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With 8.93M mobile apps hustling for user attention, it’s getting tougher for mobile app owners and marketers to improve retention and stay competitive. Naturally, this means app owners must build an exceptional app experience to stand out from the sea of apps available today.
This is possible with a thorough understanding of the customer journey across digital touchpoints. Plus, app owners and marketers need to unearth the sources of mobile app friction that negatively affects user experience and retention.
That’s where mobile app analytics comes in. Advanced mobile app analytics allows real-time user monitoring by integrating an SDK into mobile applications. This offers critical user interaction insights (UX, session conversion rates, and customer journey analytics) alongside technical metrics like app responsiveness, memory load, and more. Such insights are key to improving conversions and revenue.
Let’s understand why app owners need mobile app analytics to power their business.
The Need for Mobile App Analytics
App analytics generates real-time insights and reports on:
- The number of app installs and active users
- Popular and not-so-popular features of the app
- How are users interacting with the app?
- Friction points – are there any technical or UX-related issues?
Unresolved friction has a serious conversion and revenue impact. Mobile users often experience friction owing to a complex user interface, slow app performance, technical issues, poorly integrated features, intrusive ads and notifications, or a complex registration process.
Mobile app retention is critical because:
- It is the cornerstone for deeper engagement and building a loyal customer base that finds value in your app.
- It highlights the possible issues in your app marketing funnel. For instance, if your app retention is low, it indicates a possible issue in the user journey.
If a large user base churns after using your app for a week, you must use a mobile measurement platform to inspect the efficiency of the conversion funnel and identify the bottlenecks.
- It is a cost-effective method to build a strong base of loyal users without investing a lot in acquisition tactics.
Mobile app analytics offers in-depth insights into user behavior and uncovers the sources of friction, thereby boosting retention and revenue. Equipped with this data you can tweak your mobile app user acquisition strategy to build a frictionless app that offers a smooth experience.
Besides, effective mobile app analytics allows you to:
- Leverage solid data to guide your app development efforts
- Segment users based on usage frequency and CLV for building specific engagement levels
- Measure the impact of the new features introduced
- Prioritize the most expensive friction points through churn analytics
- Improve your retargeting efforts
- Make predictions and visualize trends
- Democratize access to data – with an easy-to-use mobile analytics dashboard like Apptrove, your entire team gets access to data, empowering them to make informed decisions.
Mobile App Analytics Best Practices
Here are our straightforward recommendations to get the best out of app analytics.
- Leverage App Analytics Early
Mobile app analytics must start right from when you test the app. Tracking data early allows you to understand user behavior, and offers relevant information to incorporate the changes in the development stage.
Thus, your team can leverage the insights to improve user experience, build a streamlined app development process, and boost the app ROI by creating apps tailored to the needs of your target audience.
Similarly, your marketing team can use insights from channel data to track sales and conversions achieved through a campaign.
Use app analytics early to study your users and tailor interactions with them at every step of the lifecycle. - Focus on Metrics That Impact Your End Goal
Mobile app analytics often overwhelm marketers with a lot of data and insights. Hence, when tracking mobile app analytics metrics, it’s best to narrow your focus on the ones that can steer you toward your goals.
For instance, an e-commerce app will focus on metrics like events, purchases, and viewed items as their primary goal is sales and conversions.
On the other hand, a gaming app must prioritize the in-app time spent or the paid features unlocked as their goal is to boost engagement. They should also track the percentage of users who continue to use the app over a set period instead of mere downloads.
These metrics fall under these categories:
- User engagement: These share insights about how the user is engaging with the app. For instance, downloads, in-app shares and purchases, time spent in-app, retention rate, session length, and more.
- Customer acquisition: These metrics share information about new users acquired and insights around them. For instance, mobile app attribution (how the user was acquired), the cost per acquisition, or their lifetime value.
- App performance: These metrics reflect the app’s health and point to optimization opportunities. So, these metrics include bugs and crash-related data, network latency, load speed, app responsiveness, and more.
- Revenue: These metrics determine the revenue your app generates. Is it enough to sustain the app? It includes cost per install, conversion rate, average revenue per user, CAC, and more.
- Avoid Common Pitfalls
When implementing mobile app analytics best practices, be mindful of the common mistakes that can hamper your tracking efforts.
- Not Defining Clear Objectives
Not setting clear objectives will land you with metrics that aren’t relevant to your business, thereby introducing overwhelming complexities for your team. - Relying Solely on Google/Apple Analytics
The scope of ad networks and exchanges is huge; hence, tracking every ad partner’s analytics interface needs a lot of time and effort and is prone to errors. Plus, GA and Apple analytics have several limitations –- They do not offer data about the medium of each install (like paid traffic, organic, etc.)
- They don’t differentiate between the source of each install (keyword, campaign, or any other)
- They don’t show the campaign source ID or user ID which helps optimize future campaigns.
It’s best to rely on a mobile measurement partner that offers all the data in one place. We will see more on this in the next section.
- Adding Too Many SDKs
Limit your SDKs to reduce your app download size. Remember that most SDK vendors have bugs that can crash your app, leading to a drop in downloads and poor reviews. This in turn impacts your app ranking and discoverability.
That being said, Apptrove’s SDK is open-source and lightweight. Hence, integrating our SDK with a mobile app doesn’t hamper app performance.
- Not Checking the Scalability of the Chosen App Analytics Solution
The app analytics solution you opt for should be able to adapt and manage an increase or decrease in the workload while maintaining optimal performance. Failing to check on this aspect will harm your flexibility, security, and possibilities for additional functionalities.
Looking for a Mobile Measurement Partner?
Trust Apptrove to level up your app marketing
Unearth the Why under the What with a Mobile Measurement Partner
Almost every analytics platform lets you track the basic metrics. But rarely do they share in-depth information on the ‘why’. Plus, given the huge volumes of campaign data available, it is tough for app marketers to determine the channels, publishers, and media sources that have led to a conversion.
A mobile measurement partner attributes, collects, and organizes app data, allowing you to get a unified view of the campaign and app performance. Thus, an MMP clearly shares which source should receive credit for a conversion.
How Does an MMP Work?
A mobile measurement partner integrates its SDK (software development kit) link into the app for registering installs and in-app events. This SDK attributes app events to the relevant acquisition source or campaign. Simply put, the actions taken by the user are directly tied to the source.
The granular insights allow app publishers and developers to track where the user traffic is coming from. Thus, once the SDK is integrated into the app, they can track omnichannel campaign activity by leveraging these integrations with demand-side platforms (DSP), ad networks, social channels, and affiliate networks.
Once the MMP registers the install and in-app events, the platform’s attribution engine kicks off, determining which campaign is driving a conversion or event. This information is sent as an immediate data postback, informing app marketers in their campaign optimization and marketing decisions that impact the return on ad spend (ROAS).
Thus, the MMP serves as a single source of truth for app publishers and marketers.
Here’s a graphical representation of how an Apptrove works.
Why Apptrove?
With an ocean of tools available today, it’s tough to choose a suitable mobile measurement partner for your app.
We have 8 reasons why you should choose Apptrove.
- Data-Driven App Growth
Apptrove gets you the tailored and granular insights you need to boost your app installs, improve campaign ROI, enhance customer LTV, and optimize your campaigns. Amplify your profits by taking complete control of your campaign efficiency.
We assure 100% accuracy! Our attribution methods are trusted, transparent, and customizable.
With Apptrove you get access to:- Realtime ROI measurement
- Automated reporting and granular logs to monitor all metrics
- Advanced, cross-device, cross-channel attribution
- Customizable and unified dashboards
- A single SDK that connects you to 500+ partners
- Robust Fraud Prevention Strategy
With Apptrove’s custom fraud shield, you can leverage custom rules for each partner or campaign to prevent fraud. Plus, you can set up custom alerts and notifications to warn app owners about campaign losses.
Further, our multi-layer fraud protection safeguards you against a wide range of threats including app version mismatch, duplicate IPs, emulator devices, and more.
- Effective iOS14+ Measurement Capabilities
With Apptrove’s SKAN analytics, you get in-depth insights into the acquisition and engagement trends across the iOS landscape. Our comprehensive dashboard allows you to uncover valuable iOS 14+ insights without compromising user privacy. Our platform is compliant with leading regulations like GDPR-CCPA and e-privacy.
- Privacy Compliance across All Platforms
Apptrove doesn’t compromise on security. Hence, we adhere to international privacy standards to safeguard your data wherever you operate. We use industry-standard encryption to safeguard data, both in transit and at rest. Our system goes beyond the basics with regular security audits and penetration testing to spot and address vulnerabilities before they become a problem.
- Intuitive Deep Linking Capabilities
You can unify your customer journeys and measure the true return on experience (ROX) with Unilinks. Our configurable deep linking capabilities allow you to streamline user experiences by directing them to specific in-app content or targeted offerings.
- Short Learning Curve
Our user-friendly dashboard and lightweight SDK make the setup process easy and quick (concluded in a day’s work!). Integrations with Global Ad Networks, SANs, SRNs, and DSPs are easy and you can add new partners in a jiffy.
All this means less time spent learning about the platform and onboarding. So, you are all set to act!
- Excellent Customer Support
With Apptrove you get constant customer support, starting at day zero. Our team tailors the onboarding process to assist your team members and partners with an easy, quick, and secure migration.
Our team of experts including account managers, customer success managers, and tech specialists are here to ensure a smooth transition.
Whether you have a burning question or need help with using a feature, you can connect with our support team 24/7.
- Global Reach, Local Expertise
Apptrove operates in multiple regions across the globe and is proud to have a diverse talent pool. We offer our services in 11 languages. This allows us to understand, appreciate, and cater to the unique needs of businesses across the globe.
Summing Up
Mobile app analytics offers detailed insights for an app publisher and marketer on multiple levels – user behavior, campaign and app performance, and marketing. Hence, it is critical to choose the right tools that can empower you to make smart data-driven decisions.
A suitable mobile measurement partner not only achieves these objectives but also takes fraud seriously, thereby preventing your precious marketing budget from being wasted.
At Apptrove, we believe in simplifying mobile measurement for you, empowering you to make data-driven decisions with confidence. Get in touch with us now to take complete control of your mobile marketing efforts or sign up for a free trial to experience Apptrove in action.
