In a rapidly digitalizing world where there are 2.87 million mobile apps currently present on the Google Play Store and 1.96 million apps are available on the Apple App Store for download, making your app stand out of the crowd has become an absolute hard nut to crack. With over 6.3 billion mobile app users worldwide and a massive number of apps have wholly revolutionized everyday life where everything from education, shopping (e-commerce), online banking, online billing, and payments relies on these mobile apps. It can be seen from the fact that nowadays mobile app accounts for 87.2% of mobile commerce sales. The world of mobile apps is highly competitive due to changing market needs. In order to get to the top of the tables, your app needs to be highly demanding that fulfill your customer’s needs by being one of the best in this highly competitive market. And you can’t achieve any of this without mobile app analytics. In this article, we’ll give you a brief on the topic of mobile analytics. If you’d like a personal consultation on this topic, feel free to reach out to our experts. We’ve set up analytics stacks for dozens of clients and can help you out.
Table of Contents
What is Mobile App Analytics
Mobile app analytics describes tools that gather data from the mobile app to evaluate its performance and help in improving its execution. It tracks, and monitors app performance and evaluates the user’s experience. The time they spend on the app, the engagement, the bounce rate, the number of people downloading your app, what causes people to drop off your app, ROI, and much more.
Need for Mobile App Analytics
Mobile app analytics is the most crucial in analyzing your app performance. By using analytics you can keep an eye on every aspect of your mobile app and can make necessary changes and improvements. If you know what your audience likes and dislikes in your app, and what are their needs and desires you can introduce new features in your app or improve the existing ones according to the market demands and requirements. Mobile app analytics can help you:
- In getting user experience-related data
- New feature impact measurement
- Measuring the return on investment
- Tracking the no. of downloads
- Helps in improving the user experience by overcoming the flaws in your app
An effective mobile app can only be built by improving the user’s experience and fulfilling the demands of your audience that can drive success to your mobile app. And it can only be done using mobile app analytics.
Mobile App Analytics can be used to analyze
❖ Visitor Activity
You can use it to access whether customers are getting value against their time, and money or not. It can be determined by a variety of factors that can include: 1) Total number of app downloads 2) In-app sharing and In-app purchases 3) Operational users and habitual users 4) User Retention Ratio 5) Time Given to the app by the users However, the above-mentioned factors can vary based on the nature and purpose of your app. For Instance, for an e-commerce app, you can focus on the key shopping parameters including shopping cart, items viewed, shopping cart to purchase ratio, etc. Similarly, for a gaming app, you can analyze the time spent and progress made by the users in the game based on the milestones in the game if any, particularly for the paid subscriptions. Don’t forget that the users with the most in-app activity are most likely to get converted into paying customers and become one of your best advocates.
❖ Sales Funnel
This analysis reveals some really important data relevant to the demographics of new users/visitors including their age, country, etc, and the channels driving new visitors to your app. You will also be interested to know/It can also help you to determine the customer acquisition cost including the average and lifetime revenue and value respectively, which will be discussed later.
❖ App Performance
This analysis can provide you with crucial data including the crash and error information besides the carrier discontinuation. This data can play a major role in app improvement and optimization. A study reveals that 79% of users re-open the app if it fails to operate on the first attempt. However, this ratio falls to only 16 percent if the app fails to operate twice. Long story short, app responsiveness can be a key factor when it comes to driving new customers.
❖ Customer Satisfaction
Customer satisfaction can be defined by the customer retention ratio and an increased number of returning customers can lead to increased advocacy. Although app testing is performed before launching the app, users may utilize the app differently than expected based on their objectives. Mobile app analytics is the only authentic tool to determine the actual customer behavior precisely. Customers will be happy if the app is providing the value it is supposed to. However, in-app errors, lags, and crashes can lead to unhappy and angry customers. Mobile app analytics can be used to fix those issues and provide users with the best possible experience.
Important KPI metrics to Track with Mobile Analytics
You can set a variety of Key Performance Indicators e.g. goals to determine the success of your launch and what steps can be taken to achieve the KPI.
❖ Marketing KPI Metrics
As the name marketing KPI indicates that it is used to measure the Return on investment hence the overall revenue that is generated using a mobile app. It evaluates the total spend on marketing and the resultant ROI. It assesses whether the ROI is going positive or negative. The marketing spend is generating enough revenue for sustainable progress. The major factors in marketing KPI metrics involve:
- Average Earning per user, or ARPU (average revenue per user)
- Customer acquisition cost (CAC): the cost of acquiring new customers
- Market Share: the total percentage that a company captures in a market
- Customer lifetime value (LTV)
❖ User Engagement KPI Metrics
User engagement simply means how many people downloaded your app, how much time they spent on the app, and the average duration that one person spends on your app in one day, how many customers return to your app during one day. It evaluates:
- Daily/weekly/monthly active customers (DAU/WAU/MAU)
- Average time spent on the app
- Number of the customers returning to the app
- Bounce/Churn rate
- Retention rate
❖ UX KPI Metrics
The UX KPI metrics determine how well the customers are interacting with your app, it helps you to measure your app performance along with the user’s experience. It includes how fast your app loads. How well all the features of your app are performing? Because customers usually don’t stay too long to wait for a slow-loading app, and it greatly increases the churn rate of your app. Moreover, you can observe the features on which customers spend the most time by using the screen records. You can also improve the features that are increasing the bounce rate. By improving the app’s performance you can improve the overall user experience which can increase the prevailing revenue generated through the app.
Key Features to Monitor with Mobile Analytics
There are certain key metrics that can be measured with mobile app analytics. Some of the key features are as follows:
❖ Number of Downloads
The most important parameter of a mobile app is its conversion rate. It is the measure of how many no. of visitors are converted into customers, e.g. a person saw your app in the App store and then downloaded it, finding its features useful.
❖ Daily/Weekly/Monthly Usage
Mobile analytics records the average duration that a customer spends on your app. It keeps a track record of daily, weekly, and Monthly active users on your mobile app. It is the most important feature for an app developer to know how much time people spend on his app. Which is also a source of generating revenue.
❖ Retention Rate
It determines how many customers or active users return to your app a second or third time. The retention rate is generally calculated over 7 or 30 days of the first app install.
❖ Churn Rate
The churn rate determines the rate at which customers stop using or drop off/uninstall an app. It allows developers to access the features that cause the customers to stop using the app, either may be due to the slow loading speed of an app or due to any other feature of the app which is not fulfilling the purpose of the app. Here, the developer can introduce a new feature to attract the customer’s attention or improve the existing features.
❖ Average Revenue per User
It is the revenue generated from each user. It measures how much each customer spends on the app or in-app purchases. If the ARPU is more than the marketing spend, then it is a positive sign. Mobile app analytics can also use to monitor the features that are responsible for increasing the stickiness of the app, i.e. increasing the customer’s time spent on the app.
Choosing the right Mobile App Analytics
Choosing the right mobile app analytics is one of the most challenging tasks. In order to choose the right app analytics, you must know the goals that you want to achieve using mobile app analytics
❖ Data Analysis
In choosing the right mobile app analytics, you must first know the type of data you want to analyze with mobile app analytics. If you have an e-commerce app, you will want to analyze how many people have made a purchase using the app. And how many people have just visited the app and have not purchased anything. If you have an educational app, you must want to know how many people have subscribed or upgraded to the paid version and how many of them have just relied on the free version.
❖ Functionality
The most important point in choosing the right mobile app analytics is keeping in view all the major features that can be monitored with the help of mobile app analytics that is discussed above. However, analytics platforms offer a wide range of functionality. So choosing the right one is the key to success. One of the functionality is A/B testing in which two options are tested under certain conditions and are observed that which one works better and then are automatically implemented into the marketing strategy. In the other type of functionality, all the data related to demographics, and activity-based are collected and then used to figure out the customer experience with your app.
Mobile Analytics Best Practices: The key to Success
Mobile App Analytics is inevitable in driving success to your mobile app. So applying the best practices can bring the best results. Some of the best practices are as follows:
❖ Regularly Track and Optimize User Funnel
The best thing that can be done using mobile app analytics is to regularly track and analyze the user funnel (mapping of every action that the user takes), and using this data make informed decisions regarding the app to improve the app’s performance.
❖ Determine your Objectives/Goals
Before using the mobile app analytics you must have set goals. E.g. if you have an e-commerce app, your goals may be to drive traffic to your e-store or boost sales (online purchases). In the case of an educational app, you may have the goal of upgrading to paid version or in-app purchases.
❖ Stay in Touch with the active users
You should also regularly communicate with your active users/customers so that you may come to know what they like and dislike about your app. Knowing the features that are not much popular among the customers may help you to improve your app’s performance. You can focus on and develop those features that are more popular and are being regularly used by customers for longer periods of time.
❖ Perform A/B Tests
Instead of relying on a single page of an app, use A/B testing. Use two pages and then compare which performs better. E.g. in an e-commerce app, use one product image on one page and the other product image on the second page, and then compare the results in terms of traffic and sales. The image that performs better is to drive sales and brings success to your app. It will help you to get the best results.
❖ Focus on User Experience
Among a number of metrics involving engagement, revenue focus on the UX metrics. If your user will be happy with your app, he/she will bring more customers by sharing the app more and more. So focus on satisfying the customer by improving the user experience by meeting their needs and demands.
Final Words
If you simply launch an app but don’t measure the app’s performance, your chances of success will be minimal. And will bring no results. However, if you want success to be definite then you must track your app’s performance. Analyze the user experience and make the necessary improvements to increase the retention rate and decrease the churn rate. And this you can’t achieve without Mobile App Analytics. Hence, Mobile App Analytics is crucial to the success of a mobile app. If you would like to understand which analytics tools are best for your app, reach out to our experts anytime.
