Hey app developers: Make sure your logo is designed well, or millennials may delete your app.
That’s one takeaway from comScore’s 2017 U.S. Mobile App Report, published Thursday by the research firms, providing a fascinating look into the smartphone landscape, including the habits of Americans aged 18-to-34, aka millennials.
The study, which analyzed comScore digital audience data and survey results, found that millennials “prove to be the most engaged, sophisticated and addicted users of apps.” Those in the 18-to-24 age bracket spend an average of 3.2 hours per day with apps — that’s nearly 50 days per year — compared to 2.3 hours for the average user.
Compared to older age groups, millennials are much more interested in discovering new apps, paying for apps, and making in-app payments — about 20 percent download an average of one paid app per month. They are also much more likely to delete an app because of thumbnail logo designs — “because apps confer social identity, millennials will delete an app if they don’t like how it looks on their screen,” the report noted. More than 20 percent of millennials said they deleted an app in the past year because of how it looked on their home screen.
Nearly half of millennials use 21 or more apps per month, while about 75 percent say their smartphone would be “useless” without apps and say they get an urge to open an app when they are bored. A majority of millennials also said they check app notifications immediately after receiving them.
YouTube and Facebook topped the list of millennials’ most-used apps, but 35 percent said Amazon is the app they “can’t live without.”
The report also analyzed how millennials are more likely to position apps on their smartphones based on “thumb reach,” and are “increasingly considering this dynamic.” And for my favorite slide of the report: App users 55 years old and up are five times as likely than millennials to only operate their smartphone with two hands.
