As a business owner, you must admit that product development isn’t enough to hold leadership in the market. You should monetize your app and choose an appropriate advertising campaign. Mobile analytics is also a critical tool in promoting your app. It allows you to understand how users interact with the interface and evaluate how effective the distribution channels are. Moreover, you’re able to focus on some bottlenecks that need to be improved.
In this article, you’ll read about the best analytics tools and metrics for mobile applications, which are vital in a promotion.
What metrics you should analyze?
In-depth analysis and usage of proper metrics allow you to collect relevant data, identify problems, and find solutions. As a result, you can better understand your audience, optimize your product to users’ needs and goals. Here are the most important metrics you should analyze.
Downloads
The more users installed your app, the more successful and profitable it is. Thus, the analysis of the number of app downloads is a critical business metric which highlights app user engagement. Besides tracking installation, you can also monitor sources of app downloads. This metric allows you to assess how effective your marketing campaign, monetization strategy and distribution channels are.
User Acquisition
This KPI metric shows the number of both new and old users who downloaded and installed your mobile app. User acquisition research can also be divided into such categories as device types, age, gender, location, organic search, ad campaigns, etc. Such analysis helps to grow your mobile app, drive higher and stronger user engagement for a product, track user behavior, measure retention rate, and segment audience.
Active App Users
This metric helps to determine active users—whether your customers use the installed app regularly or download it. For proper tracking, it’s better to divide active users into such categories as daily, weekly, and monthly. Broad knowledge of a user base is essential for improving user engagement, planning an app growth, increasing the number of users and downloads. This tool allows enhancing monetization via monitoring user behavior, obtaining specific data on in-app purchases and mobile ad clicks.
Loading Time
The length of loading time affects the number of visitors to your app which open and use it on a daily basis. If your app makes people wait, then you can lose your customers. This metric helps to track all the bottlenecks and speed uploading.
Session Length
Session length shows how much time target users spend using your app—from its opening to closing. Stronger user engagement leads to longer session length. Besides tracking session length and a daily number of sessions, it’s essential to identify those users who are spending the most time using your app and the reasons of why it is so. This approach allows you to improve specific areas with less engagement and increase revenue.
Session Interval
Session interval shows the time lapse between the first session and the next one. This metric helps to track how often your users open and use the app for a specific period. The more often people return to your app with shorter session interval, the better. Tracking session interval allows you to optimize the user experience via prompting regular opens, get insights for improvements, and attract more active users.
Time in App
Longer time in an app means better user engagement. This metric helps to identify how long a user stayed in your app over a specific period—per day, per week, or per month. By tracking time, you measure user behavior, engagement in your mobile app, gain an insight into trends and app usage patterns. Breaking the target audience into segments is essential. If some users spend more time in an app than others, you need to determine the cause. It helps to monetize your app better and improve implemented features.
Screen Flow
In simple words, screen flow is the path a user follows through your app. This metric shows visits per a particular screen, the detailed users’ interactions in a mobile app, and where they went after visits. By tracking in-app navigation, you’re able to improve problem areas. Screen flow analysis allows implementing redesigns to create clearer funnels and new ad campaign to engage dropped users to come back to your app
Retention Rate and Churn Rate
Retention rate means the number of users who return to your app or continue using it in a specific term. This metric allows you to determine an app performance, understand user behavior, and improve the effectiveness of current marketing strategy. The higher the percentage the retention rate shows, the stronger a mobile app is. As a result, you can count on more profits and increase referrals.
Churn rate, in its turn, highlights the percentage of users who left your app in a given period. The primary goal of every app is to achieve the lowest churn rate.
Conversion Rate
Conversion rate means the ratio of user clicks to targeted in-app actions. These actions are aimed to engage users to sign up, fill in a form, leave feedback, or download some useful content for free via registration, etc.
Lifetime Value
Lifetime value allows you to evaluate the total profit the app receives from each app user for all time of cooperation with him or her. With this metric, you can monitor customer loyalty and interest. It also shows how much more you can pay to acquire new users and continue to benefit.
User Growth Rate
This metric shows how the number of users has changed in a certain period—slow growth, high, or steady. User growth rate highlights the results of a marketing strategy and ad campaign.
Abandonment Rate
Even though users download and install mobile apps daily, 25% of them have been used only once during the first half of the year, and 95% have been abandoned after the first month. Abandonment rate is measured as the ratio of transactions in your app to operations that have been stopped. The most critical reasons that affect abandonment are app crashes, loading time, poor UX, and bad mobile ads.
Crash Report
This metric is the last but not the least. App crash is one of the most annoying things for smartphone owners. Different technical flaws which freeze the usage process can make users abandon an app. The crash report allows identifying the exact time and reasons for your app crash. As a result, all bugs are fixed in the fastest way.
Best mobile analytics tools description
There is a vast variety of mobile analytics tools. Find the most suitable solutions for your business using our analytics tools comparison.
Google Analytics
Google Analytics is a free set of advanced analytics tools provided by Google for creating detailed statistics of app visitors. The platform is integrated with AdWords, AdSense, DoubleClick, etc. It is available on iOS and Android platforms.
Apple App Analytics
App Analytics is a free analytics tool that allows measuring various advertising and app related KPIs such as user engagement, marketing campaigns, monetization metrics, tvOS data, etc. It serves iOS and tvOS.
Flurry Analytics
Flurry Analytics is a free mobile app analytics tool with real-time services. The tool allows exploring user behavior, tracking the number of new and active users, engagement rate, demographic data, identifying the most popular app features and smartphone models. It is available on iOS, tvOS, Android, Windows Phone, and others.
Countly
Countly is an open source analytics and marketing platform. It is available for web, mobile, desktop, and IOT devices. It’s free if self-hosted. It allows tracking data on in-app usage, user profiles, crash analytics, etc. Offers push-notification to engage a target audience. Supports iOS, Android, Windows Phone, Blackberry, etc.
Mixpanel
Mixpanel is an analytic platform with a wide range of free and premium services for analyzing in-app user actions and behavior. It serves iOS and Android devices.
Localytics
Localytics is an app analytics software for mobile apps with free and premium features. This tool allows monitoring user behavior, improving user engagement, organizing A/B testing, creating push notifications, tracking downloads and uninstalls, sales funnels, etc. It is available on iOS, Android.
App Annie
App Annie platform provides free and premium app analytics and data on the app downloads, ranking, revenue, etc. Also, the service monitors ad campaigns of competitive platforms. One of the main advantages is considered the analysis of customers’ remarketing behavior. Serves iOS, tvOS, Android, Amazon Appstore, Windows.
AppSee
AppSee is a real-time app analytics platform. This tool is for tracking such KPI metrics as daily active users, conversion rate, retention rate, user behavior, etc. The price depends on the number of sessions. Supports iOS, Android.
Tune
Tune is a free mobile and marketing analytics platform. It gives insight into app store analytics, attribution analytics, in-app marketing, etc. It is available on iOS and Android.
Facebook Analytics
Facebook Analytics contains both free and paid options. This tool provides in-depth data analysis, reports, and insights into the critical KPI metrics. It serves iOS, Android, Unity, PHP, and JS.
Bango
Bango is an analytical tool. It dashboard shows revenue metrics and results of marketing campaigns. To get an estimation, you need to contact the Bango managers. It supports Google, Amazon, Microsoft, Samsung, BlackBerry, etc.
AppFigures
AppFigures gives insights into the critical KPI metrics such as total revenue, ad revenue, app store page views, user feedback, returns, etc. The platform offers both free and paid services. It is currently available on Google Play Market, iOS App Store, Mac App Store, Amazon Appstore, Windows Store.
Amplitude
Amplitude is all about user behavior. The service provides real-time mobile and web analytics. It has free and paid options. By using the platform, you get insight into your app revenue, funnels, user engagement retention, etc. It works for iOS and Android.
Apptentive
Apptentive is an analytics tool which allows understanding user behavior, building trustful in-app communication with users, and receiving real-time feedback data. The platform offers paid custom plan and self-served plan. It is available on iOS and Android.
Apsalar
Apsalar is a free business and users analytics tool. It allows you to track such vital metrics as LTV, ROAS, ROI, the effectiveness of an ad campaign, cross-app funnels, app user cohorts, user engagement. Supported by iOS and Android devices.
Conclusions
As you see, a useful app takes much effort and can’t exist without in-depth data analysis. In this article, we haven’t described all the techniques—there are much more! Thus, tracking proper metrics and using relevant analytics tools that fit your app, are essential to staying ahead of competitive platforms.
By improving your app, you expand the target audience, boost downloads, and make more profits.
