Mobile app revenue comes from purchases, subscriptions, ad views, and other target actions of its users. To complete these actions, users must follow a specific path, for example, first app launch → registration → product selection → purchase.
However, in reality, after the first launch, only 34% of users will select a product, 14% will add this product to the cart, and only 2% will purchase it. User churn data at each stage of the customer journey can help improve the app, increase conversion rates, and grow profit.
In this article, we are going to look at the ways to identify problems in the conversion funnel, gather a user base to target, and send them push notifications to increase conversions.
With MyTracker's Funnels tool, we can track the customer journey based on five pre-configured events and an unlimited number of custom events.
Let's say we have a gaming app. Once the game is installed, the user has to register and onboard before getting the opportunity to purchase a premium subscription for a more comfortable game.
In this case, the funnel will consist of three stages and their corresponding events:
The funnel time is adjustable. Let’s set it to 24 hours.
Now we can see that 37% of users reach the onboarding step and only 7% purchase the subscription.
This is a bottleneck in our funnel that needs to be addressed to increase conversions to premium subscriptions.
A bottleneck is a term used to denote the weakest part of a process, and it affects the whole system’s performance. Even if you improve all other components, the bottleneck will still limit the overall performance of your product.
After analyzing the funnel, we need to understand which specific users are affected by the bottleneck. To that end, we can segment the users who correspond to the selected funnel stage using MyTracker’s Segments tool.
To create a segment, we add the same conditions as in the previous step. Our focus is on the users who have registered and onboarded but never purchased the premium subscription. We will try and influence them with a push campaign.
We can export the segment we created. For this purpose, each segment has an identifier, idSegment, which is assigned when a segment is created. It can be found in the address bar of the page with the segment.
If you have a MyTracker account, you can view an example of a segment. Still don’t have an account? Get started here!
For details on exporting a segment, see our documentation. When exporting, you must specify the idSegment assigned in the previous step.
Now you need to create a push campaign for the exported segment, which will increase the conversion from onboarding to purchasing a premium subscription. To do this, the product manager of the app needs to decide on a special offer for those who have registered but not made a purchase. This can be either an in-game gift or discount on a premium subscription.
You can send push notifications manually, but this is too time-consuming and complicated. So, most often, the industry uses special services, such as:
Let's assume that we have chosen Firebase for our push campaign. To send pushes to all users in the segment, you need to know the Firebase Registration Token of each user. It should be obtained on the user's device using the Firebase SDK.
There are two ways to match the Firebase Registration Token and each user from the segment:
Now we’ve got a list of segmented users’ IDs and a Firebase Registration Token for each of them exported through either the app server or custom MyTracker events.
Before you send it, prepare the push notification content – the title, description, and, if necessary, an image.
Push notification templates are available in an article in our blog.
Sending pushes via a dedicated service is based on tokens. For example, this is how it is done in Firebase.
After the push campaign is over, we need to conduct an analysis to see whether we were able to achieve our goals. This can be done with Firebase or with custom events in MyTracker. Let’s look at both scenarios.
In the Firebase console, you can view the following data for push notifications sent to Android or iOS devices in Firebase SDK:
Sends – the data message or notification message has been enqueued for delivery or has been successfully passed to a third-party service like APNs.
Received (available only on Android devices) – the data message or notification message has been received by the app.
Impressions (available only for notification messages on Android devices) – the notification has been displayed on the device while the app is in the background.
Opens – the user opened the notification message. Reported only for notifications received when the app is in the background.
If you know the number of messages sent and opened, you can calculate the conversion to opening, and if you know whether the user who opened the push has purchased a subscription, you can see the conversion to purchasing.
You can use MyTracker to count the number of opened push notifications and subsequent purchases. To do this, you need to send additional custom events to MyTracker. They should be sent when the app is opened from a push before key actions are performed.
A set of custom events can look like this:
Visit our blog to see tips for creating custom events in MyTracker.
This set of custom events helps you to assess how successful the push campaign has been:
To this end, you need to add custom events – “App opened after tapping the link in a push notification” (open_push) and “Subscription purchased after opening a push” (purchase_subscription).
We can see that of the users who opened the app after tapping the push, 11% subsequently purchased a subscription.
Now build a new funnel starting from Step 1 and see how the conversion to purchasing a subscription has changed following the push campaign.
Our funnel consisted of the following steps:
Prior to the push campaign, 37% of users completed the onboarding and only 7% purchased the subscription.
After the push campaign, we can see a 3% increase in the final funnel stage.
All of the above steps will be much more effective if you use A/B testing when building your push campaign.
In this case, the users segmented in Step 2 are randomly divided into two groups – control group users and users receiving push notifications. Thus, after the push campaign is over, you can understand that the result was not accidental, and push notifications really led to an increase in conversions.
This feature is available in most of the platforms for sending push notifications, including Firebase. Visit our blog to read about seven golden rules of A/B testing.
Conversion funnels help identify and address bottlenecks. A funnel can be built for any stage of the user journey – acquisition, activation, retention, revenue, or referrals. Read more about user journey stages in our article.
Based on the data from the funnel, you can select tools to increase conversions – it may be push notifications, email newsletters, discounts, promotions, or special offers. Learn more about tools and tactics with tips from professionals in our article.
To sum it up, working with conversion funnels is key to developing your app as a business. With MyTracker, you can track the customer journey based on five pre-configured events and an unlimited number of custom events and their parameters.
Start scrutinizing user journeys in your app right now – it is free and the set-up won’t take too much time.
