How We React to a New App’s Mishaps

The rebranded Max streaming service debuted in May 2023 with a burst of new series, new access to shows from Warner Bros and Discovery+, and the promise of a popular series’ finale a few days later. Some initial users, though, got a less pleasant “Succession”: log-in errors, glitches and crashes.

In some mixed news for app managers, a recent study led by the University of Maryland found that consumers actually get more engaged after an app crashes once, due to their curiosity and need for closure. Only after experiencing repeated, concentrated crashes and getting frustrated do they give up, according to the research published in the Journal of Marketing.

“People want to maybe see the weather forecast, finish a mobile game, watch the rest of a video or interact with friends on social media,” said Michel Wedel, Distinguished University Professor and PepsiCo Chair in Consumer Science at the Robert H. Smith School of Business. “So they have a particular goal, and when a goal is interrupted there’s a psychological tension that builds up, and people have a bigger desire to complete that goal.”

Competition in the app market is fierce—there are an estimated 3.3 million Android apps and over 1.9 million for iOs—so companies rush the release of flawed apps or updates to them and fix the mistakes afterward, Wedel said. As a result of this iterative process, app users experience a lot of outages and freezes.

He worked with Seoungwoo Lee of South Korea’s Yonsei University and Savannah Wei Shi and Kirthi Kalyanam, both of Santa Clara University, to determine how this affects user behavior, using a survey and three experiments that manipulated crashes on a gaming app.

They used observational data from an app that aggregates retailers’ catalogs and measured engagement via the number of pageviews, finding a considerable loss in content consumption when the app crashes. But unlike a conventional product failure, users actually increase their content consumption in the following session. That increase in pageviews, however, doesn’t compensate for the loss during the crashed session. And, unsurprisingly, repeated crashes curtail app engagement.

“They’re more careful in looking at the app, which means that if it relies on advertising revenue, which is based on pageviews, revenue can go down dramatically,” Wedel said. The same holds for in-app purchases. “If the app crashes, all of these sources of revenue will decrease.”

The research team recommended that developers exercise caution before releasing multiple new features that may trigger clustered crashes, and to respond quickly to widespread crashes.

Developers may also benefit from targeting users who website metrics show are more willing to persevere through app crashes, the researchers said. Wedel said if the app works well with this group, then the app publisher should move forward with rolling it out across the entire customer base.

He also recommended that companies send post-crash messages to users to mitigate the impact. “The developer can send a pop-up message on the app or to customers’ devices that says, ‘We apologize, something went wrong, please come back to us,’ as opposed to, ‘There is a problem, try updating your operating system.’”