Ever wondered what happens to your data after you use an app? It gets tracked so that developers can further optimize and improve the app. But with 7 billion smartphone users worldwide, how do they track every app’s data individually? This is possible through mobile app analytics. Mobile analytics help developers and businesses understand their users and deliver better. This is why they’re a powerful tool in shaping our app experience. Users in the US don’t just spend roughly 4 hours on mobile apps daily for nothing!
In this guide, we’ll go into the details of mobile app analytics. Learning how every tap, swipe, and interaction matters. This will also help you discover how you can leverage that data and optimize your app to do better.
Understanding mobile app analytics
Mobile app analytics is when we collect metrics regarding user behavior. This is done with the help of specific tools. By tracking this data, the creators of the app can improve its performance. This includes enhancing user retention, engagement, and conversion rates. In general, the aim of mobile app analytics is to track data and use it to deliver an improved user experience.
Examples of Mobile app analytics
After Mobile app development and release, apps are available to users through a few taps. Tracking what users do on these apps via analytics helps enhance them. So, here are a few examples of what goes on in mobile analytics:
- Retention rates: Retention rates help track how many users return to an app and in how much time.
- Session duration: Tracks the time a user spends on the app on every session.
- Number of downloads: The total times an app has been installed from app stores.
- Click-through rates: tracks how often users click on a specific link, button, or ad in the app.
- Funnel analysis: Tracks the steps a user takes before completing a goal. This includes simple tasks like signing up, making a purchase, etc.
Why are mobile analytics important?
It might seem like an app can survive without mobile analytics or app store optimization, but it cannot. Considering the market competition, how can you just deploy your app and leave it? Apps fluctuate with new releases in the market and growing size. Analytics allow you to do proper mobile app optimization and constantly make your app better. Mobile app analytics also help:
Improve user interface
Mobile app analytics help in tracking how users navigate an app. This allows developers to track a user’s clicks, heatmaps, and session times. Through this, they are able to understand confusion in the UI. Hence, they can enhance the user interface and make adjustments. These improvements help deliver a better user experience.
Prioritize feature development
Imagine an app that only adds valuable features and doesn’t have too many of them. This can be possible through mobile app analytics. With them, businesses don’t have to keep guessing which features to remove and which to enhance. This guarantees that innovations and refinements are made only where they matter.
Fix bugs and crashes
How will you know if you launch an app and it starts crashing after a while? Through mobile analytics! These metrics provide detailed reports; what caused the crash? It could be a specific device model, failure, or certain actions. With analytic reports, you can quickly identify and improve these bugs.
Optimize performance
How well your app performs directly impacts your user retention rates. Many little faults can drag users away. Why would anyone use an app that consumes battery excessively or takes an hour to load? Users will simply uninstall such an app. However, an app that doesn’t lag much and loads quickly will generally always have higher retention rates.
Boost engagement
Is your app successful? You’ll know by seeing how many users come back to it. Mostly, the retention rate for newly downloaded Android apps is 22.6%. This goes down to 2.6% in the first month. Mobile app analytics can allow you to keep track of why retention rates are getting lower. This way, that 2% can actually go up to 50%.
Case studies: How have mobile analytics helped businesses?
Case studies always help business owners resonate with other experiences. It allows them to get inspired and motivated for their own apps. So, we’ve added a few of them to our guide. Here you can see how mobile app analytics have helped other businesses like you:
Costa Coffee
Many people love enjoying coffee. A popular brand is Costa Coffee. Their app once faced a 30% drop-off rate during user registration in their app. When they went deep into the problem, they discovered 15% of those were due to invalid password entries. This was done using a mobile analytics tracking tool. By collecting this valuable data, the developers were able to make some design changes and tweaks. This eventually led to a 15% increase in user registrations.
Instagram was already doing well but still used mobile analytics tools to perform even better. As one of the most popular apps in the world, it still wanted to be more competitive. Instagram improved the overall UX by analyzing user interactions with different functions. This was done by making adjustments. How? They identifyed opportunities to enhance user engagement.
JobNimbus
JobNimbus is a project management and CRM software. Once, it faced challenges with its mobile app, which had a 2.5-star rating on the app store. After using a mobile analytic tool, they conducted targeted experiments based on some metrics. By redesigning their app and performing app store optimization, the ratings went up to 4.3!
What are the types of mobile app analytics?
Because an app has various parts that need to be tracked, app analytics have different types. Here they are:
Mobile Advertising Analytics
These analytics track how effective user campaigns and in-app ads are. This is done by tracking:
- click-through rates
- conversion rates
- cost per acquisition
- and return on ad spend
They help determine how well ads are performing. Moreover, they help understand the best ad placements. Mobile advertising analytics also help track which ads are bringing the most valuable users.
App Monetization Analytics
App monetization analytics focus on tracking revenue streams in your app. They also help track issues and utilize monetization strategies effectively. This is because they help business owners understand how users are spending money. This is done by tracking:
- average revenue per user
- lifetime value
- and churn rate
By tracking this, they understand which monetization strategies are most effective and how pricing impacts revenue.
In-App Engagement Analytics
How actively do users interact with your app? In-app engagement analytics help you keep track of this. Through this, you can understand which features are popular. They also help track where users spend their time most and what’s leading to high engagement. This is done by tracking:
- session duration
- daily active users
- monthly active users
- retention rates
- and event tracking
Through this, businesses are able to improve these aspects. Ultimately delivering an improved user experience.
App Store Analytics
After the Mobile app development comes the app launch. After launching the app, it is vital to analyze the key metrics in the app store. These analytics help track:
- App Store ranking
- number of downloads
- conversion rates
- ratings and reviews
- and keyword performance
Businesses use this data to refine their App Store Optimization strategies. This helps ensure the app ranks higher in search results and attracts more organic downloads.
App Performance Analytics
How well is your app performing? Is it working smoothly, or have you been finding bugs? App performance metrics help you track:
- app load time
- crash rate
- API response time
- memory usage
- and battery consumption
This data can be used to improve several aspects of the app’s performance. In summary, analyzing these metrics will help you deliver a better User experience.
What are some of the tools for Mobile app Analytics?
You’ve now learned the types of mobile app analytics. Let’s learn about a few popular tools too:
Firebase
Firebase Analytics is a free analytics tool. It helps businesses understand user behavior, app performance, and monetization strategies.
Features
- App Monetization Insights: With Firebase, you can measure user spending habits and maximize your monetization strategies. This is done with its tracking tools for in-app purchases and ads.
- Audience Segmentation: It allows you to segment users based on their behavior, demographics, or device type. It makes launching campaigns easier.
UXCam
Much like the name suggests, UXCam is a mobile app analytics platform focused on user experience (UX) insights. It helps businesses understand how users interact with their app.
Features
- Session duration: UXCam records real user sessions, allowing developers to watch replays of how users navigate through the app.
- Integrates with other tools: It integrates with other tools to combine qualitative and quantitative data for a more comprehensive analysis.
Flurry
Owned by Yahoo, Flurry is a free mobile app analytics tool. That helps businesses track their app’s performance easily.
Features
- Funnel Analysis: Flurry enables businesses to create custom funnels. Through it, you can analyze user journeys and identify where users drop off.
- Crash Analytics: It provides basic crash reporting like tracking crash rates, errors, and affected user segments.
Smartlook
Smartlook is a qualitative analytics tool that focuses on delivering visual insights. It helps businesses track and analyze user behavior.
Features
- Heatmaps: They show where users tap, scroll, and interact the most on different app screens.
- Event Tracking & Funnel Analysis: It allows businesses to track specific user actions like button clicks, page views, and form submissions.
AppMetrica
AppMetrica is a mobile app analytics tool. It provides insights into user behavior and app performance. Its specially useful for marketing campaigns.
Features
- In-App Event Tracking: With AppMetrica, you can define and track custom events. This includes purchases, sign-ups, or cart abandonment rates.
- Storage perks: AppMetrica offers free and unlimited event storage.
What are the Challenges with Mobile Analytics?
Mobile app analytics come with several benefits. Through these tools, you can track various aspects of your app. It even makes Mobile app optimization so much easier. Yet, there are a few challenges with them, such as:
Privacy concerns
Do you know that 72.6% of iOS apps track sensitive, private user data? Additionally, a free app is 4 times more likely to track user data than a paid app. This significantly raises privacy concerns for users.
Data Fragmentation
Data comes from different sources. This can include different devices and platforms. Due to this it isn’t always accurate and is often fragmented. In general, this challenge makes it hard to get an accurate analytical view.
Complexity with user behavior
It’s not new that we act randomly on apps. Sometimes, we don’t even know why we opened an app. The only answer is that we were bored. Due to this, it becomes hard for businesses to keep track of user behavior properly.
False or incomplete data
Users often provide inaccurate or incomplete information. Many do it intentionally, some unintentionally. This can be due to privacy concerns, human error, or even bots. As a result, businesses that rely on this data struggle with incorrect insights, leading to flawed decision-making.
Technical integration
Integrating mobile app analytic tools into an app without raising security concerns requires experience. Moreover, it needs to be done without creating bugs. This can become complex for startups.
Conclusion
Monitoring and tracking mobile app analytics for detailed mobile app optimization is vital. It comes packed with benefits. Most of the challenges can be avoided if you work with a trusted software company. Linkitsoft delivers high-class mobile app development solutions. Whether it’s for gaming, business, or healthcare, our developers are skilled in all. By developing a powerful app and monitoring the mobile app analytics, Linkitsoft can help your app stay optimized and turn those 4 hours into something that benefits your business.
Don’t wait around. Contact Linkitsoft today and let your app be successful. Get a partner that helps you track and improve your mobile analytics today!
