Smartphones account for 70% of screen time as per a recent ComScore report. Out of which, 92% of the time is spent on mobile apps. As a stakeholder in the mobile app industry, such high demand is good news for you. However, at the same time, the mobile app market is highly saturated. If there is an app for a problem, there is likely an alternative (or six) present.
How do you stay ahead of your competition if every other app on the market is the next big thing? How do you make your app stand out?
This is where Mobile analytics step in.
What is Mobile Analytics?
Mobile analytics refers to the measurement and analysis of data– the data that helps you understand your user’s behaviour and how they interact with your app.
This opens up a bunch of possibilities: like getting insight over the number of conversions, number of users and an understanding of your user’s journey while navigating your app.
Overall it gives clarity over users’ intentions– do they want to buy something? Are they here just for information? Or are they just scrolling around?
How Different Teams Use Mobile Analytics?
Analytics tools are generally integrated with companies' existing apps to capture data. It makes sure the effort spent on developing the app doesn't become a black box. It also lets you know where your users are dropping off, and the roadblocks they face during onboarding.
The insights gathered from analytics data are directly useful for different teams in the company when it comes to improving and streamlining the user experience.
Marketing:
Companies use mobile analytics for market research. 90% of corporate strategies will use analytics as an essential competency by 2022, according to impactmybiz .
It helps businesses measure and track the effectiveness of their marketing campaigns– and decide which channel is performing better. This helps manage your marketing efforts appropriately.
If one channel is performing poorly- do you spend more time and effort on it? Or do you redirect those efforts elsewhere? If another marketing channel is giving you more leads or conversions, do you spend more on it?
UX/UI:
Heatmaps and session replays help UX designers get clarity over most user-interacted areas of your app.
Heatmap helps with data visualization that shows how your mobile users interact with the interface via click, taps scrolls etc. whereas-
Session replay recreates the user journey in the form of replay videos and highlights the complete touch interactions of the user.
This knowledge helps them strategically place CTAs, optimise navigation and use elements on the screen to give a seamless experience to the user.
Combining session replays and conversion funnels, you can get insight over an entire segment of users– tracking the difference between the intended user behaviour and the actual one.
Product:
A/B testing helps product managers understand the user by segmenting them into two (or more) groups and seeing how any variable affects user behaviour.
Features like usage tracking help product managers find patterns– patterns that help them make decisions while making changes to the product and rolling out updates. It's imperative that product managers check its impact after making any change.
Was there any improvement? Did it fix a problem? ( or did it create one!) .
They also work with conversion rates, top used screens, app versions, used devices and operating systems of the users while making decisions.
One interesting use case would be setting up funnels for specific user segments. Having a see-through funnel via session replays helps product teams understand why a particular user performed the specific action, and where they were facing issues. This helps in understanding the exact context behind the user drop-offs and other notable friction points for the users.
Engineering:
App crashes and ANR are one of the top reasons behind a frustrated user. Heatmaps and session replay help technical teams track important user behaviours like rage taps, long press, quit touches and unresponsive touches that indicate user frustration
Heatmaps help teams visualize the point at which the users get frustrated. Session replays combined with heatmaps uncovers the set of actions the users perform right before quitting the app. Heatmaps combined with crash analytics allows you to replay the screen actions taken by the user and pinpoint what triggered the crash.
This removes the guesswork for the tech teams and they can get into fixing the problem without much back and forth with an already frustrated user.
Below you can see the example of a frustrated user rage tapping over the interface. Heatmaps are colour-coded to identify the most interacted area–giving context to the teams handling the user query.
How to Get Most of the Mobile Analytics data?
As established so far, mobile analytics is a goldmine. Correct execution can be the difference between a well-oiled machine and a company running blind with a ton of unusable data. Here are some best practices-
- Have a clear plan:
The term ‘plan’ here refers to setting up deliverables and metrics like Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) for your app.
Some notable metrics like user growth rate, uninstalls, OS, load time, permissions granted, positive reviews(NPS) etc. present a precise overview of the way users like to use the app.
You need a goal with broken down smaller sub-objectives. Each with action as well as a contingency plan.
What will you do once the metrics are favourable? What will you do when they are not? Having answers to these well in advance is critical when it comes to making improvements and updates to your product.
- Don’t rely on vanity metrics:
This is in a similar vein to sifting through your emails for hours without doing any tangible work. Vanity metrics look like credible info on paper but are all fluff. These are data points that appear to be positive but have no meaningful info.
‘App installs’ would be one such example of a vanity metric. A better metric to judge app performance would be ARPU (Average Revenue Per User) or ARPDAU (Average Revenue Per Daily Active User).
ARPU and ARPDAU give a clearer picture of your existing user base– and its impact on the revenue. Whereas “App installs” don't give any valuable information in comparison.. This is similar to having a high subscriber count on a YouTube channel but without any engagement.
- Do proper market research:
Testing the market, conducting surveys and niching down to your target audience is critical. It's important to remember that mobile app development is a huge investment. A good idea will fall flat if it's not backed up with proper research and will be equivalent to selling ice to Eskimos.
Making sure you have the right product-market fit is what drives your early wins and helps you build a product your Target audience actually wants.
But not all mobile analytics are created equal
There are a wide number of mobile analytics solutions out there. Examples include names like UserExperior, Google's Firebase, Clevertap etc. and although they all are mobile analytics solutions, they aren't the same and solve different problems.
Earlier discussed features like Heatmaps and Session replay fall under Qualitative Analytics– and is arguably a must-have for any company's stack.
Big names like Lenskart, ICICI Prudential Life Insurance are a few of the early adopters of Qualitative Analytics solutions– and have seen a positive impact on their apps performance and user retention. Session replays and Heatmaps are directly constituted for Up to 95% reduced support SLA and are responsible for fixing the broken user experience.
Wrapping up
When building a product that needs to stand out from the crowd. You need to have a 360 view of your app. This helps ensure that your user base is loyal and happy with your product– and for that, mobile analytics tools are indispensable.
Bonus: If low user retention is also a pain point for your mobile app– watch this webinar with Khatabook’s product manager, where he talks about how they use session replays and heatmaps to increase user retention.