Product Benchmarks: Created by Mixpanel

2019
Product
Benchmarks
Report
C R E AT E D BY MI X PA N EL
Table of
Introduction 3
Methodology 5
Contents Reach
How many people have used your product recently?

6
Activation 10

What percentage of new users have experienced your
product’s value?
Active usage 13
Are people performing a key action?
Engagement 15
How engaged are your active users?
Retention 19
How many of your active users come back?
Conclusion 22
About Mixpanel 23
Appendix 24
P R O D U C T B E N C H M A R KS R EP O R T 2019 2
Introduction
Over the past decade, customer data has become In this report, you’ll find:
a rich source of insight that fuels disruption and
innovation across all industries. User analytics
A comparison of how products perform
software has given the power to anyone, not just
data scientists, to get answers to more questions
in five strategic areas: reach, activation,
quickly—and at a lower cost. But how do you active usage, engagement, and retention
actually put this power to good use?
A breakdown of product benchmarks by
We’ve covered the first step—choosing the metrics industry: Finance, Media, eCommerce,
that matter to your business—in the Guide to Product and SaaS (Software as a Service)
Metrics. In this report, we’ll draw from Mixpanel internal
data to break down key product benchmarks and trends,
uncover the difference between the average and best- An analysis of product performance
in-class products, and reveal the path to innovation and across mobile apps, desktop, and
competitive advantage. mobile web, highlighting trends and
opportunities by platform
Key Takeaways
18X is the new 10X. Across all industries, new user growth
is driven primarily by mobile.
The gap between the average and the best products is A pullback in desktop user growth indicates that improving
getting wider. The best (90th percentile) products grow mobile experiences is now table stakes for any business. This
18X faster than average products. As consumer demand is particularly important for the online shopping sector, where
is constantly shifting, use data and analytics to accelerate e-retailers see negative growth in desktop users and a surge in
speed to market. mobile app users.
SaaS product adoption is slow, but User retention in eCommerce is at an all-

building a mobile app can give you time low; use personalization to reward
an edge. your most valuable customers and
encourage loyalty.
As SaaS continues to eat the world, very few products can At below 5%, monthly user retention is low on average across
turn casual users into active ones. Whether the slow user all industries, and extremely low in eCommerce (1%). Armed
adoption is a result of poor user experience, insufficient with the right user data, you can personalize your lifecycle
onboarding, or lack of perceived value, the numbers alone marketing to deliver relevant content for each customer at the
don’t tell. The numbers do show that SaaS mobile app right time to boost engagement and reduce churn.
users are more engaged, indicating an opportunity to better
serve users on the go.
ACTIVE USERS
Methodology
1.2 Billion
PRO D UCTS
638
USER EVENTS
78,338,393,386
IND USTRIES
4
PLATFOR MS
3
TIME FR A ME
2018 - 2019
SECTION
REACH
- 01
How many people
have used your
product recently?
What is Reach?
The total number of users who performed any
action in a product (calculated monthly)
01 REACH
User growth by industry (MoM):
A measure of top-of-funnel performance, reach
Median vs. best-in-class
represents the total number of people who % USER GROWTH MoM 90TH PERCENTILE
have used the product in a recent time period.

Regardless of the acquisition channel, reach 1%
FINANCE
includes all the users who could potentially 116%
become active and move further down the funnel 2%

MEDIA
to convert, making this metric most meaningful 47%
to growth teams. 2%
ECOMMERCE
18%
3%
The percentage change in reach month-over-month SAAS
13%
(MoM), or user growth, tells you how quickly products
grow. Based on our data, products have an average 0% 25% 50% 75% 100%
steady user growth rate of ~2.65% a month. At 1.8% and

2.3% month-over-month, Finance and Media grow at
a slower-than-average rate. It’s an indicator of market % %USER
USERGROWTH
GROWTHMoM
MoM 90TH
90THPERCENTILE
PERCENTILE
maturity, calling on companies to innovate and look for

new avenues of value creation.
1%1%
FINANCE
FINANCE
11
2%2%
MEDIA
MEDIA
47%
47%
P R O D U C T B E N C H M A R KS R EP O R T 2019 2%2% 7
ECOMMERCE
ECOMMERCE
eCommerce:
User growth (MoM) by platform 01 REACH
4% Of course, certain businesses and user segments grow

3.6%
3.1%
faster than others. The gap between the average and 90th
3%
percentile1 is wide—a clear sign that the top few companies
dominate the market. To be exact, best-in-class products
2%
grow ~18X faster than average.
1%
Best-in-class products grow
18x
0%
-0.03% faster
-1% than average
DESKTOP MOBILE APP MOBILE WEB
Across all verticals, user growth is driven primarily

by mobile app users, with the notable exception of
Desktop user growth (MoM) eCommerce, where mobile web user growth leads by a
small percentage. This situation may be linked to mobile
web having a low barrier of entry for online shopping—
FINANCE -1.5%
one that sells casual shoppers on the immediacy and
MEDIA 1.5%
convenience without the commitment of downloading an
app. Desktop reach, on the other hand, has plateaued, with
ECOMMERCE -0.03% this year’s numbers in the negative for Finance (-1.56%)
and eCommerce (-0.03%).
SAAS 2.6%
-2% -1% 0% 1% 2% 3%
1
The 90th percentile is the value below which 90% of the data points fall
4%
SaaS
3.6%
User growth (MoM) by platform

3% 6%
6%
01 REACH
2.1%
2%
This shift in usage by platform is especially apparent 4%
in SaaS, which has traditionally been desktop-first. 3%
Compared to other verticals, SaaS products show the

1%
2%
biggest increase in reach for mobile app users. As more 0.64% 1%
people travel for work and stay connected after business
hours, SaaS mobile apps provide a convenient way for 0%
0%
people to keep working while on the go. DESKTOP
DESKTOP MOBILE APP
MOBILE APP MOBILE WEB
MOBILE
All industries
In 2019, SaaS products saw a 2X higher User growth (MoM) by platform
4%
rate of growth in reach for mobile app 4% 3.6%
3.6%
users compared to web users.
3%
3%
Predictably, mobile is the key driver of user growth

2.1%
across industries. Granted, our data set doesn’t include 2% 2.1%
2%
smart speakers and other IoT devices—the data point
that could potentially alter the magnitude (if not the
direction) of the mobile consumer shift. 1%
1%
0.64%
0.64%
0%
0%
DESKTOP
DESKTOP MOBILE APP
MOBILE APP MOBILEWEB
MOBILE WEB
SECTION
AC TI VATIO N
What percentage of new
- 02
users have experienced
your product’s value?
What is an Activation?
A measure of how many users get value from your product within
the first week: calculated as % new users (based on user creation
date) who performed a key action in the first 7 days
02 ACTIVATION
Industry Key Actions

Success!
Activation is the moment when a user first Media Play media/view media
realizes the value of your product. Some call View ad
it an “aha moment” or “the eureka effect.” Pay

From a user’s perspective, it’s when they figure Subscribe
out how to benefit from your website or app;
from a business’s perspective, it’s when the
first conversion happens. From both sides, this Finance Transact/trade/transfer
moment is crucial to a product’s success. Deposit
View balance
Product managers and marketers work hard to get
Create account
users to this moment quickly, through onboarding,
personalization, and lifecycle marketing. Ideally, this “aha
moment” happens in the first week, laying the foundation eCommerce Add to cart
for higher engagement and lower customer churn. Check out
This activation moment (or the first “key action”) is

Saas Subscribe
different for every industry; it also depends on your
business goals. Media companies, for example, consider View report
“play/view media” meaningful, while eCommerce Create account

businesses care about “add to cart.” Complete application
Download
Check out
02 ACTIVATION
20%
All industries 20%
Some industries enjoy a higher on-average activation
rate; 17% of SaaS users are activated in the first week, with % user activation 15%
Media coming in close at 16%. Finance and eCommerce in the first week 11%
by platform
users, however, might take a little more time (or a lot more 10%
convincing), judging by the low activation rates. 6%
5%
Across the board, mobile app users realize the value quickly.
0%
For online retailers, mobile apps enjoy almost 10X the first- MOBILE APP DESKTOP MOBILE WEB
week activation rates of desktop and mobile web.
% user activation in the first week by industry:

Median vs. best-in-class
MEDIAN 6%
FINANCE
90TH PERCENTILE 33%
16%
MEDIA
58%
4%
ECOMMERCE
22%
17%
SAAS
65%
0% 20% 40% 60% 80%
SECTION
ACTIVE USAGE
- 03
Are people performing a
key action in a specified
period of time?
Daily active users: the number of people who
performed 1 or more key action in a day
Weekly active users: the number of people who

performed 1 or more key action in a week
03 ACTIVE USAGE
While user growth is paramount to the health of any

business, the growth of active users is perhaps the
truest measure of the product’s impact. A common Growth in weekly active users (MoM)
definition of active users takes into account all
users who visit or interact with the product daily,
weekly, or monthly. For the purpose of this report, MEDIAN 90TH PERCENTILE
we narrowed it down to those users who took

20%
meaningful actions. FINANCE
159%
3%
Growth in reach (total number of users) and in WAU (weekly
MEDIA
32%
active users) paints a mixed picture. Based on the low reach
numbers, Finance products, for example, are struggling 9%
ECOMMERCE
22%
to lure new users. Yet the number of weekly active users in
Finance grows at 4X the average rate for other verticals. 4%
SAAS
72%
Reach and WAU data tells several stories. It may be that 0% 50% 100% 150% 200%
Finance users are literally more invested in using the

product, compared to users in Media or eCommerce, and
the high value of each acquired user makes up for the slow
rate of overall growth. Or it may be that fintech companies
are simply less aggressive in acquiring new users, compared
to other verticals. After all, reach is a more controllable
metric compared to WAU. (A variety of paid channels can
give any business a quick boost.)
SECTION
- 04
ENGAGEMENT
How engaged are

your active users?
What is Engagement?
A measure of how frequently users interact with the
product while performing key actions: calculated
as total key actions in a week divided by WAU
04 ENGAGEMENT
Across all industries, active users interact with

products differently. In the section on usage, we
looked at how many users log in to perform a key
(meaningful) action each week. Now, we’ll zoom User engagement by industry
in to how frequently active users perform this
action each week—and how user activity varies
throughout the week.
FINANCE 8
While the data on how much time users spend per product
MEDIA 34
session is outside the scope of this report, the number of
key actions per week could indicate how much attention—
today’s scarcest resource—people have for different ECOMMERCE 3
products, and could even hint at user satisfaction by

industry (assuming that most people engage more with SAAS 12
products they enjoy more).

0 10 20 30 40
If that’s the case, people clearly enjoy Media products KEY EVENTS/WAU
the most, based on the number of key actions (34) that
an average active user takes every week. SaaS comes in
second at 12 actions, placing the products we play with
and work with at the top of the Engagement chart. Online
shopping comes in last. That’s not to say that people
dislike shopping, but eCommerce engagement clearly lags
behind other industries, including Finance.
04 ENGAGEMENT
Weekly activity trends and When you know your baseline engagement and the industry
benchmark, you can begin experimenting to improve your
the best days to engage results. Most commonly, marketers engage users by sending
them emails or push notifications. User analytics can help you
find the right triggers, but you also want to consider timing.
The data below can point to the best (and the worst) days of
the week to reach out to users.
User activity by day of the week

(% change in DAU compared to weekly average)
4% 4%
3%
2%
2%
1% 0%
0%
-2%
-4%
-4%
-6%
-6%
SUNDAY MONDAY TUESDAY WEDNESDAY THURSDAY FRIDAY SATURDAY
04 ENGAGEMENT
Not surprisingly, user activity slows down on the weekend, when people appear to have renewed interest in budgeting,
with Sunday showing the biggest dip in daily active users. and money is top of mind. Media products also see a spike
Friday is the third-slowest day of the week for users across in usage early in the week on Monday and Tuesday; low
all industries except SaaS users, who consistently use their engagement on Sundays suggests that other activities (such
favorite tools before heading into the weekend. User activity as TV) are competing for limited user attention.
spikes on Tuesday in all industries—and especially Finance—
User activity by day of the week

(% change in DAU compared to weekly average)
5%
4% 4%
SaaS 4% Media
3% 3% 3%
2% 2%
2%
1%
1%
0%
0%
-2% -1%
-2%
-4% -3%
-6% -5%
-8%
-8%
-9%
SUNDAY MONDAY TUESDAY WEDNESDAY THURSDAY FRIDAY SATURDAY -10%
SUNDAY MONDAY TUESDAY WEDNESDAY THURSDAY FRIDAY SATURDAY
1% 1% 1% 1%
1% 6%
6%
eCommerce Finance
4%
0% 4%
0%
2%
2%
-1% 0%
-1% -1%
-2%
-2%
-4%
-4%
-3% -3% -6%
-3% -6%
SUNDAY MONDAY TUESDAY WEDNESDAY THURSDAY FRIDAY SATURDAY SUNDAY MONDAY TUESDAY WEDNESDAY THURSDAY FRIDAY SATURDAY
SECTION
RETENTION
How many of
- 05
your active users
come back?
What is Retention?
A measure showing whether users are coming back
to use the product: calculated over 7 and 30 days
05 RETENTION
7-day retention by industry 2

As the cost of user acquisition increases every
year and in every industry, customer loyalty
becomes the primary path to profitability. FINANCE MEDIA ECOMMERCE
Retention measures the percentage of people

100%
who continue to use a product over a particular
period (e.g., a week or a month). 75%
61%
It’s not just product managers who look at product 50% 38%
retention. This metric is fundamental for marketers,

25% 16% 13% 12% 11% 10% 11%
executives, and investors looking to evaluate the health 8% 10% 8% 8% 7% 8% 8%
of a firm. But for product managers specifically, analyzing 2% 1% 1% 1% 1% 1%
0%
retention by customer cohorts and collecting qualitative 1 2 3 4 5 6 7
feedback helps identify at-risk customers so teams

can plan accordingly. The 7-day and 30-day retention
benchmarks by industry presented in this report provide
some context for understanding baseline retention—and
can serve as a starting point for optimization.
2
This report doesn’t include SaaS retention data.
30-day retention by industry
5%
5%
5%
5%
4%
4%
4%
4%
3%
3%
05 RETENTION
2%
2%
Media products may have the strongest retention
1%
1%
rate in the first week, but when you look at the 30-day 1%
1%
rate, Finance emerges as the winner—albeit by a small

0%
0%
margin. At just 1%, eCommerce products show the
FINANCE MEDIA ECOMMERCE
weakest 30-day retention rate. It could be that online FINANCE MEDIA ECOMMERCE
shoppers are a fickle bunch or simply don’t shop very

frequently; the data can’t say for sure. In eCommerce
and other industries, however, mobile app users show a
30-day retention by platform
8%
7%
little more promise—another argument for businesses
to accelerate the transition from “mobile-friendly” to 6%
“mobile-first.”
4%
3%
2%
1%
0%
MOBILE APP DESKTOP MOBILE WEB
Conclusion The competition is stiff as companies in Finance, Media,

eCommerce, and SaaS race to acquire, engage, and retain
users—a trend that naturally reflects slower on-average
rates of growth and weaker retention. A few companies
manage to break through; most do not. Yet the rewards can
be great for those companies that are up for the challenge:
the gap between the average and best-in-class products is
growing wider than ever before. Our reach data shows an 18X
difference between the median and 90th percentile rate of
growth in monthly active users.
Cross-platform analysis indicates that a strong mobile

strategy can give you an edge, especially in Finance,
which experienced a slight negative growth in desktop
users (-1.56%), and SaaS, where the numbers show higher
engagement rates for mobile app users. User activation is
impressively high on mobile apps in eCommerce, yet overall
retention rates (just 1%!) across platforms reveal massive
potential for improvement through personalized lifecycle
marketing on web and mobile channels. Understanding how
users engage throughout the week can guide you towards a
path of experimentation and incremental improvement.
About At Mixpanel, our mission is to increase the rate of

innovation. Not only as a company, but for the businesses
Mixpanel we serve. Through our analytics and engagement

product, companies can analyze how and why their users
engage, convert, and retain in real time across web,
mobile, and smart devices. Then they can use that data to
improve their business and products.
Mixpanel serves over 26,000 companies from different

industries around the world, including Samsung, Twitter,
and BMW. Headquartered in San Francisco, Mixpanel has
offices in New York, Seattle, Austin, London, Barcelona,
Paris, Amsterdam, and Singapore.
For more information, visit: www.mixpanel.com
Want more product insights delivered

in your inbox every two weeks?
Subscribe at www.mixpanel.com/blog
Appendix Metric Definition
The total number of users who performed any action in a

Reach
product (calculated monthly)
Daily active users: the number of people who performed 1 or

DAU
more key action in a day
Weekly active users: the number of people who performed 1 or

WAU more key action in a week
A measure of how frequently users interact with the product

Engagement while performing key actions: calculated as total key actions in
a week divided by WAU
A measure of how many users get value from your product

Activation within the first week: calculated as % new users (based on user
creation date) who performed a key action in the first 7 days
A measure showing whether users are coming back to use the

Retention
product: calculated over 7 and 30 days
What’s a key (meaningful) action?
An action defined as meaningful to the company’s business (e.g.,“add to

cart” for a shopping app, “play video” for a video product, etc.).
For more information, visit: www.mixpanel.com

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2019

How many people have used your product recently?

Are people performing a key action?

How engaged are your active users?

How many of your active users come back?

SaaS product adoption is slow, but User retention in eCommerce is at an all-

have used the product in a recent time period.

become active and move further down the funnel 2%

steady user growth rate of ~2.65% a month. At 1.8% and

maturity, calling on companies to innovate and look for

4% Of course, certain businesses and user segments grow

Best-in-class products grow

DESKTOP MOBILE APP MOBILE WEB

Across all verticals, user growth is driven primarily

User growth (MoM) by platform

Compared to other verticals, SaaS products show the

Predictably, mobile is the key driver of user growth

What percentage of new

Industry Key Actions

realizes the value of your product. Some call View ad

it an “aha moment” or “the eureka effect.” Pay

for higher engagement and lower customer churn. Check out

This activation moment (or the first “key action”) is

“play/view media” meaningful, while eCommerce Create account

convincing), judging by the low activation rates. 6%

week activation rates of desktop and mobile web.

% user activation in the first week by industry:

0% 20% 40% 60% 80%

Weekly active users: the number of people who

While user growth is paramount to the health of any

we narrowed it down to those users who took

Finance users are literally more invested in using the

How engaged are

Across all industries, active users interact with

products, and could even hint at user satisfaction by

products they enjoy more).

User activity by day of the week

SUNDAY MONDAY TUESDAY WEDNESDAY THURSDAY FRIDAY SATURDAY

User activity by day of the week

7-day retention by industry 2

Retention measures the percentage of people

retention. This metric is fundamental for marketers,

feedback helps identify at-risk customers so teams

30-day retention by industry

rate, Finance emerges as the winner—albeit by a small

shoppers are a fickle bunch or simply don’t shop very

MOBILE APP DESKTOP MOBILE WEB

Conclusion The competition is stiff as companies in Finance, Media,

Cross-platform analysis indicates that a strong mobile

About At Mixpanel, our mission is to increase the rate of

Mixpanel we serve. Through our analytics and engagement

Mixpanel serves over 26,000 companies from different

For more information, visit: www.mixpanel.com

Want more product insights delivered

Appendix Metric Definition

The total number of users who performed any action in a

Daily active users: the number of people who performed 1 or