This is an excellent answer to the question “Why do users uninstall apps?” on Quora, translated by Zeng Lixia, graduate student at the School of Design, Jiangnan University

Question:

What is the list of reasons why users may uninstall certain applications?

These possible causes include:

  1. Apps take too long to load because most apps aren’t like Facebook, Evernote, etc. (unique, irreplaceable) — I can (easily) find another App to do the same thing.
  2. Apps crash frequently;
  3. I don’t need this APP for a while — just clean it up;
  4. An annoying notice;

Any other reasons to add?

Answer by Srikrishnan Ganesan

If you want to know why a user has abandoned/uninstalled an APP, the only way to find out the real reasons and key points behind a user’s behavior is to interview them. Here are the itemized classes I’ll use to help you understand.

There are three key basic features of an APP that users should consider before deciding to uninstall:

If the user thinks the experience is bad or very bad, the APP will inevitably be uninstalled by the user.

If usability is considered the most important and unique of the three basic features (which rarely happens), or if the experience you get with your App is immersive (such as gamification), users will generally place less importance on trust and performance.

The user monitors these three parameters through various scenarios. Here’s a long list of these scenarios, which users cite as their reasons for abandoning the APP (some cases only occur under certain environmental constraints such as low-end devices, slow Internet speeds, etc.) :

General Reasons (by category)

Most of the reasons are fairly common, but some may be new insights for application developers. If you’re a product manager or developer, take a minute to review the list below.

Fixing some of these reasons could also help your product get better ratings and reviews on the AppStore (see my related blog post: App Ratings — A tool to blackmail users?).

Usability and experience

  • Seems to run counter to the user’s expectations,
  • Low relevance to users – low frequency of use
  • Experiences gained and lost — Products sometimes solve user problems, but not always (low success rate)
  • Bad first time experience
  • The user experience does not meet the specification
  • Too many notifications
  • Missing offline mode
  • App fatigue — being bored with your product
  • Find other apps with better experience for the same function
  • Bad, outdated or unprofessional graphics/interface (even App ICONS) design
  • No custom phone experience (mute Settings, turn off notifications, etc.)
  • There are too many ads in use
  • Forcing users to update too often (don’t use unupdated apps)

performance

  • Too much traffic (foreground/background traffic data consumption)
  • Excessive CPU resources are occupied
  • Power block
  • Takes up too much memory
  • Use is not smooth – often crashes
  • It is not allowed to move it to an SD card (for low-end Android devices)
  • Ship too many files that users don’t want or need and stuff them into galleries or other files
  • Too much data is cached
  • Performance monitoring shows it has performance issues (battery/storage)
  • It feels like it will degrade the phone’s performance
  • The experience of sensory acquisition is not standardized
  • The loading time is too long
  • The experience was slow throughout
  • Some features, or the App itself, are not available on some devices

Sense of trust

  • Asking for too many permissions (or requesting unnecessary permissions)
  • The registration process is too complicated
  • Request access to social media accounts
  • Need to grant too many permissions on social accounts
  • Other software suggested it was malware
  • Sending invitations to friends without the user’s knowledge
  • It works well only in high-speed network environment
  • Make users feel non-standard/non-professional/amateur
  • Developers can’t respond when you report problems
  • Too few updates (bugs, problems forever)
  • APP security/privacy issues are reported in news/blogs
  • When the user contacted the developer, there was no response

Category based reasons

Here are some examples to help you think about why users uninstall certain apps.

To find more specific reasons, take a look at some of the APP’s key metrics and talk to users! The metrics for some things are not yet available – please refer to my previous posts for details.

Efficiency and business apps

  • A higher quality APP was found for the same requirement
  • You have to pay for everything you really need
  • Bad experiences (data loss, rework, effort)

Content APP (music, video)

  • Content update frequency is low
  • Unknown/unpredictable content updates or refreshes
  • There are gains and losses in finding content (music apps, for example, often fail to find the song you are looking for)
  • Irrelevant content (or content that no longer applies)
  • Poor experience when the network is slow

Information and education apps

  • Information or content that is no longer of interest or relevance to you
  • The content does not meet the required standards
  • Too many ads

 Shopping and travel apps (often ignored rather than uninstalled)

  • The experience of a failed transaction
  • Mobile doesn’t seem to represent the full range of options compared to the Web
  • The experience of comparing with other similar services is also poor compared to the Web side

Social App

  • You get no response from the people you interact with
  • Not worth enough to invite friends to join
  • Users have different backgrounds or communicate in different languages

Games App

  • App fatigue (probably one of the strongest causes here)
  • Addiction makes users feel guilty
  • Downloading new versions or updates too frequently
  • The first level is too hard — level gain is too frustrating (level curve)
  • Hard to beat — Feels easy but hard to beat (horizontal curve)
  • Complete all free levels
  • Consuming too much CPU or battery

Local information APP

Personalization, theme and gadget apps

  • Bored with the current experience, or users discover something cooler
  • User custom gestures are not supported
  • Slower and slower experiences

Background: For an APP with millions of downloads, I have interviewed thousands of its users, and there was a serious loss of users in the initial stage of the product. The answer is based on interaction, online research, and a summary I’ve gathered from many users who I’ve interviewed regularly about their experiences with the APP.

PS: Some information about “Top X reasons” for uninstalling apps: