DAU and MAU feel like vanity metrics at this point. Users can open the app and bounce immediately but still count as active.
What metrics do you actually track to understand if people are genuinely engaged with your product?
Session duration and weekly return rates work better for us.
Retention cohorts are everything for the apps I’ve built. Day 1, 7, and 30 retention rates show you who’s actually getting value.
Don’t just track if someone clicked a feature once - dig into who’s using core features repeatedly. We had a meditation app where users doing 3+ sessions weekly had 4x higher LTV.
Watch the gaps between sessions. Users coming back every 2-3 days? They’re hooked. Week-long gaps mean they’re mentally checked out.
This GA4 video covers engagement tracking setup pretty well:
Find your product’s “aha moment” and measure how many users hit it over and over. That’s what matters.
Push notification open rates show who actually wants to come back.
Time between actions beats total session time. A user scrolling for 20 minutes? Probably bored. Someone who hits your key features in 3 minutes then bounces? That’s intent. Look at feature adoption depth. How many try your core feature once vs. use it 5+ times? Those repeat users are your real engagement metric. Revenue per user cuts through everything else. Engaged users actually pay.
I track how many users complete my main flow in their first week.
Most apps fail because users never get the core value. I set up events for each step and see what percentage make it through.
For paid apps, I also watch upgrade speed after free trials start. Quick upgrades mean they found value fast.
Behavior-based cohorts beat time-based ones every time.
I group users by their week 1 activity: light (1-2 sessions), regular (3-5 sessions), heavy (6+ sessions). Then I track retention for each group separately.
Heavy users stay 60% longer, but here’s the kicker - regular users convert to paid at higher rates. Light users? Most are gone by day 14.
Feature stacking is huge. Users who try 2+ core features in their first session have way better long-term engagement. We switched our onboarding to push feature combos instead of hammering one main action.
Revenue’s the real test though. Engaged users pay faster and stick around longer.
I just count how many users do the same action twice.