You have all your important numbers collected? The number of downloads, the amount of money they brought you, even the most recent opinions about your app.
However there are essential questions you can’t ignore: “how”, “when”, “where” and “what type of people use your application”.
You can undoubtedly choose an easy way by giving your app to a passerby and watching him try it in front of you. But to tell the truth, people act differently when they are being watched to when they are all alone in their phone. You need more data about how the life is treating your app.
Track the right keys. We will tell you why.
All the right metrics are selected and systematized in accordance to users behavior. Let’s share some basics here:
- acquisition- refers to the channels the users of your app went through to become the users of your app. Gives the answer to the “where” question
- activation - refers to initial experience with your app that gave you a happy crowd made of users. Happy people measured in %
- retention - refers to the number of people who opened your app repeatedly after having downloaded it
- referral - refers to those who shared their positive app-experiences with friends, family and everyone else by posting a link to facebook, twitter and other social networks.
- revenue- refers to a monetary expression of the users behavior.
When you start measuring your data make sure you do not miss anything important.
The relevant trackings will provide you with ideas on how to enhance and develop your application and boost loyalty to it. When you get the sense of these metrics you will come up with new insights into why exactly your application meets the demands of these particular users yet not those and what needs to be done in order to convert other customers into the active users of the app.
What is more:
- it is highly advisable to get beta testers before your app appears in the app store. This way you will get the first indicators.
- figure out what the main objectives of your app are and pick out the data according.
Let’s take a look at those trendy tools that you should follow.
Google Mobile App AnalyticsFree
Platforms: iOs, Android
+ lots of features you need
+ easy to learn for experienced GA users
+ integration with Google Play for conversion tracking
+ promising in future, now pretty new
- in beta for now
- no iTunes integration for conversation
Gives you the following reports organized in four categories:
Acquisitions :find out about your new users. You can track where your users are coming from and how many sessions they’ve enjoyed or in-app revenue they’ve generated (for Android apps on the Google Play Store)
Users :you can get info about new as well as returning users, their country/language, the app version, etc.
Engagement :you can use event tracking like you do on your website, get reports on speed, crashes and exceptions.
Outcomes : you can set up your goal, track the conversion of your objectives and see the goal flow (Google’s equivalent to the funnel/user path).
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Flurry AnalyticsFree
Platforms: iOs, Android, Java ME, Windows Phone, Blackberry
+ extensive and detailed
+ user paths and funnels
+ create up to 10 custom dashboards or use the “classic” one
- confusing, lots of click to find the info
- hard to identify errors
What you can find or add in the dashboards:
- Usage: active users, sessions, session lengths, frequency, retention etc
- Audience: interest of users (your other apps + category), personas (type of your users – defined by Flurry), demographic
- Events: define events, see user paths, create funnelы
- Technical: devices, carriers, firmware versions, error
Filter via segments (age, first session, usage, country, etc), app versions and dates.
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Apsalar – ApScienceFree
Platforms: iOS, Android
+ complete
+ gives analytics across multiple apps
+ real time cohorts, measures engagement of users across time
+ customizable dashboard, gives you the data you want now and first
+ create funnels
+ create events
+ segment users based on events, funnels, cohorts
+ has a free tool to measure performance and return on investment/lifetime value of acquisition campaigns
+ has a free tool that allows developers to target specific users when advertising
- the last “+” is still in private beta
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CountlyFree if self hosted (open source)
Platforms: iOS, Android, Windows Phone, Blackberry
+ unique positioning
+ great user interface
+ stunning design
+ real time
+ open source, you can host it on your own server, cloud versionis coming soon – allows to track and monitor your mobile app analytics in a hosted environment
+ dashboard easy to use
+ track events and use segmentation
+ track sets of events (funnels) that you define from the app
- segment from within the app (but that’s for performance reasons)
- if you want to segment (country, app version, platform), think about it in your app code.
For each app, you can get info on:
· Users and Users Loyalty
· Sessions and Session Frequency
· Countries
· Devices and App Versions
· Carriers and Platforms
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LocalyticsFreemium
Platforms: iOS, Android, Windows Phone, BlackBerry, HTML5
+ help bubbles for new comers
+ once your apps are added – get an overview of each one with the number of sessions or users
+ easy to use
+ compare your apps in criterias (new/returning, sessions, users, etc.) with premium/enterprise versions
+ build your own queries to get a csv file with premium/enterprise versions
+ unlimited apps in free version
+ interesting case studies in their blog
+ has a tool for premium/enterprise versions that let you send in-app messages using advanced segmentation: you can target only users that do specific actions.
- no funnels/sessions length/filters in free version
In the free version of Localytics, you can get the following analytics info for each app:
· App usage and reports (by location, device, carrier, app version, unique users)
· Users and sessions (time periods and new/returning)
· Day-Part Analysis (time of the day when your users are most active)
· Events and attributes
· Annotations (leaving notes on graphs)
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MixpanelFreemium
Stores: iOS, Android
+ event based
+ easy to create funnels
+ nice user interface
+ allows in-depth analysis
+ can tie web to mobile
+ “ActivityFeed” lets yousee a timeline of every action a user (when identified by a profile) takes in your app from day 1
- limited in data points in free version
Mixpanel is an event-based analytics tools: account creation, sharing, upgrade, purchase, etc. You have to define events and event properties for your app.
That’s what you can do:
· Track these events separately or create series of events (funnels).
· Use cohort analysis to see precisely how often users come back and get engaged with your application.
· Build complex queries based on events and demographics
· Tie mobile to web and vice versa
· If you have users’ info
In the free version, there is a limitation to 25,000 data points / month. A data point is counted every time you track an event with Mixpanel. For example, if you have a wallpapers app and if you track the pictures a user picks out, that could be 2,500 users choosing 10 pictures each.
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AskingPointFree
Platform: iOS, Android
+ provides both mobile app analytics and a review/polls system – a unique concept
+ analytics part gives data on usage, devices, versions and demographic
+ create custom events to get basic info on how people used your app
+ allows to ask specific segments of users (based on various criterias, like how they use your app, version, country) to rate your app or to send them a survey/poll
- basic analytics
- no funnel
- less complete than others
So here are the points to consider in order to get the responses on “how”, “when”, “where” and “what type of people use your application”.
Improve your app with that data and tracking!
