Schools are increasingly using mobile apps to stay connected with students, parents, and staff, but simply having an app for your school isn't enough — you need to know if your app is really meeting your community’s needs.

To know if your school’s mobile app is making an impact on your school communications, you’d want to start asking questions like:

• What percentage of users downloaded it, and how many people use it?
• What parts of the app do they like best, and where do users spend their time?
• Where do they stop using it—and why?

Feeling like a detective yet?

And like any metrics you’d gather about your school’s website, data is only powerful if you actually do something with it. Answering these questions can help improve the user experience, and for that, you can look at a few different places to track your school’s mobile app analytics and metrics.

Combining the detailed user data with insights from the Apple Developer and Google Play stores, as well as data from AppFigures, can give you a complete picture of your app's performance.

That's because these mobile app analytics tools offer a glimpse into how users interact with your app, measure its popularity, and help you make data-driven decisions to enhance user experience, drive growth, and ultimately, create a more effective communications tool for your school.

Meanwhile, the developer app stores can show you where your downloads are coming from and how users discover your app.

There's a lot to cover, so let's start with knowing how users find your school's mobile app in the first place...

Understanding and Measuring Your School's Mobile App Performance

To create a successful mobile app experience for your school community, it’s crucial to measure how users discover and download your app. Through your developer app store, you can gain insights about adoption rates, user engagement, and overall performance.

Tracking Your School’s App Downloads and User Acquisition

One of the first steps in understanding your app's performance is tracking how many times it's been downloaded. This metric can be broken down by territory, device type, and even the download source, classified into two categories:

• First-Time Downloads: When a user downloads your app for the first time.
• Redownloads: When a user who has added your app downloads it to their device again.

You can identify the most effective channels for user acquisition by looking at the source of these downloads,  whether through App Store search, web referrals, or specific marketing campaigns.

Measuring User Engagement

Beyond downloads, understanding how users engage with your app is key. Two important metrics to consider are:

• Sessions: A session is recorded every time a user interacts with your app for at least two seconds.
• Active Devices: The number of devices that have engaged with your app within a given period.

Monitoring these metrics helps you assess the overall engagement levels, including the frequency and depth of user interactions. You can further analyze engagement by filtering data by campaign, territory, or device type to uncover trends.

Retention Rates

Retention is a critical measure of your app's success because it indicates how many users actually use it after their initial download. Reports have shown that nearly half (49%) of Android apps are uninstalled within 30 days of download, and half of those are removed within 24 hours.

However, that number can shift dramatically depending on the industry. (Gaming apps have the highest uninstall rate at 66%.)

A high retention rate suggests users are happy, while on the other hand, a low retention rate might signal the need for improvements, like optimizing your content for mobile traffic or shuffling the content you feature on your app.

By filtering retention data by app version, source type, or campaign, you can pinpoint which factors contribute most to user retention and make targeted adjustments. “We realized that communication is way different now than it used to be,” said Tarah O’Connell, Northbrook 27’s Director of Communications. 

“Parents have a much greater demand on school communications than ever before...So that’s why a mobile app made sense for us. Getting the parents the information where they want it (on their phones), where they can access it quickly.” With a successful implementation plan, Northbrook’s efforts paid off, with 950 parents downloading the app after just one month — a 73% adoption rate after only 30 days.

Keep Reading: The Ultimate Guide to Mobile Apps for Schools

The Washington Market School’s communication strategy soared thanks to a mobile app that engages nearly 90% of its parents daily with regular classroom news, messages to families, and calendar updates.

Key Takeaway

When we hear "analytics," we often think of "website," but the data and metrics we can pull from your school's mobile app can be just as useful to start making smarter decisions that can improve the app’s performance. Whether you’re looking at the number of downloads, usage stats, or understanding what content performs well, with each data point, you’re learning how to better communicate with your community while they’re on the go.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Connor has spent the last decade within the field of marketing and communications, working with independent schools and colleges throughout New England. At Finalsite, Connor plans and executes marketing strategies and digital content across the web. A former photojournalist, he has a passion for digital media, storytelling, coffee, and creating content that connects.