Slow adoption for new App version

On an app I'm working on we're experiencing some frequent issues in new App version adoption. Our release policy is the following:

  • We usually release a new version of the app twice per week (usually on Monday and on Thursday).
  • Each new version is released as a phased rollout over a 7-day period
  • When we are ready to release a new version, if no major issues are found in the previous one, we release to all users the previous version and we start the phased rollout for the new version.

Sometimes (not every time) it happens that an old version keeps an high adoption even if we released at least a couple of new versions to all users after that one.

As you can see from the attached screenshot, the version released at least 20 days ago still keeps the majority of the user sessions even if we released at least 2 other versions to all users and another one as phased rollout.

Anyone has suggestion how would be possible to improve adoption for newer app versions?

At the moment we tried to wait a bit of time (half a day) between the moment we release to all the users the N-1 version and the moment we start the new phased rollout for the N version but it seems that it's not solving the issue.

Could the issue be related to the fact that we're releasing new versions too frequently?

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lechuckcaptain
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Speaking as a user, it drives me nuts when apps have to be updated at crazy-fast intervals.
Personally, I would delete an app that was updated that regularly.

We usually release a new version of the app twice per week

As a developer, I would be interested to know why such frequent updates are necessary.

Posted by
robnotyou
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Speaking as a user, it drives me nuts when apps have to be updated at crazy-fast intervals. Personally, I would delete an app that was updated that regularly. As a developer, I would be interested to know why such frequent updates are necessary.

I guess we never consider this point of view. Thanks for sharing your feedback.

This fast pace of releases is not strictly necessary, but we have a fairly large team of developers adding bugfix/improvements every day to the app, so we agreed for that kind of frequency (it was weekly based some months ago).

Do you think it might be related to the adoption issue we're having? Do you have a strong opinion on how frequent should be the releases for an app?

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lechuckcaptain
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Do you think it might be related to the adoption issue we're having?

Yes, because too-frequent updates worsen the user experience.
(Which can make users behave in unpredictable ways.)

Do you have a strong opinion on how frequent should be the releases for an app?

Yes.
No more than monthly, and preferably less frequent than that.

Posted by
robnotyou
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We usually release a new version of the app twice per week (usually on Monday and on Thursday).

What do you change in app ?

If it is to update data, then they should be on a server and automatically fetched or on demand.

Otherwise there is no reason for such frequent updates which are really annoying for a user.

IMO, a good cycle is between 3 to 6 months, unless there's a need for fixing an annoying bug or you are introducing new features. In a word, the new release must have real value for user who must be able to notice this value.

Posted by
Claude31
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We release new versions because they contain bug fixes or new features, we're not releasing new versions just for fun 😀.

Before taking the decision we had a look at some popular apps (Spotify, Amazon, Facebook, ..) and frequent releases cycle seem to be a fairly common practice.

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lechuckcaptain
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Interesting that no-one has chimed in to say how much they like to have twice-a-week updates!

Posted by
robnotyou
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