

Ask HN: what % is reasonable to expect for active users - quadrant6

So I've launched my little web app this year and looking at the stats, we've had about 2000 sign-ups and about 3-4% are active users.<p>Not much really, what should I expect?<p>I was reading that evernote, a similar app to mine (related to productivity but not mission-critical) now has 1 million registered, 360,000 active, that's a lot better!<p>Now not to compare myself with them directly but is it fair to say that my conversion rate right now is crap? especially given the app is free
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patio11
This is not a helpful question, because there is no decision you can make
which depends on the answer.

Here's a better question: "I have about 2000 signups and 3-4% of them are
active users. What can I do to improve my activation or retention?"

Here are some ideas:

1) Do you email people? This is the single most effective way to increase
retention, because email is stickier than applications for pretty much every
application which is not Facebook. If you don't email people, email people. An
easy way to test the waters is to get a MailChimp account and set up an
"autoresponder" sequence with emails 1 day into use and 1 week into use.

2) Have you optimized your first run experience? You get about 30 seconds
before that pernicious bastard, the Back button, eats your lunch. Make that
thirty seconds count. If ~5% of people currently hitting the back button had a
good first experience and stayed for the long haul, you'd have about twice as
many active users.

P.S. There are worthwhile things you can do for the business which will
decrease your percentage of users who activate. _That is OK_.

