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You're trying to plan the ultimate Fourth of July BBQ. Backyard games? Check. Sparkler stash? Ready. Grill menu? Dialed.
Two days out, you go to open The Weather Channel app to check the forecast, and suddenly, you're not just sweating from the heat. The radar won’t load or is missing entirely. Or the app just sits on the loading screen.
If you’re someone who’s relied on The Weather Channel app as your go-to weather source, this would be a major inconvenience and disruption.
It wasn’t yet peak summer, but in the weeks leading up to the sunshine season, Unwrap surfaced multiple real-time feedback alerts about technical and usability issues inside The Weather Channel app. These frustration surges pointed to problems that risked eroding user trust.
Let’s walk through what the alerts revealed, what’s at stake when a consumer-facing app like this isn’t functioning properly, and just how costly a few missed signals can become.
The Weather Channel’s real-time alerts from Unwrap
Unwrap ingests publicly available data across the top consumer-facing apps. Here’s what it picked up from the Weather Channels’s public app store feedback data:
The radar feature was M.I.A
On April 2nd, total feedback volume for this group more than doubled to 11.3%.
Radar is one of the most-used features in weather apps—and this alert highlighted that it wasn’t just glitching for some users, it was missing entirely. Complaints included constant crashes, blank radar maps, and no weather patterns showing at all.
If you’re trying to plan a camping trip, beach day, or fireworks event, that can be frustrating.
Users couldn’t access the new version of the app
The month prior, on March 5th, feedback around app inaccessibility reached a year-to-date high in one day climbing to 3.3% of total feedback volume.
The most common complaints were the app freezing on the loading screen, failing to update, or refusing to open altogether. For an app people rely on daily, even a short outage can be enough to send them looking for weather information elsewhere.
These alerts showed up in early March and April—right before summer kicks off and when weather-driven plans dominate people’s lives.
But now it’s July. Between Fourth of July celebrations, weekend getaways, and severe summer storms in much of the U.S., this is the season when a weather app becomes one of the most-used tools on a person’s phone. Translation: it’s not the best time for the app to not work as expected.
Let’s talk numbers: What’s at risk?
Now for the math. Because yes—real-time feedback insights might sound like a UX nice-to-have, but in reality, they are a retention and revenue tool.
Globally recognized as the most accurate weather provider, The Weather Channel app carries a lot of responsibility. In 2018, the Weather Channel reported that their app has upwards of 45M monthly users across the App Store and Google Play Store.
That’s a lot of eyeballs—and a lot of expectations.
According to AppFigures, in 2021 the Weather Channel app made ~$617K over a 30 day period in U.S. app stores. If we assume that revenue is consistent throughout the year, the app generates about $7.5M in annual revenue.1 While these aren’t up-to-date metrics, we’ll run with them for our calculations.
Based on the math, each app user is worth $.0139.2 That sounds like pennies—less than pennies to be correct. But if the issues surfaced in Unwrap scaled proportionally with total app users, then those fractional pennies start to add up.
If 3.3% of the Weather Channel’s app users deleted the app after experiencing problems with accessibility, that represents a potential loss in annual revenue of $247.7K. If 11.3% of app users said goodbye, that revenue loss jumps to $848K.3
These numbers compound if these problems persist and churn rate climbs—tanking retention metrics and possibly jeopardizing acquisition as well.
What real-time alerts make reality
The good news? Both of the issues above would've surfaced before they continued to escalate. By catching spikes in feedback right away, product and engineering teams would’ve had the opportunity to:
- Become alerted to bugs in new versions faster
- Flag rollout issues across platforms (iOS vs Android)
- Reprioritize roadmap fixes based on what real users were struggling with
- Communicate clearly about known issues to keep user trust intact
Proactive alerting is really more than just fixing problems. Real-time alerts give teams time to respond before bad experiences turn into more 1-star reviews or uninstalls.
This fourth of July, checking the weather shouldn’t be a hassle
As millions of Americans head outside to celebrate, they’ll be checking their weather apps to make last-minute calls—whether to pack an umbrella, delay travel, or cancel those surprise sparkles.
The Weather Channel is one of the most trusted names in meteorology. But trust is a moving target. If a radar goes dark or a user can’t rely on getting into the app, even for a day, users will find alternatives—because it’s easier than ever to do so.
Real-time feedback ensures that when something’s off, teams know right away and can make it right before customers go away.
Here’s how we did the math:
1 Estimated annual revenue from The Weather Channel app: 617,000 / 30 = 20,567. 20,567 x 365 = 7,506,833
2 Estimated revenue from each user: 45M monthly users x 12 = 540M annual app users. 7.5M / 540M = $0.0139
3 Estimated revenue loss from %s of app users:
- 3.3%: 540M x .033 = 17,820,000 users. 17,820,000 x .0139 = $247,698
- 11.3%: 540M x .11 = 61,020,000 users. 61,020,000 x .0139 = $848,178
