textPlus develops mobile apps that offer a completely free telco service. Users can sign up for a free phone number and receive unlimited texting capabilities to any number in the US and Canada. Their newest app Nextplus is one of the most popular communication apps and serves as a full replacement for users’ existing cellular service.
Nextplus’ core use-cases are specific to the free phone number users obtain post-sign-up. In addition, there’s an ad-supported SMS service to the United States & Canada, as well as an international ad-supported voice service. To find out what drives long-term retention in their app, textPlus ran analyses about their specific user behavior. Using Flurry Analytics, their investigation confirmed that their two largest “churn moments” occur when users either fail to acquire a phone number or don’t send any SMS.
Looking at their two biggest markets, the U.S. and Canada, Nextplus saw significant differences between the conversion rates on Android and iOS for users registering and then sending their first message. Android averaged a 70% conversion in the United States and 78% in Canada, whereas iOS averaged 54% and 70%, respectively.
textPlus made it their goal to improve iOS conversion and drive towards the numbers they saw for Android. However, iOS and Android clients already had nearly identical experiences through registration and message composition. This in mind, developers at textPlus had to dig-in and figure out what, if anything, was holding back iOS.