No matter how you develop and support your app, you’ll always have an eye toward recouping your costs—and measuring the impact of your investment on your overall marketing strategy.

Every business is different, but these are KPIs you’ll definitely want to track to gauge your success in reaching users, retaining users, and creating paying customers.

Reaching Users

• Number of downloads
• Number of active users (users who have opened the app in a predetermined time interval)
• New user growth rate

Retaining Users

• Number of sessions per user
• Length of session
• Session interval
• Number of permissions granted (access to location, photo library, etc)
• Churn rate (total number of customers divided by uninstalls for a predetermined time interval)

Creating Paying Customers

• Average revenue per user
• Transactions per customer
• Customer lifetime value

Measuring these KPIs gives you the information you need to financially validate your decision to create an app. It also helps you identify strengths and weaknesses in your overall mobile marketing strategy and pinpoint areas to build on loyalty and engagement to generate even greater returns.

While small businesses have been somewhat hesitant in the past to jump into the mobile app market, today’s highly mobile consumers make competing in the mobile realm a necessity for businesses of every size. Having a mobile website is a great first start, but a mobile app gives you the edge in creating a highly engaged and loyal customer base.