Difference between churn and stickiness

Churn rate and stickiness are complementary metrics that provide insight into user behavior from various angles. But don't be fooled; they are not the same! Here are some important distinctions between user stickiness and user retention:

How to measure user stickiness?

Consider user stickiness as a large umbrella. This umbrella encompasses various types of metrics, logic, and approaches. So measuring customer stickiness involves multiple ratios and metrics!

In this section of the blog, I'd like to talk to you all about understanding these metrics. And if you don't know how to collect these analytics, Adapty can help. Adapty, trusted by over 7,000 apps including Genesis and Bumble, provides you with real-time insights into the performance of your app.

1. Daily Active Users (DAU)

Daily Active Users (DAU) refers to the number of unique users who interact with the app on a daily basis. For example, if your app has been installed 10,000 times and 4,000 of those users interact with it on a regular basis, your DAU is 4,000.

And, as you can probably tell, this metric is useful for measuring daily user engagement levels, which reflect how frequently users interact with the app. It reflects both user engagement and their current experience.

A high DAU indicates strong product stickiness, implying that users value the app enough to return to it on a regular basis, which is critical for retaining a loyal user base and increasing consistent engagement.

2. Monthly Active Users (MAU)

Let us use the same example to understand MAU now. Consider that your app has 4,000 daily users on a consistent basis; multiply that by 30 days per month. That's your monthly active users (MAU)!

Monthly Active Users (MAU) are the number of unique users who use the app during a given month. MAU provides a broader view of user engagement over time, revealing information about the overall size and stability of the user base.

It assists app developers and marketers in understanding the app's ability to attract and retain users over a longer period of time, allowing for a more comprehensive assessment of app stickiness and long-term growth potential.

3. Session duration

The amount of time a user spends in a single session is more important in determining app stickiness than you might think. Here's why.

Long session duration indicates high user engagement, which is directly proportional to app stickiness. This means that the higher the engagement, the more sticky the app! Isn't this a total win-win? Well, things get better.

A short session duration indicates both quick task completion and low engagement. When you analyze these patterns, you can associate an app change with session lengths, allowing you to understand both user preferences and app seasonality.

4. Retention rate

Simply put, the retention rate is the percentage of users who continue to use your app. This means they will continue to use your app for a set period of time after installation.

For a variety of reasons, customer retention is one of the most important metrics to monitor. For starters, this rate explains both your customer loyalty and the app's ability to engage and retain users over time. It can also show a pattern of usage change caused by app updates, allowing you to determine what your users like (or dislike)!

Higher retention rate—strong app stickiness and user satisfaction.
Lower retention rate due to user dissatisfaction and poor user experience.

5. Stickiness ratio

Finally, this ratio provides a concise measure of user engagement by indicating the percentage of monthly users who interact with the app on a daily basis. You could call it the big picture of your app usage!

A higher stickiness ratio indicates higher user engagement and app stickiness, as it indicates that a sizable portion of the monthly user base is actively using the app each day. On the other hand, a low stickiness metric indicates that something in your app is not appealing or engaging, resulting in a leak of usage somewhere.