How We React When Apps Crash

High-profile mobile app crashes reveal how life can be upended when an app freezes abruptly or shuts down. The Sonos app crash in May of last year left users of the wireless multi-room sound systems unable to do things like edit playlists or even play anything at all. Sonos hurriedly released a new, but unfortunately buggy app that had critical features missing. The snafu cost the company hundreds of millions of dollars and cost the CEO his job.

The rushed release of apps or updates to them is increasingly becoming the norm. Smith’s Michel Wedel calls it learning in the marketplace. “In other words, they put something out quickly and fix the mistakes afterward.” As a result, app users experience a lot of outages and freezes. Wedel, Distinguished University Professor and PepsiCo Chair in Consumer Science at the University of Maryland Robert H. Smith School of Business, 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 impacts user behavior, and “in particular, how people engage with the apps after they crash.”

They found that when a mobile app crashes, it shortens the user’s session and cuts down on the content consumed. But interestingly, following a single crash, page views increase. Wedel says, “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. 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. It’s called the Zeigarnik Effect.”

The reaction is different when an app crashes frequently. Wedel says these clustered crashes are happening quite a bit in the industry. He points to the May 23, 2023, conversion from HBO Max to what is now simply known as Max. “The streaming service’s app kept on crashing and caused a lot of annoyance for customers. When these crashes keep on occurring and especially when they happen in a short amount of time, people do get discouraged and use the app less. Some stop using the app altogether.”

New feature releases cause the most app crashes and disrupt advertising revenue. “If an application continually crashes, even if people are still using it, we see that the engagement goes down,” says Wedel. “So people don’t look at as many pages. They’re more careful in looking at the app, which means that if it relies on advertising revenue, which is based on page views, revenue can go down dramatically.” The same holds for in-app purchases. “If the app crashes, all of these sources of revenue will decrease.”

Wedel and his co-authors recommend developers exercise caution when it comes to premature releases of multiple new features that may trigger clustered crashes. They also say it would be wise to respond quickly to widespread crashes to prevent users from experiencing repeated interruptions in a short period of time. “Often an app will crash several times following a new release before the developer notices.”

Instead of the currently popular mass release of major changes, the researchers say developers may benefit from targeting users who are more resilient to app crashes. “Identify the customers that respond least negatively to these stoppages—the ones who try to open the app again and again after it crashes—and target them.” Wedel says if it turns out the app works well with this group, then the app publisher should move forward with rolling it out across the entire customer base.

Sending post-crash messages to users is effective to mitigate the impact after a crash happens. “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.’” According to Wedel, the best message is one in which the company takes ownership of the problem, rather than blaming the user. These kinds of messages can be effective in maintaining customer loyalty and trust in the company.

The research, “The Impact of App Crashes on Consumer Engagement,” is published in the Journal of Marketing.