In today’s digitally savvy world, consumers-patients-members expect to interact with healthcare organizations across a number of mobile devices whilst on the go, just as they do with organizations across other industries. As a result more and more healthcare providers and payers are leveraging mobile apps to connect with consumers-patients-members to make their services more accessible and efficient.
You may have a patient or member portal app with secure access to medical records, communicating with physicians, managing health benefits, healthcare costs, and more. General information apps are also popular with useful information on location directions and parking, find a doctor tools, health library information and many others.
Other mobile apps within the healthcare industry include ER wait times or service-line specific apps. Regardless of the type of mobile app(s) that forms part of your holistic digital experience, each and every digital interaction across these impact the overall satisfaction levels of your consumers-patients-members. As a result, it’s imperative to measure the performance of mobile apps.
Understanding user engagement, satisfaction, and app performance are critical to measuring the success of your mobile app. By monitoring mobile app analytics in addition to performing deeper dives into mobile app data this will assist you in identifying areas for improvement and optimization of the mobile app digital experience to create delightful experiences for those that use it.
Below are some essential metrics that you should be tracking and closely monitoring. Engagement metrics such as:
- Number of Downloads – it’s important to know how many times the mobile app has been installed. If you notice this decline from month to month, you might want to focus your efforts on promoting the mobile app to let your audience know it’s available to use.
- Average Visit Time – this will help you understand what the average duration time is for a session. Any changes in these behavior patterns can alert you to look deeper into the data to identify why changes are occurring.
- Screen Views per Visit – this metric informs you of how many mobile app screens are interacted with during a session. This is useful information to be mindful of as you are working on optimizing your app with any enhancements or new features to assist in user experience design.
- Retention Rate – with this metric you know how many users return to your mobile app after their first visit. You will also find the remaining percentage is your churn rate; those who do not continue to use the app after the first visit.
- Number of Active Users – an insightful metric to really understand your most engaged users. You may want to do this by week or month to tell you the unique number of people who have used (opened) your mobile app over a certain time-frame of those that have installed it.
- App Event Tracking – if you have specific features or conversion funnels within your mobile app tagged with events, this metric will allow you quick access to understanding the performance of those features so you know the actions users take, such as:
- Find a doctor
- Find a location
- Make an appointment
- Searches performed
- Patient or member portal log in
- Contact
- Customer satisfaction metrics, including:
- App Ratings and Reviews– regularly monitor what your mobile app rating is in app stores as this will leave a first impression on those that download your app. In addition to this, listen to the feedback you are receiving across these platforms and use any user challenges as enhancements that form part of your product backlog.
- Touch Heatmaps – know where users are tapping on mobile app screen views and identify any user experience issues. You’ll quickly identify any challenges if users are tapping in places which aren’t interactions within the app.
- In-App Feedback – use surveys that are delivered within mobile apps for a quick way to receive direct feedback. These tools can be easy to implement and you can ask targeted questions.
- App performance metrics, for example:
- App Crashes – at a minimum this mobile app performance metric should be monitored. You need to know how often your app abruptly closes while a user is using it and should be something you are actively working towards reducing.
- App Speed – it’s crucial to understand how fast your mobile app loads and runs. Poor mobile app experience due to these issues can result in mobile app abandonment and should be a metric to focus on improving.
- App Latency – this metric tells you how long it takes your mobile app to request and receive a response from an API. Any long delays here can also further impact mobile app experience.
The above will give you a comprehensive understanding into how your mobile app is performing. Don’t just monitor these metrics but analyze them and dig deeper into the data to uncover trends and patterns. Use the insights from your healthcare mobile app data to select 3 or 4 key areas to work on improving and let this guide the decision making to keep your efforts focused on mobile app optimization.
For example, you may decide to work on reducing your crash rate in upcoming updates, or improving your retention rates by creating an onboarding process highlighting frequently used features of your app on first mobile app load, or increase conversions for a particular funnel by resolving user experience challenges uncovered from feedback and data to complete a specific task. Using the data to determine where to focus your efforts on problems that are likely to have the highest return on mobile app performance and user satisfaction is where you need to start focusing your efforts.
I would love to hear the challenges or success you’re experiencing in measuring your mobile app performance.
