How to Measure Mobile App Performance (And the Results That Matter)

Launching a native app is a great move for brands across diverse sectors like ecommerce, SaaS, media, and more. 

The potential benefits of launching an app are substantial - from revenue to engagement to user retention.

But to truly understand the impact of your mobile app on your business, you need some real business metrics to point to.

This guide focuses on measuring real business outcomes, to give you a structured approach to understanding mobile app performance. 

We'll explore key metrics related to revenue, user engagement, customer retention, and brand perception, giving you clear benchmarks to aim for and practical strategies to maximize your app's return on investment.

MobiLoud helps businesses of all types - from ecommerce to SaaS to media - launch high-quality, revenue-driving mobile apps for minimal investment and effort. Want to see how it works? Go here to get a free preview of what your website will look like as an app.

Most Common Business Results to Measure for Mobile Apps

Let’s look at a range of different ways to measure mobile app performance, using hard, clear metrics. Keep in mind that not all of these metrics will be relevant to all types of apps - we’ll go into the most important ones for different types of business a little later.

Revenue

Revenue is where the rubber meets the road for most businesses. Your mobile app should be contributing meaningfully to your bottom line, and there are several key ways to measure this impact.

Conversion Rates

Look at conversion rates - the percentage of users completing valuable actions like purchases or subscriptions. 

Mobile apps typically outperform mobile websites by a factor of 3x or more in conversion rates. This dramatic improvement comes from the seamless experience apps provide: stored payment information, personalized recommendations, timely & relevant push notifications, and even offline functionality that lets transactions happen without constant connectivity.

Measurement Strategy: Track conversion rates across different user segments, acquisition channels, and app versions to identify optimization opportunities.

Average Order Value (AOV)

Examine your Average Order Value (AOV). Well-designed apps can increase AOV by 15-40% compared to mobile web experiences. 

Think about it - when a customer is using your app, you can offer tailored product recommendations based on their purchase history, suggest complementary items, and create a checkout process that's virtually frictionless. 

Apps also tend to keep shoppers 

All these elements encourage customers to add more to their cart.

Measurement Strategy: Monitor AOV trends over time, across different user cohorts, and in relation to specific app features or marketing campaigns.

Revenue Generated

Track the total revenue generated through your app. While this doesn’t always tell the full story, it’s a simple way to assess how much business your app facilitates.

For established businesses, mobile apps typically account for 35-65% of total digital revenue within 12-18 months of launch. 

Don't just look at absolute numbers, though. Compare growth rates between your app and other channels, analyze how much revenue comes from first-time versus repeat customers, and try to measure incremental revenue (sales that wouldn't exist without the app).

Measurement Strategy:

• Track both absolute revenue figures and percentage of total business revenue
• Compare revenue growth rates between app and other channels
• Analyze revenue attribution between first-time and repeat customers
• Measure incremental revenue that wouldn't exist without the app

User Engagement

Revenue tells you what's happening now, but engagement metrics help you predict future success. Engaged users become loyal customers, make repeat purchases, and often become brand advocates.

Daily Active Users (DAU)

Daily Active Users (DAU) is your fundamental engagement metric. Healthy apps maintain a steady number of people who regularly use the app, which should ideally grow over time.

Track this not just as an absolute number but as a percentage of your total user base. Look for patterns across different days of the week and monitor how DAU responds to marketing efforts and app updates.

Measurement Strategy:

• Track DAU as both absolute numbers and as a percentage of total user base
• Monitor DAU patterns across different days of the week
• Analyze DAU in relation to marketing efforts and app updates
• Compare DAU growth against Monthly Active Users (MAU) to assess stickiness

Session Length

Session length (how long users spend in your app per visit) reveals engagement depth. Optimal times vary by industry. 

Ecommerce apps might aim for 3-8 minutes (enough time to browse and buy without frustration). Media apps might target 8-15 minutes (enough time to consume content).

You need to look at this number in context with your overall metrics. Comparing session length in the app vs session length on your mobile/desktop websites is a great way to see the engagement impact of your mobile app.

Measurement Strategy:

• Examine session length distribution rather than just averages
• Identify key user actions accomplished within different session durations
• Correlate session length with conversion metrics
• Compare trends across different app versions and features

Session Frequency

Session frequency tells you how often users return to your app. It’s like session length; increasing this metric shows the app is doing a good job engaging users - and more sessions typically translates to higher revenue.

Measurement Strategy:

• Segment users by frequency cohorts (power users vs occasional users)
• Analyze patterns in session timing (time of day, day of week)
• Correlate session frequency with user lifecycle stage
• Measure impact of notifications and re-engagement campaigns on frequency

Screen Flow and Feature Usage

You might even get really deep into the weeds and track usage patters for specific mobile app features.

This won’t be relevant for all types of apps. But if you have a mobile app with exclusive features (not available on the website), you may have an interest in how often these features are used.

Measurement Strategy:

• Create flow visualizations to identify common paths and drop-off points
• Track feature adoption rates for new and existing features
• Analyze time spent on different screens and features
• Identify correlation between specific feature usage and retention

App Retention

Attracting downloads is just the beginning. True success comes when users keep your app installed and return to it regularly. This is where retention metrics come into play.

Retention Rates

Track retention rates (the percentage of users who return after their first visit) at key intervals like Day 1, Day 7, Day 30, and Day 90. 

Industry averages for 30-day retention hover around 35-40%, with top-performing apps reaching 58% or higher. 

Compare retention across different user cohorts and acquisition channels to identify what's working best.

Measurement Strategy:

• Track retention curves across different user cohorts
• Compare retention between acquisition channels
• Analyze impact of onboarding improvements on retention
• Correlate feature usage with retention rates

Churn Rates

The flip side of retention is churn - the percentage of users who stop using your app (you’ll want a low number for this metric).

Understanding why users leave is just as important as the raw numbers. Consider implementing exit surveys or analyzing behavior patterns preceding churn.

Measurement Strategy:

• Conduct exit surveys to understand churn reasons
• Identify patterns in user behavior preceding churn
• Analyze churn by user segments and acquisition sources
• Calculate customer lifetime value impact of reduced churn

User Lifecycle Progression

Think about your user lifecycle as a progression: new users become casual users, who become active users, and eventually power users. 

How you define a “power user”, as well as users at other stages in the lifecycle, is up to you. But the main idea is that an app should help nurture one-time customers or sporadic users into regular, high-value customers.

Measurement Strategy:

• Define clear criteria for each lifecycle stage
• Track progression and regression between stages
• Identify key actions that correlate with stage advancement
• Measure time-to-power-user across different segments

Learn more: How to Improve Mobile App Retention

Overall Customer Retention

Beyond app-specific retention, your mobile app could also deliver success by increasing your overall retention rate (how many customers remain actively buying, or how many users continue to engage with you).

Customer Retention Rate

Look at how app users compare to non-app users in terms of overall loyalty to your business. You can also assess your overall retention rate over time, paying specific attention to when the mobile app was launched and whether it correlates with a noticeable change in your retention rate.

Measurement Strategy:

• Compare retention between app users and non-app users
• Track changes in overall retention before and after app launch
• Analyze retention across different customer segments
• Measure retention impact of cross-platform vs single-platform usage

Customer Churn Rate

Just like above; look at what difference (if any) the mobile app makes on your overall churn rate. Has churn decreased since launching the app? Do users with the mobile app downloaded churn at a lower rate?

Measurement Strategy:

• Calculate economic impact of reduced churn
• Analyze patterns in customer behavior before churning
• Compare churn rates between different customer segments
• Measure effectiveness of app-based re-engagement campaigns

Customer Lifetime Value (LTV)

The best measure of long-term retention is customer lifetime value, or LTV - the typical amount a customer spends with you over their lifetime as a customer.

Higher retention = more purchases/longer as a subscriber, and higher LTV.

Measurement Strategy:

• Compare LTV between app users and non-app users
• Track LTV changes as users adopt additional channels
• Analyze LTV components (purchase frequency, AOV, retention)
• Calculate ROI based on LTV improvements

Brand Perception

While harder to quantify than revenue or engagement metrics, brand perception significantly influences long-term success. Your app is often the most frequent touchpoint customers have with your brand, making its quality a critical component of overall brand experience.

App Store Ratings and Reviews

App store ratings and reviews provide the most visible measure of satisfaction. Top-performing apps maintain average ratings of 4.5+ stars. 

But don't just count stars. Analyze review content for common themes in both positive and negative feedback. Responding thoughtfully to reviews (especially critical ones) demonstrates your commitment to customer experience.

Measurement Strategy:

• Monitor rating trends over time and across app versions
• Conduct sentiment analysis on review content
• Track common themes in positive and negative feedback
• Measure impact of addressing user concerns on ratings

Net Promoter Score (NPS)

You might want to use Net Promoter Score (NPS) surveys within your app to measure how likely users are to recommend it. 

Leading apps maintain NPS scores of 50+, significantly above the industry average of 30-40. Track NPS trends over time and across different user segments to identify areas for improvement.

Measurement Strategy:

• Implement in-app NPS surveys at key moments
• Track NPS trends over time and across user segments
• Correlate NPS with specific features and experiences
• Compare app NPS with overall brand NPS

Social Media Sentiment

Social media sentiment offers another window into perception. Monitor conversations about your app across platforms, paying attention to both volume and sentiment. 

For healthy apps, positive mentions should outweigh negative ones by at least 3:1. Social listening tools can help automate this process and identify influential users whose opinions carry particular weight.

Measurement Strategy:

• Implement social listening tools to track mentions
• Analyze sentiment trends during key events (updates, campaigns)
• Identify influential users and their impact on sentiment
• Compare sentiment with competitor apps

Further reading: A Step-by-Step Playbook for Launching Your Mobile App

Measuring Mobile App Success for Different Verticals

Different types of businesses naturally prioritize different metrics when evaluating mobile app performance. Let's explore what matters most for various sectors.

Ecommerce Apps

For ecommerce businesses, the primary goals are driving incremental revenue, increasing purchase frequency, and enhancing customer loyalty.

Mobile apps typically drive higher conversion rates and AOV than the brand’s mobile website, with higher shopping frequency and session length, with lower cart abandonment (or higher recovery rate for abandoned carts). All this leads to more LTV from app users.

Key Metrics:

• Conversion Rate 
• Average Order Value
• Purchase Frequency
• Avg. Session Length
• Cart Abandonment Rate (plus cart recovery rate/revenue)
• Product Discovery (# of products viewed per session)
• Revenue Share (how much of your total revenue comes through the app)
• Repeat Purchase Rate
• Push Notification Opt-In Rate (more push subscribers = a more effective direct marketing channel)
• LTV

Learn more: Sustainable Acquisition Strategies for Ecommerce Apps

Media & Content Apps

Media companies want to maximize content consumption, increase subscriptions, and build habitual usage.

You want to get people reading your content more often; consuming content for longer; and more upgrades to premium offerings (e.g. subscriptions or purchases).

Key Metrics:

• Content Consumption
• Session Frequency
• Time Spent In-App
• Subscription Conversion
• Ad Engagement
• Push Notification Effectiveness
• Offline Reading/Viewing

SaaS Mobile Apps

For SaaS businesses, mobile apps often serve a different purpose. The primary goals are enhancing platform stickiness, increasing feature adoption, and reducing churn. 

A mobile app may come as part of a subscription. The mobile app itself is not the product, but another feature of your overall product. It’s a success if it helps users stay subscribed for longer (or pushes users to subscribe to a higher tier).

Key Metrics:

• Feature Usage
• Daily Active Users
• Session Frequency
• Adoption Rate (how many subs use the app?)
• Cross-Platform Retention (how does the mobile app affect your overall retention/churn rates?)
• LTV (do people who download the app stay subscribed for longer, or sub to higher plans more often?)

Marketplace Apps

Marketplace businesses have unique challenges in measuring mobile success, as they need to balance activity on both sides of their platform. 

Many success metrics are the same as for regular ecommerce apps; more revenue, higher conversion rates, higher customer retention.

But you might focus more on engagement-related metrics. Since the network effect is so crucial for marketplaces, if your app succeeds in getting more activity (on both the buyer side and seller side), it can have a huge impact on the overall health of the business.

Key Metrics:

• Transaction Share
• Buyer/Seller Ratio
• Buyer/Seller MAU
• Listing Creation
• Message Response Time
• Transaction Completion Rate
• Return Frequency

Community & Social Apps

Community and social platforms live or die by engagement. The DAU/MAU ratio (daily active users divided by monthly active users) is a key stickiness indicator, as is the number of sessions, session length and interaction rates.

Key Metrics:

• DAU/MAU Ratio
• Content Creation
• Interaction Rate
• Notification Engagement
• Time in App
• Return Rate
• Community Growth

Want to launch a mobile app that drives real results for your business, with little to no risk? MobiLoud helps you do this, by converting your existing website into an app. Book a free consultation with our team of experts to learn more about how it works.

ROI: Performance vs Investment

There’s one more aspect to understand: mobile app success has to be measured relative to the investment you put in.

This is ROI - return on investment.

What this means is that an app that drives $10k in monthly revenue can be a great success or a monumental failure, depending on what it cost to make (and to acquire users).

If it cost $150,000 to build your app, another $5-10k per month to maintain, and you’re paying around $50 to acquire each user, your app is probably not a net positive for your business.

But if that same app - $10k monthly revenue - cost just around $1-2k to build, a few hundred per month to maintain, and minimal cost to get users, it may be a roaring success.

ROI is key to any business decision. Make sure you know the path to a positive ROI for your mobile app.

How MobiLoud Maximizes Your App’s ROI

MobiLoud lets you launch a high-performance mobile app for iOS and Android without:

• Rebuilding your website
• Managing a second codebase
• Taking on significant overhead and operational complexity
• A steep upfront investment

For around $500/month, you get a fully managed service that handles everything from app configuration to app store submission and ongoing maintenance.

The upfront cost is low, the overhead is low, yet results are practically equal to what you’d get from a fully custom app.

This means your app doesn’t have to generate millions in new revenue to be worth it. Even a modest increase in repeat purchases, push notification-driven conversions, or customer retention can make your investment profitable. Everything else is upside.

Unlike cookie-cutter app builders, MobiLoud gives you a fully branded, premium native app experience without limitations. Your tech stack, your site functionality, your checkout flow - it all works out of the box, just like it does on your site. But you also get the mobile-native features that matter for business results: push notifications, home screen presence, and an App Store listing that boosts brand credibility and discoverability.

Most importantly, you're not doing this alone.

MobiLoud isn’t a tool. It’s a team. We take full ownership of your app’s success, helping you drive adoption, improve engagement, and continually optimize your app’s performance post-launch. 

That includes strategy sessions, Slack access to our team, and done-for-you push notification flows that help turn your app into a serious retention and revenue channel.

For businesses focused on outcomes, not just launching an app for the sake of it, MobiLoud offers the highest probability of positive ROI with the lowest possible barrier to entry.

Want to see what your app could look like? Start with a free preview and we’ll show you exactly what’s possible.

Final Thoughts

Measuring your mobile app’s performance effectively means:

• Picking the right metrics to track
• Weighting metrics correctly (find your North Star - most important success indicators)
• Putting these metrics into the overall context of your business
• Looking at your app’s return against the investment you put in

You’ll also need to look beyond surface metrics to understand true business impact.

Yet while downloads and ratings matter, revenue, engagement, retention, and brand perception tell the real story of your app's success. You can’t pay for stock or cover payroll with a screenshot of your app store reviews.

To launch an app that contributes measurable results for your business, think about the metrics you need to track and the benchmarks you’re looking for before you launch - and take into account how much you’re going to spend on the app as well.

Less investment (not just upfront, but the time and headspace required to manage) = a higher chance of a positive return.

MobiLoud helps you get that positive return, by stripping away the cost and effort involved in launching and managing your app, drastically lowering risk, and also the bar required for a positive ROI.

At around $500 per month, even just a small boost in revenue and engagement from your mobile app and it’ll be worth it.

Everything above? Pure profit. 

Interested? Get a free preview of your app to start the ball rolling.