What is daily active users (DAU)?
Daily active users (DAU) is a metric that measures the percentage of unique users who engage with your product daily. This metric is generally used in the subscription-based business.
How to calculate daily active users (DAU)?
To calculate daily active users, sum total the ‘number of unique new users’ and the ‘number of unique returning users’ and you’ll get your number of daily active users.
Remember, you are calculating daily active users, so take the figures on a daily basis. Many analytics tools can easily show you your daily active users.
Formula for calculating daily active users (DAU)
Real-life example of daily active users (DAU)
Let’s say, you offer micro team management software. Yesterday, the number of new users was 150 but 50 out of those logged in more than once.
So your number of “unique” new users will be 100 (150-50). Similarly, the number of unique returning users was 200.
Then your daily active users (DAU) will be: 100 + 200 = 300.
What’s considered a good daily active users (DAU)? (benchmark)
A DAU to MAU ratio of over 20% is considered good and a rate of less than 10% is considered bad. If your DAU:MAU exceeds 50%, it is considered outstanding.
B2C apps, especially social apps, have a higher DAU/MAU Ratio of around 20% - 50%, while the range is much lower for B2B.
High DAU is evidence that your customers are using your product and more customers are signing on. But if your DAU falls, it can be an early sign of churn.
Ways to increase your daily active users (DAU)
In order to increase your daily active users, you’ll need to improve your product stickiness and engagement.
Some ways to do this are:
- Make your product easy to use: You’ll not win anything by designing a complex product, in fact, you’ll lose your users. 80% of users uninstall an app because they don’t know how to use it. Ensure that your software or website is easy to use and navigate and product walkthroughs are a cherry on top.
- Improve your overall customer experience: 86% of customers are willing to pay more for a superior customer experience. A proactive customer success team will help reduce churn and increase DAU. With the right support, your DAU as well as your customer base will increase.
- Include gamification to increase interaction: Gamification uses rewards as drivers for users to return and perform an action on an app, hence, improving DAU. Duolingo has an impressive 9.1 million DAU by using this strategy.
Also Read: Related Metrics
- Net Promoter Score
- Customer Churn Rate
- Customer Lifetime Value
- Customer Retention Rate
- Repeat Purchase Rate
- Customer Satisfaction Score (CSAT)
- Renewal Rate
- Customer Acquisition Cost
- First Contact Resolution Rate (FCR)
- Free Trial Conversion Rate
- Monthly Active Users (MAU)
- Average Revenue Per User
- Referral Program ROI
- Upsell Rate & Cross-sell Rate
- Viral Coefficient
- Participant Share Rate
- Invitation Conversion Rate
- Net Dollar Retention
- Product Adoption Rate
- Sessions per User