Weekly Active Users (WAU) measures the number of unique users who engage with your app within a 7-day window. WAU is particularly valuable for apps where daily usage isn’t expected but weekly interaction is, such as business tools, productivity apps, and analytics platforms. This metric bridges the gap between daily and monthly active users, helping you understand weekly engagement patterns and avoid the day-to-day variability that can skew your data.
What is Weekly Active Users (WAU)?
Weekly Active Users (WAU) is a metric used to track the number of unique users who engage with an app, website, or digital platform within a 7-day period. It serves as a key indicator of user engagement and helps businesses understand how frequently their audience interacts with their product on a weekly basis.
WAU sits between Daily Active Users (DAU) and Monthly Active Users (MAU) on the engagement spectrum. While DAU captures daily habits and MAU shows broader monthly trends, WAU provides a balanced view that smooths out daily fluctuations while still offering timely insights into user behavior patterns.
This metric is particularly useful for apps where users aren’t expected to engage every day but should return at least once a week. Business-focused tools like Slack, project management apps, and analytics platforms often prioritize WAU because their usage patterns naturally follow weekly work cycles.
What are active users?
Active users are individuals who meaningfully interact with your platform over a given time period. Since different apps serve different purposes, the definition of “active” varies from company to company and should align with your specific business objectives.
For some apps, an active user might be anyone who logs in or opens the app. For others, it could mean completing a specific action like making a purchase (e-commerce), sending a message (messaging apps), executing a transaction (banking), or downloading content (SaaS tools).
The key is to choose criteria that reflect genuine engagement with your core features. A user who opens your app but remains idle provides less value than one who actively interacts with key functionalities. Your definition of an active user should capture meaningful interactions that indicate the user is deriving value from your product.
You can identify active users through unique identifiers such as email addresses, user IDs, device IDs (like IDFA for iOS users), or a combination of these as backup in case one fails.
How do you calculate WAU?
Calculating WAU involves counting the total number of unique active users who interacted with your app within the last seven days, starting from a designated day.
Here’s how to apply the formula:
- Define your active user criteria: Determine the specific in-app actions that qualify a user as “active.” This could include clicking buttons, completing transactions, creating content, or any meaningful interaction.
- Set your measurement frequency: For WAU, you’re looking at a rolling 7-day window.
- Count unique users: Use your analytics tool to sum all unique users who meet your active user criteria for the selected week. Remember that each user should be counted only once, regardless of how many sessions they had.
For example, if during a week you had User 1 log in and click a button, User 2 log in but remain idle, User 3 scroll and swipe, and User 4 click a button, your WAU would be 3 (Users 1, 3, and 4 performed qualifying actions, while User 2 did not meet the active criteria).
When analyzing WAU over a date range, many analytics platforms calculate the number of unique users in the preceding 7 days for each day in your selected period, then display an average. This approach helps identify trends in weekly engagement.
Advantages of using WAU metric
WAU offers several benefits for understanding and optimizing user engagement:
- Avoids daily variability: Business-focused apps like Slack experience high DAU Monday through Friday but see significant drops over weekends. WAU lets you see weekly activity without having to account for expected low-activity days.
- Measures app success: A successful app is one that users engage with regularly. Since 80-90% of mobile apps are abandoned after a single use, tracking WAU helps you determine whether users find your app worthy of their time.
- Gauges customer engagement: Consistently high WAU numbers indicate users are having meaningful interactions with your app and are more likely to upgrade subscriptions or purchase add-ons.
- Determines app stickiness: By calculating DAU/WAU ratios, you can assess how frequently users return within a given week. Higher stickiness suggests users find your app valuable and integral to their routines.
- Identifies retention issues early: A sudden drop in WAU serves as an early warning sign, allowing you to investigate and address problems before users churn.
WAU, DAU, MAU
These three metrics form a complete picture of user engagement across different time frames:
Daily Active Users (DAU): The number of unique users who engage with your app within a 24-hour window. Primarily used by apps where daily interaction is expected, such as social media, gaming, and messaging apps.
Weekly Active Users (WAU): The number of unique users who engage within a 7-day window. Ideal for business tools, productivity apps, and platforms where weekly usage patterns are more meaningful than daily ones.
Monthly Active Users (MAU): The number of unique users who engage within a 30-day window. Used by travel, finance, and utility apps where users typically interact a few times a month or less.
The WAU-to-MAU ratio provides insight into user retention and engagement trends. If WAU numbers are consistently high relative to MAU, it indicates a stickier, more engaging platform. A good WAU/MAU ratio typically ranges between 30-50%, meaning a significant portion of monthly users engage with the platform in any given week.
Similarly, tracking DAU/WAU helps you understand how many of your weekly users return daily. These ratios together reveal the depth of user engagement and help identify whether you have a retention problem that needs addressing.
How can you increase WAU?
Creating a winning engagement strategy requires leveraging multiple channels to keep users coming back consistently.
Push notifications
Push notifications are one of the most effective ways to re-engage users and deliver important information anytime, anywhere. However, if misused, they can generate uninstalls. Focus on delivering actual value through personalized, relevant communication rather than high-volume generic messages. Monitor your push notification statistics to understand what’s working and what’s not.
In-app messages
Align your app experience with users’ needs and preferences. Research shows brands using personalized in-app messages experience 61-74% retention rates within 28 days, compared to just 49% for generic campaigns. Use in-app messages for important notifications like payment failures, app issues, and version upgrades. Segment your audience based on geography, usage patterns, and history to deliver tailored, relevant content.
Email and SMS campaigns
Retention depends on keeping your app top of mind. Create an effective onboarding process that sends the right mix of emails to keep users engaged. Use email to reconnect with users who were once active but have stopped using your app—it’s the least intrusive way to notify them about updates and encourage them to return. Effective audience segmentation makes the difference between an idle and an engaged user.
Deep linking
When users click links from your emails, ads, or notifications, they should land exactly where they need to be in your app—not on a generic home screen. Attribution-fueled deep linking connects your siloed channels into a single cohesive user experience, removing obstacles along the user journey and helping build long-lasting relationships with users.
Gamification and rewards
Gamification is a common tactic to make platforms more engaging. Offer rewards, leaderboards, badges, and achievement systems to make using your app more enjoyable. Regular updates based on customer feedback also encourage repeat visits—keep content fresh and introduce new features regularly.
Mobile optimization
Users access your app from various devices—smartphones, tablets, laptops, and desktops. Follow mobile-friendly best practices to ensure they have the best experience possible on every device. Poor mobile experience is a common reason users abandon apps.
The limitations of using WAU
While WAU is valuable, it has inherent limitations that you should understand:
Lack of standardization
Since every company defines “active” differently, comparing WAU across competitors can be misleading. There are no universal standards for what constitutes an active user, making cross-company comparisons challenging.
Doesn’t measure engagement depth
WAU tells you how many users engaged but not how deeply they interacted with your app. A user who opens the app briefly and one who spends an hour using core features are counted the same way. Pair WAU with metrics like session duration and feature adoption for a complete picture.
Industry variations
What constitutes a “good” WAU or DAU/WAU ratio varies significantly by industry. A strong ratio for an e-commerce site might be weak for a fitness app. Establish your own benchmarks by tracking your historical data rather than relying solely on industry averages.
Doesn’t indicate user quality
Not all active users have equal value. WAU doesn’t distinguish between highly engaged power users and casual visitors. Different acquisition channels produce users with varying engagement behaviors and lifetime values, which WAU alone cannot reveal.
Key takeaways
- WAU measures weekly engagement: It counts unique users who interact with your app within a 7-day window and is ideal for apps where weekly usage is more meaningful than daily interaction.
- Define active users clearly: Having an explicit definition of what makes a user “active” is crucial for calculating meaningful WAU. Consider your business goals when determining criteria.
- WAU smooths daily variability: Unlike DAU, WAU avoids the ups and downs of different days of the week, providing a more stable view of engagement patterns.
- Use WAU alongside DAU and MAU: The WAU/MAU and DAU/WAU ratios provide insights into user stickiness and retention. A good WAU/MAU ratio is typically 30-50%.
- Multi-channel strategies boost WAU: Leverage push notifications, in-app messages, email, deep linking, and gamification to keep users returning consistently.
- Establish your own benchmarks: Every product is different. Track your numbers over time and aim to beat your own historical performance rather than relying solely on industry averages.