First-Time In-App Purchases Tied to Length of Time Using the Apps

A recent Localytics study found “building relationships with app users and fostering long-term usage are more important.” Among the findings was that of all studied users who made an in-app purchase, 44 percent took 10 or more interactions with the app.

According to the study, 22 percent of users in the study made their first in-app purchase during their first session with the app, while 33 percent made their first in-app purchase in sessions 2-9 with the app, and 44 percent made their first in-app purchase in sessions 10+.

“On average, a user who makes an in-app purchase will do so 12 days after first launching the app,” Localytics noted in its blog post sharing the results.

The company also highlighted a trend away from incentivized downloads and toward engagement and overall customer lifetime value (CLV).

“With this new data, that shift is shown to be even more important. With a high correlation between highly engaged users and in-app purchases, developers and publishers with a goal of maximizing CLV have even more reason to obsess over user retention,” according to Localytics.

The study found that users who wait and interact with an app multiple times before making their first in-app purchase are more valuable than those who make an in-app purchase in their first session. Users who make a purchase in their first sessions make an average of 2.8 purchases in a given app during their time as a user. On the other hand, users who make a purchase after their first session average 3.5 purchases in a given app during their time as a user.

A separate report from Flurry found that mobile apps took up 94 minutes of a mobile user’s day in December, up from 81 minutes in June, 66 minutes in December 2010 and 43 minutes in June 2010. Meanwhile, mobile Web browsing took up 72 minutes of a user’s day in December.

Flurry also looked into which categories of apps claimed most consumers’ time. The company found that 49 percent of U.S. mobile app consumption was attributed to games, 30 percent to social networking, 7 percent to entertainment, 6 percent to news and 8 percent to other categories of apps.

“Any way we slice it, Games and Social Networking apps deliver the most engaging experience on the web and mobile today, and set the stage for the battleground for controlling the consumer relationship going forward for all platform providers on all platforms,” Flurry notes.

Sources:

http://www.localytics.com/blog/2012/loyal-users-generate-25-more-in-app-purchases/

http://blog.flurry.com/bid/80241/Mobile-App-Usage-Further-Dominates-Web-Spurred-by-Facebook