The thinker and consultant Peter Drucker says: «You can’t manage what you can’t measure». In mobile applications it’s the same: we can’t manage our apps or know how to improve them if we don’t measure.
Many developers tell me that analytics is not a priority for them, either for lack of time, lack of knowledge or other reasons … That is why I would like to summarize the five main reasons why mobile analytics is and should be a priority for your mobile application:
- Start before launching your app
Before launching the application is important to know what to measure and how to measure it. We have to think about what matters inside the app because these are going to be the «hot» points of our app. Then, when the app is already on the market, we can check if our «hot» points are the real ones and if not, we can always change or improve them.
- App usage
If we know how the app is used, we will know how to improve it and make it more attractive. But that’s not all! With mobile analytics we can know exactly how users monetize (and when), how much they use the app, when and how. With all this knowledge about the use of our application we can improve the user experience and launch campaigns focused on improve retention.
- Mobile User
It is great to know how the application is used but also very necessary to know who the user to launch better marketing campaigns. What country is it? What URL has led to our app? Was a direct download from the store? These are some of the questions that we can solve by analyzing them.
- Mobile device
It’s important to know the device from which the app is used for both our marketing efforts and how to prioritize new versions. For example, if it’s on Android where we have a more loyal mass of users, we can imagine that new versions will work better on this platform.
- Return on investment
The analysis helps us to know if it our app (and the promotion of it) is working. If we do not measure, we can’t test if it works and what works best to convince our boss to give us more budget to work on this app.
This is an ongoing process: analyze, customize, optimize and repeat. If we collect data from our users, we’ll know what’s not working and so, we’ll know the next improvements that we have to implement. If you customize the user experience, you’ll get users more engaged and you’ll be able to increase their monetization.
In the following posts I will talk about the best mobile metrics we can use and the analytics tools that best fit your app needs.
