The mobile app market is expected to generate over $600 billion in revenue by 2026, yet only a tiny fraction of apps ever reach profitability. Growing your mobile app means working on every stage of your conversion funnel — from discovery and downloads to engagement, retention, and monetization.
First, you need to work on your app’s discoverability. To grow your mobile app, you need to try newer ways to help even more potential users discover it. You also need to boost your conversions — both app store and in-app conversions. Adding experimentation to your app growth mix is one way to do this, as we will see below. You must also work on your app retention to ensure you can convert your users into users for life and boost your average revenue per user — a critical mobile app growth metric.
Seems like a lot of work, right? It is. That is why, to help you, we are rounding up twelve of the most effective mobile app growth tactics that work across the different mobile app funnel stages and will help you build a well-rounded growth strategy for your mobile app in 2026 and beyond.
1. Create a website for your app
Most successful mobile app businesses, especially those with subscription-based apps, build full-fledged websites to go with their apps. While it might appear that mobile app websites are only placeholders on the web — as app stores are where all the business happens — they are much more than that. They are an entire app growth channel that assists with everything, from app discovery and downloads to retention.
Search is a major source for app discovery. According to Google’s research, one in four app users discovers an app through search. Now, when users look for apps, search engines show them listings from the app stores. These are generally the most downloaded apps, and if you have a new or upcoming app, you probably do not have a chance to show up there. But if you set up an SEO-optimized website for your mobile app, your app can also appear in the organic search results and claim a share of these search leads.
In fact, because search is such a powerful app discovery channel, mobile app businesses don’t just build websites for their apps but also run ad campaigns and drive people to them. It is on the website that users see the app’s different download or purchase links. Many mobile apps now even let you make purchases directly from their websites — a trend that gained momentum after the Epic vs. Apple ruling in 2025 allowed US apps to link to external payment systems.
If you want to learn how app store optimization compares with website SEO, check our detailed ASO vs. SEO comparison.
2. Go all in on app store optimization
The top places for app discovery are — no surprises here — the app stores. The App Store and Google Play are where about 40% of app users discover apps. These app store discoveries happen via searches, ads, and through the stores’ featured listings.
Let’s talk about your app’s organic visibility first. While app stores never share how their proprietary algorithms rank app listings for showing search results, they recommend some best practices. Using the right keywords in the right places holds the key. You need descriptive (but unique) app titles, subtitles, and descriptions. Of these elements, the title is the most important. One way apps optimize their titles is to use a unique brand name along with the main keyword users could use to find it. For example: DoorDash – Food Delivery.
“Choose keywords based on words you think your audience will use to find an app like yours. Be specific when describing your app’s features and functionality to help the search algorithm surface your app in relevant searches.” — The App Store
When you get all these right, you won’t just appear in organic results but should also see your impressions go up everywhere inside the app store (in the featured, recommended, or suggested listings).
Another piece of the app store search optimization mix is events. When users search, app stores don’t just show apps in the results but also events. You might get discovered through events — experiment with adding events to your app and listings.
Ratings and reviews also influence your organic visibility, but these take time to optimize. We routinely see apps with thousands of users without even a few reviews — probably because they never asked for them. This is a missed optimization opportunity. If you have even 100 users, ask them to rate and review your app. Remember that your responses also matter. Here is more on optimizing your mobile app’s ratings and reviews.
Update cycles, downloads and engagement, and in-app purchase data also reportedly influence your app store search rankings. But there are no instant hacks here. You need an app that performs well and offers value.
Localization can also impact your rankings. If you target different markets, localized listings can boost your app store visibility significantly.
Paid visibility in the app stores
If you have launched a brand new app, paid ads can get you the first 100 users the fastest. But in addition to running ads, you’ll also need to extend a great offer, as offers are a big reason users spend in the app store and inside apps.
Finally, you can build referral traffic to your app listings to boost user acquisition. Here are a few ways to go about this:
- Build a website — your website can be your app’s number one referral source.
- Run a PR campaign — try to get coverage in popular publications, as they routinely cover apps in their content.
- Run an influencer marketing campaign (more on this below).
- Plan a blogger outreach campaign: reach out to blogs with roundups listing apps that do what your app does and request to be added to them.
3. Build a referral system inside your app
Many users discover apps through recommendations from their friends, contacts, and families. In fact, recommendations drive about 33% of app downloads. That is why the referral channel is important when it comes to growing your mobile app’s user base. If you are currently getting zero referrals from your users, you are missing out on a growth driver.
Instead of setting up a basic referral system, try incentivizing the process. For example, you can give a user access to your premium in-app products or subscriptions for a limited period for inviting their friend to use your app. You can extend the same bonuses to the new referred user, too.
Another advantage of offering premium app experiences this way is that you get to boost your in-app purchases when users like what they get to try and want to keep using them. Fastic does this really well — both the referrer and the referred friend receive premium access, creating a win-win situation that drives viral growth.
4. Work with influencers
Influencer marketing can be great for promoting apps and reaching targeted audiences. And while you need funds to use this tactic, you could start with micro-influencers even with a limited budget.
Partnering with the right micro-influencers will let you break into small — but loyal — audiences matching your ideal app user profiles. In fact, if you have a brand new app, even micro-influencers can help you get your first few hundred users, which can eventually get you thousands more.
The most important thing when collaborating with influencers to grow your mobile app is investing in a long-term relationship. You don’t want an influencer to give your app a one-time shoutout. Instead, work out an arrangement where influencers:
- Announce any new features you add to your app.
- Create educational content around how users can unlock more value from your app.
- Build UGC campaigns to engage your users and help reach even more new users in the process.
Celebrity endorsements still work, too. Major apps have seen explosive growth through influencer partnerships — Sweatcoin, for instance, combined influencer marketing with paid social ads to achieve a tenfold increase in monthly active users.
5. Experiment with your app listing
Your app listing is the most critical touchpoint in your app’s conversion journey. It is on your app listing that users decide if they want to download or purchase your app.
That is why, to help you build your best-converting listings, both the app stores let you run experiments on them. Both Google Play and the App Store let you:
- Set up multiple app listings.
- Split your traffic among all the different versions.
- See which listing converts the best.
You can use app listing experiments to determine the best copy for your app — you can test titles, subtitles, and descriptions. You can even experiment with different icons, screenshots, and videos to discover the ones that drive the most downloads. You can also test multiple localized listings and see if they boost your conversion rates across your different target markets.
Explore: Store listing experiments in Google Play | Store listing experiments in the App Store
App listing experiments are a great way to optimize your app listings for better conversions. However, if your app listing gets just about 100 or so visitors, you will not be able to get statistically significant results. In those cases, you can try user testing. Hire users that fit your ideal user profiles and get them to review your app. Check out our user research tips from this post on paywall A/B testing — they apply here as well.
6. Experiment with different in-app products
If you have a subscription-based app, you can still experiment with creating one-time payment products. For users who are not interested in signing up for subscriptions or don’t want to — as the free version suffices for them — such in-app purchases offer a more enriching app experience while still not tying them to any recurring charges.
Monetarily, too, such in-app purchases are rewarding as they improve your average revenue per user metric. In-app purchases now account for roughly 39% of total app revenue globally, and subscription revenue alone reached $66.8 billion in 2024 — proof that diversifying your product mix pays off.
Take the lunar calendar Moonly app, for instance. While Moonly is available for a subscription, it also offers one-time payment products for generating revenue while boosting engagement. Learn more about choosing the right monetization approach in our guide to app pricing models.
7. Add paywall experimentation to your business mix
If you monetize your app with in-app purchases, your paywalls make the core of your conversion funnel. Everything that lives on your paywall — from its graphics and copy to the color of the CTA button — impacts your conversions.
And we are not only talking about cosmetic elements. We are also talking about your products, their pricing, and any offers you might be running.
For example, if you have built a subscription app, your subscription plans are your products. They can take many forms: weekly, quarterly, or annual. How would you know what your users’ preferred billing cycle is? For some industries, users prefer monthly billing because the fee is manageable, and an annual subscription can seem like a big, upfront cost. Offering the right billing schedule can make a difference. The only way to find out is to test.
Offers are equally important — they are a big reason that push free or freemium app users to upgrade. Offers can also take many forms. For example, you can offer new freemium app users a “new user” offer, float seasonal offers for Christmas, or have win-back offers for ex-users.
Since the only way to find your best-converting copy, design, products, offers, and pricing is testing, you need to start with paywall experimentation.
Data from subscription apps shows that apps running regular A/B tests have 74% higher average MRR than those that do not test. Apps with 50+ experiments see 10–100x revenue growth compared to apps that rarely test.
How paywall experiments work with Adapty
Running a paywall experiment typically means creating a test build, adding it to the app, and codifying the test logistics. This entire process can take a few weeks, even with expert development resources.
Adapty is a mobile app revenue analytics platform with a no-code paywall builder and experimentation functionalities. Adapty’s no-code paywall builder allows you to add a paywall to your app without writing any code. Just choose a paywall template, edit it to make it yours, and that is it.
Setting up a paywall experiment is easy, too. Just convert the paywall you want to experiment with into an A/B test, and Adapty will duplicate it. Edit the elements that you want to test in the duplicate paywall — again, no coding needed. Finally, launch the experiment.
As soon as you start a paywall experiment, Adapty starts capturing conversion data so you know exactly how each paywall is performing. And with Adapty Autopilot, the system automatically reallocates traffic to the best-performing paywalls based on real revenue data — not just conversions.
Suggested reads:
8. Test pricing
If you monetize your app with in-app purchases, your pricing strategies will directly impact your revenue. Pricing is a consideration for four out of five app users.
First, you want to ensure that you have priced your in-app purchases right, because setting higher prices — especially for a new app — can cost you sales. App users hardly ever download a single app for something. They get a handful. And so they have a sense of what similar apps are charging.
Slashing prices can understandably translate to more sales, but so can increasing prices. Sometimes, you discount your app’s value by discounting its price. Users might be willing to pay a premium to access your full app. Price elasticity is real — maybe your users can and will spend more.
Users from different regions also have different pricing sensibilities. Making your app or your in-app purchases available at different prices for your different target markets can make a real difference. Think of this as pricing localization. For Space App, price experiments alone increased their purchases by an average of 20% to 40% across their different markets.
9. Leverage AI-powered personalization
AI is no longer just a buzzword — 63% of mobile app developers now integrate AI features into their apps, and 44% of apps use AI to deliver personalized content. For app growth, AI-powered personalization can be a game changer at every stage of the funnel.
Here is how to apply AI-driven personalization to grow your app:
- Personalized onboarding: use AI to tailor the onboarding experience based on a user’s device, location, or answers to initial questions. This increases the chance they will complete setup and engage with your app.
- Smart push notifications: instead of batch-sending the same message to all users, use AI to determine the optimal send time, frequency, and message content for each user segment.
- Dynamic paywall content: tools like Adapty’s AI Paywall Generator can create brand-consistent paywall variants in seconds, allowing for rapid testing and personalization.
- Content and product recommendations: just as Netflix and Spotify use algorithms to surface relevant content, your app can recommend features, content, or products based on user behavior patterns.
By 2026, static, one-size-fits-all app experiences are becoming obsolete. Leading apps serve different experiences based on user segments, behavior patterns, and predicted intent.
10. Work on retention
App abandonment is the single biggest challenge to your app growth strategy. The average app has a day-30 retention rate of just 3–4%, and uninstall rates stand above 40% within the first 30 days of install. Any work you do to help a new user discover your app, download it, and start a trial gets wasted as soon as the user abandons it.
First things first: you can’t fix this fully. If a user wants to start with, say, intermittent fasting, they will likely download three or four apps at least. Then they will choose the one they like the best. The only thing you can do is make your onboarding so good that your app becomes their favorite.
Here is a breakdown of the key retention strategies:
| Retention strategy | Purpose | Best for |
|---|---|---|
| Onboarding optimization | Reduce early drop-off by showing value fast | All apps, especially freemium |
| Email capture during onboarding | Create a channel to re-engage users outside the app | Subscription and content apps |
| Push notifications | Prompt users to return, complete actions, or convert trials | All apps with opt-in permission |
| In-app messaging | Guide users to key features and milestones | Complex apps with multiple features |
| Lifecycle messaging campaigns | Automate behavior-driven messages from day 0 to advocacy | Apps focused on long-term LTV |
| Gamification (badges, streaks, points) | Increase habitual usage and create a sense of progress | Fitness, education, productivity apps |
| Win-back campaigns for ex-users | Re-engage churned users with new features or offers | Apps with seasonal or periodic use |
Also, seek your users’ emails and their permission to email them during onboarding. This way, you get another way to stay in touch and keep prompting them to return to your app. For instance, sending an email about a new feature to your ex-users can actually get them to re-download and re-engage with your app. Emails also help you promote your offers — you have no idea how many of your users might simply be waiting for an offer to upgrade.
Push notifications are equally crucial. If you have tied a specific in-app action to revenue — for example, if you find that users who complete three workout sessions tend to subscribe — you can use push notifications to get more users to that stage.
You must also keep your app technically sound. Performance issues — crashes, slow load times, excessive battery drain — cause a significant share of app uninstalls.
11. Adopt an omnichannel engagement approach
Relying on a single channel — whether it is push notifications or in-app messaging alone — limits your reach. The most effective app growth strategies in 2026 use an omnichannel approach, coordinating communications across push notifications, in-app messaging, email, SMS, and even web push to maximize both reach and engagement.
The key is making these channels work together, not in silos. For example:
- A user who ignores a push notification might respond to an email with the same offer.
- An in-app message can prompt users to enable push notifications by explaining the benefit.
- Web push notifications can re-engage users who are active on your site but have not opened the app recently.
- SMS can serve as a last-resort channel for high-value transactional messages.
Case studies show remarkable results from omnichannel strategies. AvaTrade, for instance, saw a 12% boost in real account registrations by orchestrating push and web notifications across its multiple platforms. The critical success factor is ensuring a consistent, personalized experience across every touchpoint.
12. Use seasonal and event-based marketing
When you think about holidays, you might assume that people are not likely to hang out in the app stores. However, this is the busiest time in the app stores, with many people discovering, downloading, and re-downloading apps.
In other words, holidays are the time to go all out to acquire new users, engage existing ones, and re-acquire your ex-users. Here is how:
- Craft festive offers and add seasonal paywalls to reflect the users’ mood. You can do this without code using Adapty’s paywall builder.
- Make your app store listings festive and possibly set up an entirely different seasonal listing to test against the regular one.
- Set up events and stories targeting both existing and ex-users — this is also a time to reinforce user loyalty and win back churned users.
We have covered holiday marketing for apps in detail in our guides on mobile app holiday marketing tips and growing subscriptions with holiday marketing.
Key mobile app growth metrics to track
A growth strategy is only as good as the metrics behind it. Here are the KPIs you should be monitoring, organized by category:
| Category | Metric | What it tells you |
|---|---|---|
| Acquisition | Installs/downloads | Volume of new users entering your funnel |
| Acquisition | Cost per install (CPI) | Efficiency of paid acquisition channels |
| Engagement | DAU/MAU ratio | How “sticky” your app is on a daily basis |
| Engagement | Session length and frequency | Depth and regularity of user interaction |
| Retention | Day 1 / day 7 / day 30 retention | How well you keep users over time |
| Retention | Churn rate | Rate at which users stop using your app |
| Monetization | ARPU | Revenue efficiency per user |
| Monetization | LTV | Total revenue expected from a user over their lifetime |
| Monetization | Paywall conversion rate | Percentage of users who convert at the paywall |
| Performance | App crash rate | Technical stability affecting retention |
For a deeper dive into understanding how users move through your app, see our app funnel analysis guide.
Wrapping it up
There you have them: twelve proven strategies to grow your mobile app in 2026 and beyond. But before trying them, analyze your app’s current conversion funnel. Doing so will help you prioritize the strategies to use first.
For instance, if you are not getting enough traffic to your app listings, start with optimizing your listing for better app store visibility and outreach programs. If your app listing page does not convert well, start by optimizing that touchpoint — use listing experiments and test pricing. If in-app purchases are not converting, experiment with pricing and paywalls.
The apps that grow the fastest share a few traits: they test constantly, personalize experiences, engage users across multiple channels, and track the metrics that matter. The mobile app market in 2026 is massive and still expanding. With global app downloads expected to surpass 300 billion and in-app revenue continuing to climb, the opportunity is real — but so is the competition.
You will need a solution like Adapty to implement many of these mobile app growth strategies. Sign up now and see how easy it is to set up in-app purchases, paywalls, and paywall experiments with Adapty.
