Retention FAQ

Use the Retention page to track and analyze user retention patterns for your products.

 

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What is user retention?

User retention is a metric that tracks how many users who have converted (e.g. installed an app or re-engaged with an app) are still using the product after a certain period of time.

How does Singular define and calculate retention?

"Retained Users Xd" - the number of users who have remained active X days after the conversion.

The formula is as follows:

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Notes:

  • The day of conversion (in mobile apps, the day of install or re-engagement) is considered to be day 0 (and thus has 100% retention).
  • Days are counted in 24-hour increments. Thus, the 1st day after conversion is defined as 24 hours to 48 hours after conversion. The 2nd day is 48 hours to 72 hours, and so on.
How do I customize the retention report, e.g. to add a breakdown by OS or country?

To change the report, click Edit Report and add or remove dimensions as you do in Singular's standard reporting. You can also filter the report (e.g., to show retention only for a specific app).

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How are uninstalls, re-installs, and re-engagements reflected in the retention reports?

Uninstalls: These are not reflected in the retention stats. A session coming in on the day of the uninstall is added to the retention calculation, as usual, signifying that the user used the app that day.

Re-installs: The opening of the app after an uninstall and re-install counts as a normal user session, signifying that the user used the app that day.

Re-engagement: If Singular performs re-engagement attribution, the retention calculations are reset, and from that point on, Singular counts retention for the user on that app based on the day of re-engagement. See the Re-engagement FAQ for more information.

Why is there a discrepancy with the app store data?

It’s important to remember when you are comparing data sets, there are a couple of reasons why the data might look different. Here are a couple of helpful hints to consider.

Time: What is the time breakdown? Is the report pulled per day in the Store report vs. the report per the entire time period in the Singular report? D7 Retention will look different if you are comparing a full month of data vs. a daily breakdown for a given month

Source: Usually, users are looking at data broken down by Source breakdown, while in the Store report, there is no source breakdown. These differences may make a big impact on the report's results considering it involves calculation and percentage of it

Total conversion count: If there is a difference in the total conversion you are seeing from each data source (Singular report vs. the number of downloads in the App Store report), it will have an effect on the calculation of the Retention rate. You can review possible reasons for the discrepancy in the install numbers here

Onboarding phase: How long has the Singular SDK been integrated in your app? Another possible reason for this discrepancy is the fact that you just recently onboarded with Singular, and users that are considered "New" to Singular but "old" to the App Store will be counted as new conversions while in the store, it won't. This is because Singular counts installs for every first open of the app, even if the app was already opened previously, while the stores will not re-count the installs.