7 ms·

There's an (unverified) myth that retention on mobile apps is better. This is one of those things that marketing people keep telling each other without ever ver

by mojuba 4y ago

There's an (unverified) myth that retention on mobile apps is better. This is one of those things that marketing people keep telling each other without ever verifying the facts. (Unless you deliberately make the web version inferior, of course.) The reasoning behind it is that you should take real estate on the user's home screen at all costs, because your app's icon will serve as a reminder and people will allegedly come back to it and open more often. But what matters at the end of the day is the product and the value it brings to the users. I'd argue that deceiving the users to provide real estate for your app does not help your business in the long term. If you get more installs today by coercing them (like Reddit does, for example) you will most definitely see some other metric such as retention decline over time. Broadly, users - us that is - are not idiots. Deception works momentarily and can have an immediate effect on some metrics. Long term though, every user and no matter how smart or dumb, will eventually assess the value it gets them against the money, against their time, or against the "home screen real estate" they provided. Speaking from my own experience with multiple mobile apps: there are many ways you can trick the users but you can't trick the longer terms statistics.

danpalmer 4y ago
You say unverified, but I’m pretty sure there’s lots of verification for this. Obviously it will depend on the service or app, but it’s a well known trend. At my previous job our app had much higher retention than our web product, despite the web product being much more mature, modern, and feature rich. We verified this across multiple marketing channels, and looked at long term user retention over years.
- mojuba 4y ago
  Could it be that the mobile interface was simply better in terms of speed, usability, smoothness of the UX? Complex web apps honestly often look and feel shite in the browser.
  - asutekku 4y ago
    Nah, people retain on mobile apps because they have a simple icon to use to get there. It’s extra effort to remember the name of the service and write down the address.
    - jmcgough 4y ago
      Push notifications are really powerful for creating habits as well.
  - danpalmer 4y ago
    Potentially, but aren't those essentially properties of native apps? When we say that apps retain users better it's not some magic, it's because of apps typically having better UX, whether that's speed/features, device integration, or the "UX" of being right there on the home screen.
- jimmytidey 4y ago
  How do you know that people use the app because they are already highly committed to the service, rather than the other way around? IE, the whole thing is a selection effect?
  - danpalmer 4y ago
    We were a logged-in only service, and measured that users acquired on the app who never used the website were typically retained longer than users acquired on the web who never used the app. We certainly did encourage users acquired on the web to download the app, and the fact that those who did were retained longer could have been a selection effect, but I don't think this accounts for users who never saw the other platform.
axiomsEnd 4y ago
Sometimes it looks like designers are using this without any kind of thought. A page in my country, that is used for managing appointments with medical specialists forces user to install it, to read some messages (mostly automated) from this facilities. After installation it tries to remind user that it's there by pushing notifications about it's existence, like anyone is going to be like "I'm bored, I'll check all local urologists and maybe make an appointment with one, just for fun"
manigandham 4y ago
Why are you calling it an unverified myth? In reality there are petabytes generated everyday proving the efficacy of mobile apps vs websites. This has been tested and measured in pretty much every possible way at this point with 100s of billions in ad spend. It's not just real estate on the screen, it's faster on-device processing with lower latency, rich offline abilities, better and more persistent access to more API's from notifications to storage, stronger identity with durable logins, and of course better analytics tracking. It's not always the correct choice but native apps are the overall winner for mobile UX.
- kuba-orlik 4y ago
  But in the context of Bolt, I believe they aren't displaying ads in their app?
  - manigandham 4y ago
    My reply was against mobile app retention being a myth. I don't know the reasons for Bolt but it's unlikely to do with ads.
- spion 4y ago
  Having petabytes of stats doesn't mean the interpretation of those stats is any good. The retention for your web app might suck, for example, because you're constantly showing popups to the users telling them to switch to the mobile app and once they leave you no longer see them in "the data". The problem with data is that you can't see the things that are real but not in the data.
  - wallfacer 4y ago
    Qualitative data can be valuable data, even in this quantitative age.
- survivorBias 4y ago
  https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Survivorship_Bias https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Survivorship_Bias More often then not, the front end devs responsible for the app are not very good with "normal" web frontends - so they sabotage the competition, to reduce work. Also, web pages, could be repackaged into Apps by others leeching from the products attention.
reducesuffering 4y ago
> Deception works momentarily and can have an immediate effect on some metrics. Long terms though, every user and no matter how smart or dumb, will eventually assess the value it gets them against the money, against their time, or against the "home screen real estate" they provided. Long term hardly matters for most these days, they're optimizing for $ and promotions as mercenaries. That metric bump will get the PM promoted where they'll jump ship to the next company and juice the app metrics the same.
- mojuba 4y ago
  Exactly. Short terms tricks are often also used right before a funding round or acquisition.
addicted 4y ago
My Reddit usage has basically plummeted to 0 at this point because of their pushing me towards an app. I think there are provable cases where an app almost certainly leads to less retention than more and something like Reddit, whose value lies in allowing you to explore the internet is almost certainly one of them.
- thejosh 4y ago
  Best thing reddit did to break my use of them: 1/ New UI, forcing people on to old.reddit.com 2/ Mobile pushes HARD for their app, which is pretty buggy on Android from what I can tell 3/ old.reddit.com now shows "other links" midway down the page! Absolutely useless. 4/ old.reddit.com now forces "show more comments" This is why people left digg to go to reddit. :-) All I want is the old reddit interface in the middle, feel free to place ads on the right. I even went reddit gold or whatever it was called for a while. I really miss the old reddit UI, there is so much good tech information on reddit for random things, that it's a shame.
- manigandham 4y ago
  Reddit optimizes for user attention to sell ads. The mobile app is better at delivering that attention across the user base, even if a few users don't like it. Same thing with Quora and many others.
- Lucasoato 4y ago
  I really can't understand why Reddit is pushing the app so hard. I mean, keep that as an option, but why creating an awful UX for the mobile web users? You gather more data but the product is worse, less users are staying and you're losing value at the end...
  - usrn 4y ago
    Push notifications. Once someone is hooked on the site a notification can get them back into the dopamine feedback loop very easily. I think this is why restaurant chains have started giving people free food to install their apps too (along with all the data they can sell now.) I think smartphones would be much less popular if people understood why corporations love "apps" so much. It's nothing like the older PC world full of software more or less for its own sake.
northerdome 4y ago
The worst part of this is how the Mobile Web experience is actively hampered on iOS by Apple. When web apps on mobile do have a worse experience for me, it is often due to Safari. This is especially frustrating because the average consumer blames the website for the poor experience and doesn't understand Apple is at fault.
solarkraft 4y ago
I personally stop browsing Reddit and Twitter when their fuck-you-banners appear. I have accounts with both, but installing the app or logging in is usually more friction than accessing the content is worth. ... So thanks for keeping my periods of distraction very short! Maybe they just care about their users' mental health and are sacrificing their engagement for it :)
- choward 4y ago
  The default Reddit web site on desktop is excruciating enough to use. On mobile it's unusable. I only use old.reddit.com. If that ever went away I would never visit Reddit again.
  - RexM 4y ago
    Apollo on iOS is great if you’re looking for a Reddit app that doesn’t suck. Not sure if you’re on iOS though.
  - woojoo666 4y ago
    Might be worth checking out libredirect [1] which I use on desktop and mobile to automatically redirect reddit links to privacy-respecting front-ends like libreddit and teddit. Also since I have it on my default browser on Android, even if I open a reddit link from, say, a hackernews app, the popup webview will use my default browser which will in turn automatically redirect to libreddit/teddit. I never have to worry about seeing reddit's annoying web app, never have to worry about giving reddit my data. (old.reddit.com still does give reddit data, and from my experience Reddit does a lot of tracking IPs + working with google + traffic correlation to figure out what stuff you browse. However if you still prefer old reddit, libredirect does provide an option to automatically redirect to old.reddit.com instead of libreddit or teddit) [1]: https://github.com/libredirect/libredirect https://github.com/libredirect/libredirect
- romwell 4y ago
  >I personally stop browsing Reddit and Twitter when their fuck-you-banners appears That's what https://old.reddit.com https://old.reddit.com is for. Simply prepending "old." to the reddit link makes everything work better. Works on mobile and desktop, just as it always had. And no fuck-you banners.
rapind 4y ago
I don’t think it’s really about retention, but rather the value of the richer data set you can gather on your users.
s1k3s 4y ago
> There's an (unverified) myth that retention on mobile apps is better. This is one of those things that marketing people keep telling each other without ever verifying the facts. (Unless you deliberately make the web version inferior, of course.) I own a platform with native apps + web, and I can confirm that retention on mobile apps is better, by the numbers. I'm not comparable to Bolt though, neither in the business model or the number of users.
- moneywoes 4y ago
  How much of a delta? Does it justify having mobile?
hsuduebc2 4y ago
This is ridiculous. Why they assume that I'm picking because I saw them on screen? I'm picking them because of price and service quality. People from marketing voodoo...
derekzhouzhen 4y ago
People on HN are not idiots. Users, in a broad sense, are. There are people searching for wordle in the app store for Christ's sake.
skobovm 4y ago
This is a weird take, and I highly doubt retention is the primary reason they choose to limit the use of their web interface. In fact, I’m generally suspect of the hand-wavy speculation that some less savvy business unit made a decision in isolation. The two drivers that I would expect are: reducing friction and native compute capabilities. People generally gravitate towards the path of least resistance, which is something you already see companies exploiting with things like unfavorable privacy settings defaults. Having an app is another instance of that. There is much less mental friction in pushing a button on a home screen compared to opening a browser, punching in a URL, possibly having to log in, etc. Given that this is rideshare, this is important, because the services offered by other companies are effectively identical. If someone has Uber installed, they would be much more likely to go the path of least resistance — using the installed app — as opposed to going out of their way to use an equivalent offering. Additionally, there are problems in mapping that would be very difficult, if not impossible, to solve in a browser. For example: localization (precise positioning) would be incredibly difficult without a native library, you wouldn’t be able to do any offline re-routing, like gmaps does, among other limitations.
Nextgrid 4y ago
> Deception works momentarily and can have an immediate effect on some metrics. Long term though, every user and no matter how smart or dumb, will eventually assess the value it gets them against the money, against their time, or against the "home screen real estate" they provided. This doesn't apply to Bolt nor any of their competitors. They all work off VC money subsidizing rides and once the VC money dries up users will flock to the next competitor that's being VC-subsidized. This will happen much quicker than the users wisen up to the abuse.

by mojuba 4y ago

danpalmer 4y ago

You say unverified, but I’m pretty sure there’s lots of verification for this. Obviously it will depend on the service or app, but it’s a well known trend. At my previous job our app had much higher retention than our web product, despite the web product being much more mature, modern, and feature rich. We verified this across multiple marketing channels, and looked at long term user retention over years.

mojuba 4y ago
Could it be that the mobile interface was simply better in terms of speed, usability, smoothness of the UX? Complex web apps honestly often look and feel shite in the browser.
- asutekku 4y ago
  Nah, people retain on mobile apps because they have a simple icon to use to get there. It’s extra effort to remember the name of the service and write down the address.
  - jmcgough 4y ago
    Push notifications are really powerful for creating habits as well.
- danpalmer 4y ago
  Potentially, but aren't those essentially properties of native apps? When we say that apps retain users better it's not some magic, it's because of apps typically having better UX, whether that's speed/features, device integration, or the "UX" of being right there on the home screen.
jimmytidey 4y ago
How do you know that people use the app because they are already highly committed to the service, rather than the other way around? IE, the whole thing is a selection effect?
- danpalmer 4y ago
  We were a logged-in only service, and measured that users acquired on the app who never used the website were typically retained longer than users acquired on the web who never used the app. We certainly did encourage users acquired on the web to download the app, and the fact that those who did were retained longer could have been a selection effect, but I don't think this accounts for users who never saw the other platform.

axiomsEnd 4y ago

Sometimes it looks like designers are using this without any kind of thought. A page in my country, that is used for managing appointments with medical specialists forces user to install it, to read some messages (mostly automated) from this facilities. After installation it tries to remind user that it's there by pushing notifications about it's existence, like anyone is going to be like "I'm bored, I'll check all local urologists and maybe make an appointment with one, just for fun"

manigandham 4y ago

Why are you calling it an unverified myth? In reality there are petabytes generated everyday proving the efficacy of mobile apps vs websites. This has been tested and measured in pretty much every possible way at this point with 100s of billions in ad spend. It's not just real estate on the screen, it's faster on-device processing with lower latency, rich offline abilities, better and more persistent access to more API's from notifications to storage, stronger identity with durable logins, and of course better analytics tracking. It's not always the correct choice but native apps are the overall winner for mobile UX.

kuba-orlik 4y ago
But in the context of Bolt, I believe they aren't displaying ads in their app?
- manigandham 4y ago
  My reply was against mobile app retention being a myth. I don't know the reasons for Bolt but it's unlikely to do with ads.
spion 4y ago
Having petabytes of stats doesn't mean the interpretation of those stats is any good. The retention for your web app might suck, for example, because you're constantly showing popups to the users telling them to switch to the mobile app and once they leave you no longer see them in "the data". The problem with data is that you can't see the things that are real but not in the data.
- wallfacer 4y ago
  Qualitative data can be valuable data, even in this quantitative age.
survivorBias 4y ago
https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Survivorship_Bias https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Survivorship_Bias More often then not, the front end devs responsible for the app are not very good with "normal" web frontends - so they sabotage the competition, to reduce work. Also, web pages, could be repackaged into Apps by others leeching from the products attention.

reducesuffering 4y ago

> Deception works momentarily and can have an immediate effect on some metrics. Long terms though, every user and no matter how smart or dumb, will eventually assess the value it gets them against the money, against their time, or against the "home screen real estate" they provided. Long term hardly matters for most these days, they're optimizing for $ and promotions as mercenaries. That metric bump will get the PM promoted where they'll jump ship to the next company and juice the app metrics the same.

mojuba 4y ago
Exactly. Short terms tricks are often also used right before a funding round or acquisition.

addicted 4y ago

My Reddit usage has basically plummeted to 0 at this point because of their pushing me towards an app. I think there are provable cases where an app almost certainly leads to less retention than more and something like Reddit, whose value lies in allowing you to explore the internet is almost certainly one of them.

thejosh 4y ago
Best thing reddit did to break my use of them: 1/ New UI, forcing people on to old.reddit.com 2/ Mobile pushes HARD for their app, which is pretty buggy on Android from what I can tell 3/ old.reddit.com now shows "other links" midway down the page! Absolutely useless. 4/ old.reddit.com now forces "show more comments" This is why people left digg to go to reddit. :-) All I want is the old reddit interface in the middle, feel free to place ads on the right. I even went reddit gold or whatever it was called for a while. I really miss the old reddit UI, there is so much good tech information on reddit for random things, that it's a shame.
manigandham 4y ago
Reddit optimizes for user attention to sell ads. The mobile app is better at delivering that attention across the user base, even if a few users don't like it. Same thing with Quora and many others.
Lucasoato 4y ago
I really can't understand why Reddit is pushing the app so hard. I mean, keep that as an option, but why creating an awful UX for the mobile web users? You gather more data but the product is worse, less users are staying and you're losing value at the end...
- usrn 4y ago
  Push notifications. Once someone is hooked on the site a notification can get them back into the dopamine feedback loop very easily. I think this is why restaurant chains have started giving people free food to install their apps too (along with all the data they can sell now.) I think smartphones would be much less popular if people understood why corporations love "apps" so much. It's nothing like the older PC world full of software more or less for its own sake.

northerdome 4y ago

The worst part of this is how the Mobile Web experience is actively hampered on iOS by Apple. When web apps on mobile do have a worse experience for me, it is often due to Safari. This is especially frustrating because the average consumer blames the website for the poor experience and doesn't understand Apple is at fault.

solarkraft 4y ago

I personally stop browsing Reddit and Twitter when their fuck-you-banners appear. I have accounts with both, but installing the app or logging in is usually more friction than accessing the content is worth. ... So thanks for keeping my periods of distraction very short! Maybe they just care about their users' mental health and are sacrificing their engagement for it :)

choward 4y ago
The default Reddit web site on desktop is excruciating enough to use. On mobile it's unusable. I only use old.reddit.com. If that ever went away I would never visit Reddit again.
- RexM 4y ago
  Apollo on iOS is great if you’re looking for a Reddit app that doesn’t suck. Not sure if you’re on iOS though.
- woojoo666 4y ago
  Might be worth checking out libredirect [1] which I use on desktop and mobile to automatically redirect reddit links to privacy-respecting front-ends like libreddit and teddit. Also since I have it on my default browser on Android, even if I open a reddit link from, say, a hackernews app, the popup webview will use my default browser which will in turn automatically redirect to libreddit/teddit. I never have to worry about seeing reddit's annoying web app, never have to worry about giving reddit my data. (old.reddit.com still does give reddit data, and from my experience Reddit does a lot of tracking IPs + working with google + traffic correlation to figure out what stuff you browse. However if you still prefer old reddit, libredirect does provide an option to automatically redirect to old.reddit.com instead of libreddit or teddit) [1]: https://github.com/libredirect/libredirect https://github.com/libredirect/libredirect
romwell 4y ago
>I personally stop browsing Reddit and Twitter when their fuck-you-banners appears That's what https://old.reddit.com https://old.reddit.com is for. Simply prepending "old." to the reddit link makes everything work better. Works on mobile and desktop, just as it always had. And no fuck-you banners.

rapind 4y ago

I don’t think it’s really about retention, but rather the value of the richer data set you can gather on your users.

s1k3s 4y ago

> There's an (unverified) myth that retention on mobile apps is better. This is one of those things that marketing people keep telling each other without ever verifying the facts. (Unless you deliberately make the web version inferior, of course.) I own a platform with native apps + web, and I can confirm that retention on mobile apps is better, by the numbers. I'm not comparable to Bolt though, neither in the business model or the number of users.

moneywoes 4y ago
How much of a delta? Does it justify having mobile?

hsuduebc2 4y ago

This is ridiculous. Why they assume that I'm picking because I saw them on screen? I'm picking them because of price and service quality. People from marketing voodoo...

derekzhouzhen 4y ago

People on HN are not idiots. Users, in a broad sense, are. There are people searching for wordle in the app store for Christ's sake.

skobovm 4y ago

This is a weird take, and I highly doubt retention is the primary reason they choose to limit the use of their web interface. In fact, I’m generally suspect of the hand-wavy speculation that some less savvy business unit made a decision in isolation. The two drivers that I would expect are: reducing friction and native compute capabilities. People generally gravitate towards the path of least resistance, which is something you already see companies exploiting with things like unfavorable privacy settings defaults. Having an app is another instance of that. There is much less mental friction in pushing a button on a home screen compared to opening a browser, punching in a URL, possibly having to log in, etc. Given that this is rideshare, this is important, because the services offered by other companies are effectively identical. If someone has Uber installed, they would be much more likely to go the path of least resistance — using the installed app — as opposed to going out of their way to use an equivalent offering. Additionally, there are problems in mapping that would be very difficult, if not impossible, to solve in a browser. For example: localization (precise positioning) would be incredibly difficult without a native library, you wouldn’t be able to do any offline re-routing, like gmaps does, among other limitations.

Nextgrid 4y ago

> Deception works momentarily and can have an immediate effect on some metrics. Long term though, every user and no matter how smart or dumb, will eventually assess the value it gets them against the money, against their time, or against the "home screen real estate" they provided. This doesn't apply to Bolt nor any of their competitors. They all work off VC money subsidizing rides and once the VC money dries up users will flock to the next competitor that's being VC-subsidized. This will happen much quicker than the users wisen up to the abuse.