Think about a popular app or online tool. What keeps users coming back week after week? Is it a specific feature they can't live without? The ease of getting something done? Maybe it's just satisfying to use.
As a SaaS business, understanding what drives that kind of weekly loyalty is key. That's where weekly active users (WAUs) come in. This metric reveals far more than just who's logging in — it tells you who's consistently getting value from your product.
In this primer, we’ll dive into why WAUs are so important and how tracking them opens the door to making your product even more irresistible to users.
We’ll go over:
- A quick definition of what WAUs are
- Steps showing you how to track weekly active users
- The importance of tracking WAUs
- Tips for boosting WAUs
- Some important mistakes to avoid when tracking WAUs
Let’s get started.
What are weekly active users?
Weekly active users are a key metric for understanding how often people are interacting with your digital product, whether it's an app, website, or software.
WAU specifically tracks the number of unique users who engage with your product over a 7-day period.
It's important to understand what counts as "engagement." This can vary depending on your business goals. Some common examples include:
- Logging into an account
- Clicking a button or making a selection
- Viewing content (like a video)
- Making a purchase
- Sending a message
To get the most out of tracking WAUs, it's helpful to compare them with daily active users (DAUs). DAUs measure engagement on a daily basis. This gives you a finer-grained view of short-term activity but can fluctuate more due to daily patterns.
WAU, on the other hand, provides a broader weekly view of usage, smoothing out daily variations. Looking at both metrics side-by-side helps you spot ongoing trends in how frequently people return to your product.
How to track WAUs
Accurately tracking WAUs boils down to understanding unique users and their actions within a week. Here's a step-by-step guide to get it right:
1. Define what counts as “engagement” for your particular product
What specific actions signal a user is truly engaged with your product? Don't just rely on logins — think about actions that tie back to your business goals. Consider where the desired action fits in the customer journey. Newly active users might have different engagement patterns than long-term, loyal customers.
2. Choose your specific timeframe
Of course, weekly active users are always measured within a standard 7-day week. Still, picking your starting day (e.g., Monday) and sticking to it for consistent tracking and comparison is a key step for tracking WAUs.
3. Get the right tech for the job
Using analytics tools (such as Google Analytics) is essential. It doesn’t need to be Google Analytics though. Look for features like custom event tracking to define actions beyond pageviews, like button clicks, content views, or purchases.
The system needs accurate unique user identification to separate new and returning users within your chosen week for accurate WAU numbers. Data visualization through charts and graphs makes it far easier to see trends and spot how updates or marketing efforts impact your WAU.
But remember: Data privacy protection is non-negotiable. Be clear about how you collect and use user information, and give users control over their data.
Why is tracking WAUs so important?
Unlike daily active users (DAUs), where numbers can spike or dip based on the day of the week, WAU smooths out those short-term fluctuations. This gives you a clearer view of whether people consistently find value in your product and lets you spot if overall engagement is growing, declining, or staying the same.
WAU goes beyond simple login counts. By defining what makes a user "active" (based on your goals), you'll know if people are truly interacting with your product's core features or just passively browsing.
A steadily increasing WAU is a sign your product is resonating with your target audience. It shows that marketing efforts, new features, or product tweaks are paying off by bringing in engaged users and keeping existing ones coming back.
Let’s take a closer look at some further benefits of tracking WAUs:
- Reveals areas for improvement for your product: If WAU is low or dropping, it's a red flag to investigate. It might point to bugs, confusing design, or a lack of features that meet your users' needs.
- Provides insights into how happy your customers are: High WAU suggests users are getting what they came for. This ties into long-term loyalty and could point to increased customer lifetime value.
- Enables better and more informed marketing strategies: WAU data helps you segment users based on engagement levels. You can tailor campaigns to nurture less active users or reward your most loyal ones.
- Supports data-driven decisions: Instead of gut feelings, WAU gives you concrete numbers to back up product updates, feature changes, or pricing adjustments.
How to increase your WAUs
Boosting your weekly active users means creating a product people love to come back to week after week. Here are three key strategies to make that happen:
1. Put a strong focus on making the user experience as best as it can be
Make sure your product is easy to use, enjoyable, and fulfills a real need for your users. This means:
- Intuitive design: Focus on clear and straightforward design principles. Users should be able to find what they need and complete tasks effortlessly, minimizing frustration.
- Removing roadblocks to value: Identify and eliminate obstacles that prevent users from getting the most out of your product. Address issues like confusing steps, slow loading times, or bugs that disrupt the user flow.
- Gather continuous feedback: Actively solicit user feedback through surveys, interviews, and user behavior analytics. These insights will reveal pain points that might be lowering engagement and suggest areas for improvement.
2. Keep users engaged with regular product updates
Combating product stagnation is critical. Regular updates that introduce new features, address bugs, and deliver fresh content signal to users that you're committed to continuous improvement. Here's how to make sure your updates resonate with users:
- Become user-centric: Pay close attention to user feedback. What features do they crave? Are there persistent annoyances you can fix to enhance their experience? Find answers to these questions through feedback and address them swiftly.
- Prioritization is key: Strike a balance between introducing major new features and incorporating smaller improvements that boost the overall user experience.
- Effective communication: Keep users informed about updates through in-app announcements, email blasts, or social media posts. Generate excitement and encourage them to explore the latest additions.
3. Craft a frictionless and enjoyable onboarding process
A fantastic first-week experience can significantly impact long-term user engagement. Here's how to craft a stellar onboarding journey:
- Clear and guided introduction: Don't throw users into the deep end. Provide clear walkthroughs, helpful tooltips, or concise video tutorials to guide them through the product's core functionalities. Ensure documentation is always at hand for them to consult.
- Personalization: Whenever possible, personalize the onboarding flow to align with the user's specific goals or the problems they're trying to solve. This demonstrates attentiveness from your end, and it shows you’re tailoring the experience to your customers’ needs.
- Celebrate milestones: Motivate users to continue exploring by rewarding them for completing key onboarding steps (through gamification, for example). Acknowledge their progress and keep them engaged with the product's potential.
Mistakes and pitfalls to avoid when tracking WAUs
Getting an accurate picture of your weekly active users means avoiding some common traps that can inflate or distort your numbers.
The unique user dilemma is an easy mistake to make. This means that, if your tracking isn't careful, it's possible to count the same user engaging multiple times within the week as multiple unique users. This is especially tricky if users switch between devices or browsers.
Solution: To combat this, make sure your analytics platform has strong user identification methods. This could involve tying engagement to accounts, using reliable device fingerprinting (mindful of privacy), or a combination of techniques.
For instance, a user logging in on multiple devices will likely be assigned a unique account ID, ensuring they're counted only once.
The multi-device challenge is another factor to consider. Modern users jump between smartphones, tablets, laptops... and you need to track them across all these. Otherwise, you risk double-counting one active user as several.
Solution: Choose a platform (like Mixpanel) that links activity from different devices to a single user profile. Again, this is often done using a unique user ID that's shared across devices whenever someone is logged in to their account.
Next steps
Upon reading our primer, you should now have a solid grasp of how and why your weekly active users matter.
Now, the question is, how can you start tracking and experimenting with this metric so that other key business metrics like revenue, profit margins, and engagement grow, too?
The answer is Eppo.
Eppo is a robust experimentation and feature management platform built to help SaaS companies understand what drives their WAUs and other key business metrics.
Eppo allows you to:
- Pinpoint factors for long-term loyalty: Discover how your most consistently engaged users interact with your product. What key actions or value propositions keep them returning week after week? Eppo’s clear and easy-to-share reports help with this.
- Get granular with WAU insights: Break down your weekly active users by segments (demographics, how they found you, preferences). Understand which user groups are most engaged and deliver experiences for particular contexts with Eppo’s Contextual Bandits and measure their performance.
- Boost WAU through rigorous testing: Conduct A/B tests directly within Eppo, experimenting with changes to onboarding, features, or design. Measure the precise impact these changes have on your weekly active users.
- The Eppo difference: Eppo's warehouse-native approach gives you accurate, unbiased data directly from your source of truth. When combined with its experimentation capabilities, Eppo empowers you to continuously optimize features and workflows for the highest possible WAU.
Ready to raise your WAUs with the power of rigorous experimentation?
Discover what weekly active users (WAUs) are, why they matter, and how to track them for better product decisions.
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