Over the years I have noticed many business owners, in an effort to attain emotional satisfaction and peer admiration for operating a “fast moving company”, fall prey to the idea that they need to rush software products (and services) to market as quickly as possible … usually at a detriment to their customer experience.

In my opinion, subjective feelings will always take a back seat to cold hard facts.

According to a recent study performed by RevenueCat, a company who specializes software subscription management, it was found that customers who do not immediately receive value from a product or service will likely leave within the first month … AND WILL NEVER RETURN.

RevenueCat, who gathered data from over 10,000 mobile apps on both the android and iOS stores, found that the “renewal rate” of customers (i.e., the percentage of your total customers who opt to continue their subscription) increased each month throughout the duration of the study. 

In human terms, this means that as time passes more and more of your total customer base will be comprised of those who have enjoyed and received value from your software when it was first launched.

 

Remember, new customers do not know or care about how fast you got your project to market. They are only concerned with the value they are receiving. 

Simply put, it is the quality of the experience customers receive during their first few interactions that plays the largest role in whether they will actually stick around. And, over time, these customers who stuck around when you initially launched your software will make up an increasingly larger percentage of your total customer base … and thus your total revenue.

As a business what do you really want? Do you want the emotional satisfaction and admiration from your peers for operating a “fast moving company” … or do you want to move right, and actually make money by achieving high customer satisfaction and retention?

If you have read this far, I think you can pick up where my team and I stand on this issue.

In my next post, I will be covering a few ways in which you can improve your “renewal rate”.

 

Reference:

Study conducted by RevenueCat: https://www.revenuecat.com/blog/monthly-renewal-rate-in-app-subscriptions/?utm_medium=TCnewsletter&tpcc=TCappnewsletter