Daily Active Users
What Are Daily Active Users (DAU)?
Daily active users or DAU refers to the number of unique users who engage with your product on a daily basis. For apps and websites, this typically means opening the app or visiting the website.
Why DAU Matters
DAU is an important metric because it shows how engaged your users are. If your DAU is high, it means you have loyal users who keep coming back to your product day after day. This is great for business - engaged users are more likely to make purchases, share your product with friends, and continue using your product long-term.
Tracking Your DAU
Most analytics tools can help you track your DAU. You'll want to connect your analytics to your product and start measuring unique users each day. Look for trends over time to see if your DAU is rising or falling. Try making changes to your product to boost DAU, such as:
Improving the onboarding experience for new users
Optimizing popular features and navigation
Running promotions and loyalty programs
Releasing exciting new updates and features
The higher your product's DAU, the better. Keep your users happy and engaged, and your DAU will thrive.
Why Do Companies Care About Daily Active Users?
1) They Represent Engagement
Daily active users, or DAUs, show how many people engage with a product or service every day. For companies, higher DAU numbers mean more people are actively using and interacting with their product.
2) They Can Lead to Monetization
DAUs are more likely to make in-app purchases or engage with features since they're frequent users. If a company has a lot of DAUs, it means more opportunities to generate revenue through these means. Even if a product is free, companies can still profit from DAUs through data collection and advertising.
3) They Help With Product Decisions
By tracking how DAU numbers change over time, companies get insights into how people are using their product. If DAUs suddenly drop, it signals there may be issues that need addressing. Companies can then make changes to re-engage users and boost DAUs again. Monitoring DAU metrics ultimately leads to building a product that people love and want to use every single day.
How to Calculate Your Product's Daily Active Users
To determine your product’s daily active users (DAUs), you’ll need to look at usage data over the course of a single day. The basic steps are:
1) Identify your “active” events
First decide what actions count as “activity” in your product. For a social network it may be posting, commenting or liking. For a fintech app, it could be making a trade or adding money to your wallet.
2) Query your analytics for those events
Pull a report from your analytics tool for a single day showing how many users performed an “active” event. This number is your DAU count for that day.
3) Track trends over time
Look at your DAU numbers over the course of days, weeks and months to determine trends. Is your active user base growing, shrinking or staying stable? Monitor how changes to your product or marketing campaigns impact DAU to optimize growth.
4) Compare to MAU for engagement
Your Monthly Active Users or MAU shows the number of unique users over the course of a month. Dividing your MAU by 30 will give you an average DAU. Comparing your actual DAU to this average can reveal how well you’re engaging your users from day to day. A higher ratio indicates users are highly engaged.
Keeping tabs on your daily and monthly active users is key to understanding how your audience is using your product and strategizing ways to improve engagement and retention. DAU and MAU metrics, while simple, provide actionable insights to help fuel your product’s growth.
How To Increase DAU?
Boosting your daily active users (DAU) is crucial for any web or mobile product. Here are a few ways to increase your DAU:
1) Improve User Experience
A great user experience keeps people coming back. Make your product easy to use, visually appealing, and intuitive. The simpler and more enjoyable your UX is, the more people will use your product every day.
2) Show Personalized Messages
Send in-app messages that are relevant and connected to a key action or inaction of a user. For example, many apps show messages with helpful tips, updates or running offers. These types of messages boost engagement and retention. However, don't overdo it and annoy your users!
3) Offer Incentives
Offer rewards or incentives for daily use, such as points, badges, or virtual currency. Many fintech and edtech apps are masters of incentives and use them to keep people using it every day. Find incentives that match your product and audience.
4) Fresh Content
Update your content, features, and offerings regularly to give people a reason to come back daily. For example, news websites keep people coming back with fresh stories and media platforms release new videos, podcasts or music daily. Staying up to date with the latest content is key.
5) Build Habits
The more people use your product, the more it becomes a habit. Habits form through repetition and rewards. Focus on giving people a great first experience, then build from there with regular use, experiences, and incentives to help make your product a daily habit and routine.
6) Social Features
Add social features that encourage sharing, interaction, and community. Things like comments, likes, profiles, forums, and messaging give people a social reason to use your product every day. Social engagement and connection are very powerful motivators.
