How to Find Active Users of an App

What are active users?

Active users are unique users engaging with an app within a specific period. Product teams use this metric to measure mobile app analytics KPIs like engagement, growth, churn, and product stickiness. 

It’s important to note that the definition of an “active” user can vary depending on your app’s nature and goals. For some apps, simply opening the app might count as an activity, while others may require specific actions like making a purchase or posting content.

Why tracking your app’s active users is important

Measuring app health

Active user metrics are vital to your app’s overall performance. Tracking daily, weekly, and monthly active users gives you a comprehensive view of user engagement levels. This data helps you identify trends, spot potential issues early, and assess the impact of updates or changes.  

Guiding product development

Understanding your active users’ behaviors is important for informed product development. By analyzing which features are used most frequently and how users navigate your app, you can prioritize improvements and new features that cater to your most engaged audience. 

Predicting revenue

Whether your monetization strategy involves in-app purchases, subscriptions, or advertising, engaged users are more likely to contribute to your bottom line. You can more accurately forecast future earnings by correlating active user data with revenue metrics.  

Benchmarking against competitors

Understanding how your active user metrics compare to industry standards and direct competitors is important as it allows you to gauge your app’s market position and identify areas for improvement. 

How to find the active users of an app

Step 1: Define your active users

The first step is to define your app’s active users. Determining what makes a user “active” helps set measurable goals and track the right metrics. 

You can define your active users based on the frequency of use, as shown below:  

• Daily Active Users (DAU): Users who interact with your app at least once per day.

• Weekly Active Users (WAU): Users who engage with your app at least once per week.

• Monthly Active Users (MAU): Users who use your app at least once per month.

You can also define your active users based on what they do on your app. 

• Do they log in? 

• Do they complete a task? 

• Do they interact with specific features?

• How much time do they spend in the app?

Step 2: Track active users

Based on how you’ve defined your active users in Step 1, you can determine which users are “active.” The next step is to monitor them. This involves continuously tracking user activity to gather data on their engagement and behavior. 

You can do this with the help of an excellent user analytic tool like UXCam. Our tool’s real-time analytics and dashboard features can help you track active users based on your criteria. 

For example, if you’ve defined it based on frequency, you can check your daily, weekly, and monthly active users on UXCam and see how many visits they had within that period. 

Similarly, if you’ve defined your active user based on their actions within your app, you can track them with UXCam. 

For example, if your active user is a user who visited your app and added a product to the cart, you can create a segment that includes these defined actions and measure it, all from a single dashboard. 

Step 3: Set up continuous monitoring

Now that you know your active users and how to track them, you need to monitor them continuously. You must regularly review the data on these users for insights into user retention, engagement, and growth over time. This will help you grow your active user base and find the best ways to improve your app over time. 

Using UXCam, you can automatically save segments based on the criteria for active users that you set in Step 2. 

For example, suppose you’ve defined your active user as someone who logged into your app and added a product to the cart. Then, you can create a saved segment on your analytics dashboard with these conditions. 

Our tool will now monitor this segment of users to see how many completed that action daily, weekly, or monthly. You can also see how these metrics change over time. 

Example of monthly active users, daily active users, and daily active users over time.

Best practices for finding active users of an app

Here are a few best practices you can adopt when finding an app’s active users. .

Understand your “active user”

Identify the specific user actions and behaviors that define activity within your app. This could include frequent logins, completing tasks, or engaging with key features. By pinpointing these actions, you can accurately categorize and monitor genuinely engaged users. 

Track active users properly

Tracking your app’s active users is key to making informed decisions about user engagement and retention. A few ways to ensure this include using the right tools, monitoring trends, and validating data regularly.  

Act on the collected data

Regularly update features, fix problems, and improve the user experience based on what you learn from your user data. This will result in an improved app and happier users. 

Know your active users today

Finding and keeping track of your active users is a big part of improving both your app and user retention rates. Tools like UXCam can offer insights that allow you to better understand your users and improve their experience. 

Sign up today to start identifying and tracking your active users.

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