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What is App Analytics? Great mobile app analytics tools for dummies

Mobile app development is a process that, contrary to appearances, does not end with the release of the application on the market. Many people forget about the last stage of the software development life cycle, i.e., maintenance. Meanwhile, without support, ongoing updates, and further development, the application begins to age and becomes less attractive to users. And yet, for each application, its users are of crucial importance: they decide on the development of the application, whether a given function is, e.g., user-friendly, communicate their needs and expectations, and impact functionalities.

As a software development company, we know that many conclusions can be drawn from the behavior of users, and it is worth checking how the application functions in users' eyes. App analytics, which allows you to track traffic and users, will be helpful in this task, thanks to which you can optimize the performance of your applications. But first, what is application analysis?

What is App Analytics?

The majority of mobile app analytics is essentially the same as their web counterparts; they monitor and analyze user activity and events on apps. Using an app analytics program gives you access to crucial information about how your app works and where you can make improvements. You may optimize your application to be as user-focused as feasible by seeing how people use it. App analytics are useful in the mobile world, where app marketers use them to learn about how people use their apps and check whether the app idea that stands behind them works. App analytics is a type of software that tracks and analyzes users' mobile app usage. Although the focus is on monitoring activity in the smartphone industry, app analytics focuses primarily on data analysis using iOS and Android platforms. Mobile analytics is the process of collecting user activity data, analyzing it for intent, and taking action to increase retention, engagement, and conversion rates.

Analysis used to be done in Excel and SQL, but it has been mostly replaced by a few tools that make following analytics best practices much easier. In a brief mobile app, marketers are using app analytics tools to track and analyze app store data (i.e. user behavior data) to improve user engagement and create adjusted mobile strategy and marketing campaigns.

The importance of analytics in your mobile app? Why is this the crucial point for achieving success nowadays?

Without visibility, your application may fall short of meeting your users' demands, no matter how beautiful or useful it is. When that happens, your consumers will migrate to other platforms or providers in order to obtain what they want.

You not only get the tools you need to improve your app's performance by using mobile application analytics, but you also receive a slew of benefits in four key areas:

• ROI: Make use of the real-time ROI assessment to enhance the value and, ultimately, ROI of your app by gaining a better sense of consumers through data.
• Data-driven methods: With more access to data, you may figure out what drives future ad initiatives. With a clear depiction of past triumphs and failures, you can adjust your approach using data-driven ideas.
• Personalized strategies: You're more likely to offer customers what they want or need if you segment and target them with greater specificity. You may find these groups by utilizing app analytics and start targeting them with tailored tactics.
• Goal tracking: You may use Google's advertising platform to track the effectiveness of each acquisition channel. You can devote additional time and effort to these channels by recognizing them.

The four categories above aren't the only reasons to use a mobile app analytics solution. However, understanding these categories is critical to app success as a whole.

The more value a mobile app provides to its customers, the greater its chances of remaining in the market for a long time. In real life, giving outstanding customer service may be tough. This is due to the fact that user behaviors and market trends are ever-changing.

However, mobile app analytics solutions may assist you bridge the gap and ensure that you don't miss out on any important new features. With app analytics, organizations may track user behavior such as app openings and usage duration while in-app. These reports can be used by different teams to enhance various aspects of your software.

Analytics metrics are used by product managers to refocus the product's direction as well as improve the app's overall quality. On the other side, app developers and marketers may improve code performance and generate more lucrative targeted marketing campaigns, respectively.

App analytics enable you to do the following:

• In every performance area, a higher return on investment (ROI).
• It'll raise the standard of customer care in your company. You'll be able to deliver superior customer service by gaining better data accuracy and using it to serve clients better.
• Customer-centric, user-specific marketing efforts.
• App retention and downloads are up, thanks to the data-driven rise in app usage.
• It is also important that managers have a clear vision for the future and are capable of assessing personnel accomplishments.

What KPIs Should You Track for Your Mobile App Analytics?

It is easy to lose focus on mobile app metrics; however, seven important KPIs (Key Performance Indicators) should be tracked to measure the success of an app and its overall user experience. These seven KPI's may not represent all the best apps analytics that you can see, but they provide measurable insights about how a product is performing and highlight areas to improve.

• Retention rate: This statistic measures how many of your customers are active users. This number also informs you about the number of app users you are losing owing to churn.
• Lifetime value (LTV): This formula helps you calculate your customers' total value over the course of their relationship with your company.
• Uninstalls: It's critical to know how many people uninstall your app in order to understand why they did so.
• Cohort Analysis: This part of the report focuses on dividing users into traffic sources, countries, and devices, as well as analyzing the associated figures.
• ROI: This number indicates how much money you've spent versus how much money you've earned on a single project.
• Cost per acquisition (CPA): This is a great tool to use to calculate exactly how much you spend on each acquisition.
• User growth rate: The number of new users within a specific period is known as the "growth rate."

Types of App Analytics tools

App analytics tools are often divided into many categories, such as app marketing analytics, in-app analytics, and app performance analysis.

In-app analytics

In-app analytics measures everything a user does inside an app. Using mobile analytics solutions for this class of applications helps you to understand how customers use your software.

In-App analytics KPIs

• Device type: manufacturer & operating system
• In-app behavior: clicks, levels completed, features used
• Location, gender, age and language of users
• Whether user is new or returning
• Number of installs & downloads
• Session duration
• Conversion rates & revenue

Insights from your data can shine a light on areas that must be improved, such as content, product, or app design. They also assist you in determining who your users are by using relevant data such as attributes and personas to explain the post-publishing development and improve UX for maximum return on investment.

App performance analytics

This category, which is sometimes referred to as "machine-to-human communication," is concerned with the user less than other app analytics categories and more with the underlying technology. As a result, it serves as the foundation for all of your other app analytics types. The foundation of enhancing your app's performance is analytics regarding user engagement and activity. If you don't have this data, it will be nearly difficult to retain consumers since if an app doesn't work or crashes every few minutes as a user, you won't find it appealing.

App Performance KPIs

• Carrier latency
• API latency
• Uptime
• Crashes
• Exceptions
• Technical errors
• Data transactions

App advertising analytics

You also get analytics tools that cover the app's performance on marketing channels in addition to generic app analytics that look at both technical and user experience. This tool should be the centerpiece of any effective app marketing campaign, and what enables ROI calculation.

Another set of metrics that app advertising analytics tools may evaluate include returns on ad spend and ad impressions. This way, you can hone your ads and assess the efficacy of your spending by monitoring these metrics. Marketers can learn what is effective and ineffective for each traffic source, then optimize their marketing efforts.

App Advertising KPIs

• CTR (click through ratio): the ratio between the number of instances when an ad was displayed and clicked through
• CR (conversion ratio): the ratio between the total number of people who interacted with your ad and took actions (e.g. install, purchase, etc.)
• CPC (cost-per-click): how much a single click on an ad within an app costs
• eCPM (effective cost-per-mile): the effective cost of 1,000 ads displayed in your app
• CPI (cost-per-install): the cost of when each user installs an app

App marketing analytics (a.k.a. app store analytics)

Advertisements, offers, and cross-promotion are just a few of the elements that may be included in advertising campaigns. However, to get an idea of what works and what doesn't, you'll need to utilize marketing analytics. Analytics from the App Store are used to create reports on mobile app marketing performance. It evaluates how changes in your search keywords, meta data, and other app store-related elements affect your visibility and performance. Furthermore, it displays information about how consumers come across your app: do they discover it on the App Store or on other websites? App marketing analytics is a tool that gives you a comprehensive look at how well your app is optimized in different stores.

Marketing Analytics KPIs

• Installs: Consider how many people downloaded your app and the route that leads consumers to install it.
• Views: How often does your app get viewed? Is it being followed by a specific deep link, or have consumers of another application switched to yours?
• Purchases: When someone purchases an item inside your app, or when they buy the app itself
• Registration:Recognize why people joined an app after identifying the need for registration.
• Content viewed: Specific audiences for each page are shown, including the pages that are most frequently visited.
• Shares
• Invites

How do I use analytics for apps?

It's critical to pick an analytical program for your company and understand what it produces for your business and how it will help you enhance your performance. Understanding data analysis will assist you in testing - or enhancing - the performance and functionality of your mobile application. What are the most effective methods for using data to achieve measurable results? What are some of the greatest ways to apply data from our app analytics software to improve our apps? How do you evaluate information from a mobile application?

Below you can find several mobile analytics tools that can be implemented to iOS or Android mobile apps. Some of them are free mobile analytics tool.

Firebase

Platform: iOS / Android / Unity

What it does: While Firebase is a platform on its own, it also builds the infrastructure for your app. It doesn't just focus on analyzing your app; it also offers the framework for you to develop it.

Another great feature of this mobile analytics software is that it provides a variety of features in one package, including analytics, crash reporting, hosting, and A/B testing.

Features:

• Hosting.
• Crash reporting.
• Test Lab (for Android).
• Application performance monitoring.
• Cloud messaging.
• Google Ads.
• The mobile app version of Google Analytics is included in Firebase.

Mixpanel

Platform: iOS / Android / Web

What it does: Mixpanel is a popular analytics tool that may be used to measure various aspects of your performance. Mixpanel collects data on user interactions and allows you to create customized reports.

This tool lets you analyze user behaviors by segmenting and building funnels. Mixpanel also provides insights on data points such as location, device, channels. Mixpanel can be used to send targeted messages through push notifications as well.

Features:

• A/B testing.
• Push notifications.
• Funnels.
• Engagement tracking.
• Mobile and web.

Flurry

Platform: iOS / Android

What it does: Flurry allows you to keep track of user activity on all platforms without spending a cent.

It's worth noting that Flurry is entirely free since they may share your information — without identifying you in any way — with third parties.

Features:

• Free app analytics.
• Events.
• Funnels.
• Segments.
• Cohorts.

Amplitude

Platform: iOS / Android

What it does: Amplitude is a powerful quantitative analytics solution. Its functions and applications are comparable to Mixpanel's.

Features:

• Real-time app analytics.
• Retroactive funnels.
• User segmentation.
• Scalable analytics.
• Retention rate detection.

Countly

Platform: iOS / Android / Web

What it does: Countly delivers a comprehensive analytics picture for both web and mobile. It's a real-time, open-source mobile analytics app that may be hosted on your own servers.

Features:

• Open-source application.
• Extensible via plugins.
• On-premise or private cloud.
• Retention analysis.
• Funnel analysis.

Adobe Analytics

Platform: iOS / Android

What it does: Adobe Analytics gives you the insights you need to understand your customers. Adobe Analytics gives you real-time analysis and detailed segmentation.

Features:

• Flow exploration.
• Fallout analysis.
• Custom histograms.
• Cohort analysis.
• Contribution analysis.

Facebook Analytics

Platform: iOS / Android / Web

What it does: The Facebook Analytics tool allows you to see how people use your product on all devices and platforms. You can compare user activity statistics with consumer data from Facebook.

Features:

• Retention.
• Funnels.
• Demographics.
• Segments.

Localytics

Platforms: iOS / Android

What it does: Upland acquired Localytics, a mobile app marketing platform that is now known as Localytics. It provides comprehensive push message capabilities.

Aside from that, it's a fantastic instrument for monitoring retention and attribution models across your apps.

Features:

• Sessions and events.
• Retention.
• Attribution.
• Uninstall tracking.
• LTV.
• Mobile CRM.
• Cloud support.

Interceptd

Platforms: iOS / Android

What it does: Interceptd is an ad fraud detection and optimization solution that prevents fraudulent app installations and improves your legitimate traffic.

Eliminating ad fraud has data and analytics implications that cannot be overlooked, especially when it comes to protecting businesses from an average of over 30% fraudulent mobile ad traffic. By eliminating the phony installs, fraudulent clicks, and simulated in-app purchases and registrations, you gain access to clean data.

Features:

• Block fraudulent clicks, installs and in-app actions.
• Optimize your clean traffic.
• Get access to accurate and clean data.
• In-app event tracking and analytics, including graphs and flowcharts.
• Track fraud and your KPIs via customizable reports.
• Stay on top of metrics such as effective ROAs, customizable cohorts and revenue events.

Conclusion

It’s important to remember that, while each system is different, it’s crucial to view the entirety of the customer journey while using your product. Mobile app analytics tool like Facebook Analytics give you a chance to understand your customers. As a mobile & web application development company, we have been creating successful software products for many years. So if you want to discuss your project, do not hesitate to arrange a free consultation with our specialists.