For example, if your users abandon your app shortly after the installation, it may indicate an issue with registration or onboarding process. If you track such actions, you will help your teams to detect the bugs and fix them quickly which will ultimately improve user experience.
Better App Performance
As already mentioned, app uninstall data can be useful to determine if there is a link between uninstalls and app performance — it may slow down users’ device performance or take too much memory etc.
Such data will help you to spot the issues related to specific operating systems that you could have overlooked throughout the development process.
Retention Analytics
Tracking uninstalls will get you more insight into your app’s limitations — sometimes the user is not comfortable with sharing personal data or it can be a single point in the app (e.g. registration page) that makes them remove your app.
Always keep an eye on the user churn and use uninstall data for your own ‘reality check’.
Better User Experience
Once you compile the uninstall data, you can learn on the best ways to improve your app UX. If your users uninstall your app after a short time, there may be a problem with onboarding. You can monitor closer install-to-registration rate — by comparing them to industry benchmarks, you can determine the quality of your onboarding.
Such insights would give you an opportunity to improve the onboarding process and user experience.
Tools to Track App Uninstalls
With all the benefits for your app, there are plenty of tools to help to track your Android or iOS app uninstalls providing valuable statistics. Some of the those are:
Uninstall.io
Uninstall.io helps you to analyze parameters that cause your app uninstalls and to take action to retain users. It provides a SDK for app uninstall tracking and focuses on related stats — the interface is intuitive and analytics is clearly presented for you to be able to visualize your uninstall tracking.
Uninstall.io can help you to understand who uninstalled your app (operating system, app version, free disk space, network system etc) and where people decided to uninstall your app (e.g. the preceding event) as it will give you enough details to tweak your app and prevent such cases in the future.
You can try their 21 days free trial, while there are several packages. If you have under 10k users, you do not pay while other packages are priced from $99 up.
Google Play Developer Console
Google platform allows you to track the app performance — you must be registered to the Google Console and after you select All applications, click on your app.
You can check the number of installs and uninstalls for the previous time (week, months or a year) and features available for the downloadable reports include Android version, device, country, language, app version and more.
You can use this tool for uninstall tracking for free.
MoEngage
MoEngage is another platform that can help you with tracking of your app uninstall rate and provide solutions to win them back. You have plenty of options to follow about the users who deleted your app like gender, age, location, number of sessions etc. and you can set a range for the criteria you choose. If you check the uninstall statistics by a period of time you can better understand your uninstall tracking.
After you upgrade your mobile app, you can announce it to your users by email.
MoEngage offers their analytics for free for less than 10,000 monthly active users.
AppGain.io
AppGain platform works on both Android and iOS and will help you to know who deleted your app, re-target your app uninstallers and reduce churn rates as well as to increase your retention rates.
In case any of the users abandoned your app, you can re target your ex users and get them back on track through social media like Linkedin, Facebook, Instagram etc.
The features include tracking who uninstalled your app, possibility to contact them again and more.
You can try it for free with 14-days trial period or the basic package or upgrade if your needs expand.
AppsFlyer
AppsFlyer platform provides SDK for both Android and iOS to track metrics and improve performance. Since tracking for iOS and Android apps is different, there are some steps to follow.
For Android, you should first register to console, integrate with AppsFlyer SDK and then you can view Uninstall Data within the dashboard.
There is a documentation file for iOS too if you want to measure uninstalls for your app — start with finding your app, check your Certificate, export the .p12 file, integrate with AppsFlyer SDK and test Uninstall. Then, you will be able to track Uninstall data within the dashboard.
The uninstall attribution is free if you have their SDK installed but visit AppsFlyer pricing to see which edition would suit you the best.
CleverTap
CleverTap is a well known platform for tracking uninstalls of both Android and iOS. CleverTap focuses on minimizing the churn where you can compare uninstall versus new activations to better understand the cause of users’ actions.
Besides behavioural and live segmentation, you have the option to reach out to users and try to win them back and you have 14 days free trial while other packages start from $311 per month per 25.000 MAU.
Count.ly
Count.ly is another choice for iOS and Android app uninstall tracking with plenty of features — Countly SDK enables you to see the missing users who didn’t have a session for more than 7, 14, 30 etc. days and create campaigns to re-engage those users via push notifications.
They offer Community edition free forever with basic features or choose among enterprise edition or your own customized edition package.
Final Thoughts
Once the user uninstalls your app, they are unlikely to come back — tracking uninstall metrics will effectively improve your retention strategy and you will get a complete picture of the relevant information.
Keep an eye on users actions to make sure your app satisfies the users needs and use tools to help you track relevant data to be ready in case of any alerts.
Uninstall tools will make things easier for you — decide which one suits you better based on your app and your budget.
