Would you pour water into a leaking bucket?
Probably not, right?
But what if that leaking bucket is your own mini app?
If you're seeing new users come in - amazing! That means you're getting some distribution and traction. But if those users don’t stick around, your app might be quietly leaking value. Like water slipping through a crack, they’re trying it once and never coming back.
To build a sustainable mini app - one that not only attracts users but keeps them coming back - you have to look at user retention.
Retention is what turns one-time visitors into loyal users. It’s the foundation for growth, monetization, and long-term success.
Because at the end of the day, that’s what we’re all here to build: sustainable, onchain businesses that last.
Ok, but what is user retention?
User retention refers to the ability of your app to keep users coming back over time after they first start using it. It measures how many users continue to use the app after their first visit.
For example, if 100 people open your app today, and 25 of them are still using it a week later, your 7-day retention rate is 25%.
User retention is important because:
It shows how valuable or engaging your app is.
High retention often leads to higher revenue, better reviews, and organic growth.
It’s cheaper to keep existing users than to acquire new ones.
App analytics data on Warpcast
Warpcast provides some basic usage stats for your mini app via the app dashboard.
While this gives you a helpful high-level overview, it’s not really actionable, especially when it comes to understanding user retention.
Take DAU (Daily Active Users), for example—it’s useful, but it lumps together new and returning users, which can be misleading. You don’t just want to know who’s showing up—you want to know who’s coming back.
That’s why you need to level up your data game. You need actionable analytics.
You need actionable data
Yes, I get it—this is crypto, and most users don’t like sharing data. But having some kind of analytics layer in your mini app is vital if you want to build something sustainable.
With the right data, you can:
Measure real user behavior
Identify drop-off points
Optimize the experience
That’s how you turn a leaky app into a sticky one. Win-win for both you and your users.
You can use any analytics tool that tracks retention:
Google Analytics (easy to set up)
Amplitude or Mixpanel (for deeper product insights)
Plausible (privacy-friendly and simple)
Pick what fits your style—but start tracking. Without data, you're building blind.
Tracking data: install and instrument
Your analytics tools should be added to the app right when it is available. You need plenty of data, and there is a great chance that you will get some users to your app when you launch.
But it is not enough just to add the tracking code to your app and call it a day.
You need to define events to track in your app, these should cover all the actions users can take in your app. The type of events you need to track depends on your app, but here is a mini app example: Drawcast.
In Drawcast:
Users can draw a prompt: we track if a user starts drawing, and if they submitted the drawing
Share this drawing with friends: we track shares as well
Users can join games, and we track this event as well
Other people can guess drawings, and if they guess correctly, they earn points for themselves and for the drawer: we track correct and incorrect guesses
Users earn points and climb the weekly and all-time leaderboard: if they unlock an achievement, we track that
Users can earn badges for winning the weekly leaderboards and completing daily quests: this achievement is tracked as well
There are likely default events your selected analytics tool tracks by default, such as page_view, first_visit events, and other data such as device types, operation system, top pages, etc. These can be really useful when analyzing user retention. More on this a bit later.
I highly recommend tracking as many actions as possible in your analytics tool, so you have a large pool of data, and who knows what you can uncover when analysing your user retention data.Â
New user experience matters - a LOT!
When someone opens your mini app for the first time, your mission is clear: Deliver the core value as fast as possible.
The goal is to help new users reach the AHA moment - that instant when they get what your app does and why it’s worth coming back to. The faster they hit that moment, the better your chances of retaining them.
This early experience is crucial. It often determines your app’s retention curve in the days and weeks that follow.
To improve this, you need to analyze what first-time users do inside your app. Where do they drop off? Where do they succeed? What actions correlate with long-term engagement?
That’s where user cohorts come in.
By grouping users based on when they signed up or what actions they took in their first session, you can spot patterns, identify friction points, and figure out what’s working—and what’s not.
Because in the end, if you nail the new user experience, you’ll set the foundation for strong retention and long-term growth.
Create user cohorts
In Google Analytics, you’ll find a built-in retention chart on your dashboard. It’s useful for a high-level overview, but it shows aggregate data—all users, with no filters.
While that gives you a general retention rate, the real insights come from digging into specific user cohorts. These are groups of users who share certain behaviors, especially those tied to your app’s core value.
We create cohorts to:
Group users who took specific actions
Compare their retention to other groups
Spot what behaviors likely drive better retention
Let’s break it down with an example from Drawcast.
I hypothesized that retention in Drawcast depends on whether a new user:
Draws something
Joins a game and successfully guesses a drawing
So, I set up the following three cohorts:
Cohort 1: All users (everyone who opened the app)
Cohort 2: New users who joined a game and guessed at least 1 drawing in their first visit
Cohort 3: New users who submitted at least one drawing in their first visit
In Google Analytics, I used these event-based filters to define the cohorts.
For Drawcast, I chose weekly retention intervals, but your timeframe should match your app’s usage pattern (daily, weekly, monthly, etc.).
What did the data show?
Drawcast launched on April 22, so data from before that is mostly just internal testing.
Looking at the chart:
Cohort 1 (All Users)
Week 1 retention for users who joined between Apr 20–26: 23%
Week 1 retention for users who joined between Apr 27–May 3: 10.2%
👉 Not only did new user volume drop, but retention also halved. That’s a red flag.
Cohort 2 (Players: joined a game & guessed correctly)
Week 1 retention (Apr 20–26): 47.9%
That’s double the average retention rate. Huge!
Cohort 3 (Drawers: submitted at least 1 drawing)
Week 1 retention (Apr 20–26): 38.3%
Better than average, but not as high as the "players" cohort.
What can we learn from this?
Even with limited data, a few early signals stand out:
Users who play are more likely to come back.
Playing appears to be more engaging than drawing - leading to higher week 1 and week 2 retention rates.
That’s a strong insight, but remember: correlation ≠causation.
This should be tested further in the coming weeks, ideally with more users and in different scenarios.
Quick Disclaimer:
When you're starting out, your dataset is small. That means your insights might not be statistically significant yet. Early data can be noisy, and both false positives and false negatives are common.
The more quality data you gather, the better your decisions will be—and the lower the risk of being misled by random patterns.
So yes, track everything.
Yes, set up retention charts.
But always take early conclusions with a grain of salt.
Taking action
Now that you’ve gained some insight into your app’s retention performance, it’s time to form assumptions and test them!
In the case of Drawcast, here are a few ideas I’m considering based on what the data revealed:
Add an onboarding checklist for new users to ensure they can draw and join a game on their first visit.
Redesign the homepage to emphasize joining a game, since correctly guessing a drawing gives users instant positive feedback.
Introduce daily quests tied to key actions to reinforce the app’s positive feedback loop.
Add stronger incentives to share drawings, as growth has started to slow down.
And of course, there are many more ideas I’d like to test over time.
But before I wrap this up, there's one more important point I want to share…
Gut feeling and talking to users
In the early days, don’t underestimate your gut feeling—and more importantly, talking to your users.
Some of the most valuable insights won’t show up in charts. That’s why I’m actively reaching out to power users and asking:
What keeps you coming back?
What do you enjoy the most?
What do you dislike?
What would make the app more fun or engaging?
These conversations often reveal simple but powerful changes that can make your app stickier and more delightful.
Conclusion
I hope this gives fellow builders like you a helpful starting point to better understand your users, improve retention, and build a mini app people actually want to use in the long-term.
So dig into your analytics, talk to users, and let me know what you uncover.
Let’s BUILD! 🚀
About me
Hey, I'm Tamas, a marketer, product guy, and builder of some offchain and onchain apps. You can find me on X: https://x.com/torok_tomi and Farcaster: https://warpcast.com/tamastorok.eth
