In the golden age of the app store, launching an app with a high CPI (Cost Per Install) campaign was often enough to secure sales. However, the new success does not mean how many users you can buy, it means how many you can keep.
"Leaky Bucket" syndrome - when you pour expensive marketing into the top of the funnel to acquire users, and watch them drain out the bottom before they have even completed their first session.
Acquiring a user is expensive. If your analytics show lots of drop-offs after the app installation, you can blame the "bad luck" or "low-quality traffic". However, more often, the reason is friction.
Here are 5 reasons your app might be losing users, along with ways to fix the issues.
Low User Retention is Lower Than You Think
Let’s look at the data. If you think a 20% retention rate after one month is "bad", it is actually much worse for the average app.
According to industry benchmarks from AppsFlyer, the average Day 30 retention rate for mobile apps across all categories is ~3-5%. That means for every 100 users you acquire, 95 of them quit within a month. Moreover, the majority of that drop-off happens in the first 72 hours.
If your numbers are similar, you are not failing - you are the average. To lower the drop-off rate and make your app users stay loyal, you need to identify and solve the issues that make the user log out, delete, and forget.
Reasons for The Low User Retention
The Onboarding
You have ~60 seconds to convince a new user that your app is worth their attention and space on the phone. During this window, users are making the judgments about quality, trustworthiness, and relevance.
For English-speaking users, a standard onboarding flow might work fine. However, what happens when the user is in France or Japan?
If your app greets the Italian user with a poorly translated UI by a machine (or worse, remains in English), the user does not just see translation mistakes. They see a lack of trustworthiness. They tag the app as "low quality" or "scammy".
To fix this issue
Stop treating onboarding as a functional tutorial. Make sure your value proposition is transcreated, not just translated. So it carries the same emotional punch in Italian as it does in English. If a user feels good in the first minute, they are more likely to stay for the second.
Visual and UIs
Designers love Lorem Ipsum and short English copy: "Buy Now", "Sign Up". These words look clean and minimalist in a Figma file.
However, when you go international, your design often breaks. Why? Because English is very compact. Languages like German or Finnish can expand text length by up to 40%.
When a German user opens your app and sees the "Jetzt kaufen" ("Buy now") button text overflowing its container, they do not assume you forgot to test it. They assume the code is buggy.
To fix this issue: Design with expansion in mind. Use flexible containers rather than fixed-width buttons. Test your UI with "pseudo-localization" during the QA phase. Catch these breaks before your users do.
No Localization
Many product teams believe that "localization" means swapping an English file for a Spanish one. They translate the words, but they fail to adapt the experience.
Cultural adaptation goes deeper than language translation:
- Dates: "04/05/2026" means April 5th in the US. To a British user, it means May 4th.
- Colors: In the West, green means "go" or "stock market up". In parts of Asia, red is the color of growth, while green can mean a decline.
- Logins: "Apple ID" and "Google" are standard, but if you do not offer Line in Japan or Kakao in Korea, you lose the user’s trust.
If your app displays dates in the wrong format (MM/DD vs DD/MM) or uses foreign currency symbols, trust evaporates. To keep users engaged, you must implement a comprehensive mobile app localization strategy that adapts the entire user journey to fit local behaviors and expectations.
Irrelevant Notifications and Timing
Push notifications, used correctly, grow retention. Used poorly, they increase uninstalls.
Many apps make the mistake of bombarding users with generic "Come back!" push notifications or interrupting the user flow with in-app pop-ups asking for ratings or upsells.
If a user is in the middle of a task, and a full-screen pop-up blocks their view, the friction is huge. Similarly, if you send generic, poorly suited text like "Check out this feature!" at 3 AM, or send 5 notifications in a single day, the user will solve the problem by deleting the app.
To fix this issue, respect the user’s attention.
- Limit pushes to high-value interactions only.
- Only ask for a rating after a successful action, never in the middle of a workflow.
- Make notification text personalized and relevant, not generic marketing spam.
Ignoring the Feedback
Finally, many product teams see a high drop-off % and have no idea why it is happening.
Analytics can tell you that 40% of users dropped off on Screen 3. However, analytics cannot tell you why. Was the button hard to find? Was the copy confusing? Did the app freeze?
To fix this issue, there are 2 solutions:
- Use advanced tools that record the user experience in real time. There, you can check what the button that is being ignored is, and what is the loading that makes a user turn the app off.
- Additionally, you are not asking your users about their experience, you are blind. Relying on App Store reviews is too slow. By the time a user leaves a review there, they have already uninstalled your app. Stop guessing and start asking. Integrate UX feedback tools (SurveyMonkey, Qualtrics, or micro-survey SDKs) to ask for a short questionnaire completion.
Conclusion
At the end of the day, retention is a measure of trust. Users stick with apps that solve their problems and fit into their lives.
When you ignore localization, bombard them with notifications, or fail to ask for their input, you are asking the user to adapt to you. Eventually, they get tired.
True localization is the highest form of digital empathy. It says, "I see you and I built this for you".