Report: Users come back to social and messaging apps 2-3 times a day

Users return to social networking and messaging apps on average three times per day, according to the Q3 Mobile Benchmarks Report from Adjust. The mobile app analytics and attribution firm looked at app retention among consumers a week after they had installed an app.

• Books and magazines retain more users after seven days than other verticals, at 35 percent on Android.
• Most users spend on average about five minutes in a distributed series of actions in an app.
• The verticals that retain the worst include educational apps at around 9 percent and travel apps, which also averaged between 7 and 8 percent on Android and iOS.
• On the other hand, travel showed a high volume of time spent in sessions, with 305 seconds on Android and 249 seconds on iOS. This was still dwarfed by Games, at more than 700 seconds on Android and more than 600 on iOS.
• Games measured the highest time-spent per user as well, at about 270 seconds on Android.

"Generally speaking, Android users tend to stick around more than iOS users. This trend is consistent across most verticals, except in gaming, where iOS apps retain users marginally better than Android apps," the report said. "When we computed these benchmarks, we noticed very distinct bumps in retention rates around days 7, 14 and 21. These increases reflect re-engagement campaigns. Clearly, app marketers are reaching out on these days in very particular patterns."

The data from Adjust may help explain why Apple recently decided to compete with the likes of FlipBoard with its Apple News app. Of course, retention is a huge metric for all kinds of developers, and the good news is that those involved in games and social have a likely chance of succeeding. There's some good advice in this report beyond the numbers, including how to determine what day you want to start measuring retention -- Adjust suggested after the onboarding period is best for mobile games, while looking at transactions might be better for e-commerce apps.

For more:
- see the full report here (reg. req.)