2021 mobile consumer tips - 12 mobile consumer insights or apps worth reading about 📲

Special episode >> insights from key experts, every week

Hey, Gilles and the Clind team here!

It’s now been 5 months since we started publishing this newsletter, The Timestamp, every week.

The Timestamp can be seen as a “writer collective” that shares its best findings to more than 2500 readers every week.

This week is a bit special as we are sharing some of the best insights we found about building a mobile consumer app. As you may know, the newsletter you are reading now, The Timestamp is made using key takeaways that are being shared every day in the Clind app (App Store and Android Play). Clind is a consumer app, meaning it is built to be used by individuals like you and me.

Here is what we learnt while building a mobile app. We think the following content can be very valuable to anybody looking to build a mobile consumer app.

In this free episode, we will just share links to a list of resources + 1 series of takeaways. The rest can be accessed for subscribers only.

Going through this list of 12 items, you can learn:

• why an app losing 80% of its mobile users is normal,

• how France became strong in consumer social showcasing Zenly and Yolo,

  1. Interview of Antoine Martin, founder @Zenly acq. by Snap (podcast)

  2. Interview of Gregoire Henrion, cofounder @Yolo

• why there are only 2 types of social apps: social vs. media

• how the product development of your app can be led by a community,

• how Deliveroo started and became a food delivery giant,

• how habit-forming is key to becoming a category-leading app like Curio,

• how Calm became the app that monetized doing nothing,

• how to increase conversion solving a customer complaint with Blinkist,

• what Eric Seufert thinks as an expert in User Acquisition and mobile ads

  1. about Apple, Facebook, and mobile advertising

  2. about growth loops

  3. about app installs, is this really the end?

And now here we go with the first topic that we summarized below in a format that makes it easier to read quickly:

---

#1 Why any app will lose 80% of its users? 

New data shows losing 80% of mobile users is normal, and why the best apps do better published on his blog by Andrew Chen - General Partner at a16z / Andreesen Horowitz.

📲 An average key performance indicator for an app is the number of users uninstalling the app after they first launched it once: data shows that on any app we observe 77% uninstalls after 3 days and 90% after 30 days. This is true for any app whether this is a successful top 10 app or not. This means that app developers have to focus their effort on apps having very high short-term retention metrics (Day 1 retention above 60 or 70% -D1, 1 day after the first time the user launched the app).

📆 Users still here after D7 -7 days after the first app launch for any new user- stick around much longer. Short-term retention before D7 is generally a moment where the user gets to understand the value of the app and starts using it. After D7, users have most probably had an aha moment where they realized the app brings a positive value to their lives.

📤 The above makes it easy to understand why app invitations to connect friends are more powerful than sending emails saying « we miss you ». That is because short-term retention is the first nut to crack for app developers.

---

#2 Tips from Antoine Martin @ Zenly acq. by Snap 

Antoine Martin, fondateur de Zenly sans détours interviewed on the podcast Radio Chateau in April 2020 (interview in 🇫🇷).

Having a product-led growth approach means that as an app developer, you are always conducting user tests. Testing helps to gather quantitative data about your app features. The ability to analyze your data with tools (like Amplitude for app analytics) will tell you which feature is used or is not used.

When giving priorities to features, it is important to narrow down to a maximum of 1 or 2 key features for 1 app. At Zenly, they would always give the highest priority to features increasing app opens.

Zenly started in 2010 as an app called Alert Us. Around 2017, Snap acquired Zenly. Zenly had initially raised a (7me) SeriesA round with 10k DAU (daily active users) with investors like Kima, IDInvest, or Benchmark.

To be continued 👇

---

If you enjoyed reading the beginning of this newsletter, you may want to access the full content that covers 10 more insights you cannot miss if you have an interest in mobile consumer apps. Get your own subscription to The Timestamp (it can start for free > just leave your email address) and receive the full newsletter this Sunday.

Just in case you have plenty of time to go through each of these content without needing our summary, here is the full list of links corresponding to the list of contents we mentioned above:

1. https://andrewchen.com/new-data-shows-why-losing-80-of-your-mobile-users-is-normal-and-that-the-best-apps-do-much-better/

2. Zenly with Antoine Martin / Podcast Radio Chateau in French 🇫🇷 (Spotify)

3. YOLO with Gregoire Henriot / Podcast in French 🇫🇷 (Spotify)

4. Social vs. Media apps by Peter Yang

5. Community-led app development by Peter Yang

6. Becoming a food delivery giant, Deliveroo case study by Alexandre Dewez / Overlooked

7. (Subscribers only) Become a category-leading app, Curio case study

8. (Subscribers only) Monetizing doing nothing, Calm app case study

9. (Subscribers only) Monetization / Conversion tips, Blinkist case study

10. (Subscribers only) Eric Seufert, UA expert, about Facebook, Apple, etc…

11. (Subscribers only) Eric Seufert about growth loops,

12. (Subscribers only) Eric Seufert about the end of app installs.

See you next Sunday!