How to Track Mobile Analytics to Collect All Needed App Data

“How do I ensure more people use my app?” If you are a mobile app maker, you have undoubtedly asked yourself this question. And the answer is fairly simple — you need to know how to track mobile analytics. The truth is that the success of any mobile application depends on whether your company relies on analytics when making decisions about its development and maintenance.

This truth, however obvious, is often ignored by developers. In most cases, it happens because of the lack of understanding of how to collect, analyze, and, most importantly, use mobile app data to benefit a product.

What is mobile app analytics?

Mobile app analytics is the process of collecting, analyzing, and interpreting data about an app’s performance and its users’ data. This process helps app makers understand how a particular application is performing and which parts need improvement. 

Analytics is an essential tool for any mobile app developing company. It can help you understand user behavior, identify bugs and other problems in an application, point out which features are popular and which aren’t, and more. Let’s take a closer look at how app developers benefit from quality mobile data analytics.

Why Do You Need Mobile App Analytics?

There are many reasons why analytics for mobile applications is so essential for any app-developing company. One of them is that it provides insights into your app and the users’ behavior. Once you are conscious of the strengths and weaknesses of your app, as well as user behavior patterns, you can improve user experience. With the help of this data, you can make crucial decisions to improve your app’s features or even develop new ones.

Although different groups of mobile apps may use similar metrics and KPIs in their analytics, they have peculiarities. Here are a few examples of how mobile app analytics is used in different apps and what app metrics tracking is used for each.

1. E-commerce

Mobile app analytics is an integral part of a successful e-commerce business. Mobile apps are one of the most critical touchpoints for customers and retailers alike, so tracking their performance and success is imperative.

Here are some examples of mobile app analytics in e-commerce:

• It helps developers understand the customer journey, learn what customers are looking for when using a mobile application, and predict which products will be in demand in the future.
• It helps them identify any problems that might arise during the checkout process or any other parts of the e-commerce experience by collecting performance and crash data.

2. Games

The approach to analytics in the mobile gaming sector may be different depending on a company’s business model and marketing strategy. 

However, all companies that work in mobile gaming usually track these essential metrics: 

• Installs and uninstalls are crucial metrics for measuring the performance of an application.
• Tracking the number of daily active users (DAU) and monthly active users (MAU) helps game makers identify stickiness and suggest what should be done for a game’s future success.
• Retention rate helps game makers determine when users stop playing their game and then take steps to increase lifetime value (LTV).

Mobile game metrics provide insight into how players engage with the game, providing the developer with the knowledge they need to tailor the app for user demands, increase revenue, and other mobile game KPIs.

3. Online banking

Like other types of apps, analytics gives online banking application developers insight into how their app performs, what needs improvement, and what users want. Mobile analytics can help you figure out what your users are doing on the app, where they’re coming from, and how they use the application. 

Online banking companies can improve user experience in various ways. For instance, they may opt to build additional features into their applications, like reminders for bill payments or suggestions on managing credit, investing, and saving money each month.

4. Social media

Social media apps with so many people using them make money through selling advertising. What makes them successful is the ability to analyze their users’ behavior, their interests, etc. By identifying what features make their apps sticky, social media app makers can create a more attractive environment for advertising products and services.

What Type of Data Can Be Collected From App Users? 

Now that we talked about common cases of using mobile data analytics, let’s take a closer look at the variety of data you can collect.

1. General data

It is fundamental information about user activity in your application, which includes the number of installs and uninstalls, registrations, and upgrades.

2. User engagement

User engagement is one of the most important factors in any successful app. This parameter includes app traffic, open rate, session interval, session length, retention rate, etc.

3. User experience

This parameter is about your app’s performance that encompasses load time, operating system type, screen adaptability, permissions users granted, and others.

4. Financial data

Customer lifetime value, average revenue per user, purchases, and customer acquisition cost are all essential figures from a business performance point of view.

Mobile App Analytics: What to Track?

Analytics for mobile apps is a tool that helps you understand how your users are interacting with your app. It is important to know how to track key performance indicators (KPIs) to ensure you are getting the most out of the data.

Roughly speaking, all KPIs for mobile app analytics can be divided into four groups: retention, engagement, acquisition, and monetization. These KPIs can be used to measure the success of an application and help you make decisions about future development.

What KPIs Should You Track for Mobile App Analytics?

To get a detailed insight into your app’s performance, you may want to track the following KPIs:

1. Retention rate

This metric represents the proportion of active users among your customers. It also tells you how many app users you lose due to churn.

2. Lifetime value (LTV)

LTV allows you to determine the value of each customer over the course of their experience with your application.

3. Uninstalls

Knowing the number of people who uninstalled your app within a given period enables you to conclude why they left. You will understand which part of your app should be improved.

4. ROI

This figure shows how much you’ve spent in relation to how much you’ve made on a single project. It is the clearest indicator of whether your app is financially successful.

5. Cohort Analysis

This KPI focuses on segmenting users according to traffic sources, countries, and operating systems. Then you can decide which platform to opt for and whether you should localize your app.

6. Cost per acquisition (CPA)

This is a fantastic tool to determine the precise cost of each acquisition. With this metric, you can identify which features bring profit and which do not.

7. User growth rate

The “user growth rate” is the number of new users over a given period.

5 Best Mobile App Tracking Tools

There are hundreds of mobile app tracking tools that can empower app developers with quality analytics. Each tool may be suitable for one type of data rather than another. This is why we recommend you set up your goals and answer the question of what type of data and analytics you need. Once you have that figured out, you can easily find the right tracking tools for your application.

Read about a few mainstream solutions that deliver high-quality mobile app analytics below.

1. Segment

Segment provides software and APIs that collect, clean, and activate customer data. It helps you make data-driven decisions about your product development and marketing strategy.

With Segment, you can collect user event data from mobile, web, and warehouse sources. This solution enables you to align your marketing and engineering teams with a shared data dictionary.

Segment offers a flexible pricing policy, offering a free account that allows you to collect data from 2 sources, send the collected data to unlimited destinations, and track the activity of up to 1,000 users per month. 

The Team plan starts at $120/month, and with it, you can collect data from unlimited sources and track the activity of up to 10,000 monthly users. You can also get a Business plan with custom pricing depending on your specific business needs.

2. Flurry 

Flurry helps app-developing businesses boost user acquisition efforts, manage a data-driven product iteration process, and increase app engagement.

This solution allows you to track installs, uninstalls, session length, and other data with ease. In terms of user data, it helps you recognize your target market and how they use your application. You also can conduct on-demand analysis for funnels, cohorts, and more.

Flurry positions itself as an entirely free platform for professional-grade mobile application analytics.

3. Amplitude

Amplitude is a digital analytics tool that provides insight into user behavior. The solution empowers you to understand your users better, increase conversions, and boost engagement, growth, and revenue.

Startups and small teams can benefit from a free plan offering basic analytics for unlimited data sources and users. Mid-sized companies and enterprises can request custom quotes for more advanced behavioral analytics to meet their business needs.

4. Firebase

Firebase provides developers with information on various KPIs related to apps. Its synchronicity with Google is one of the key factors in its status as one of the most popular mobile app analytics tools. Firebase allows developers to analyze their web, iOS, and Android apps.

This solution offers impressive free functionality that includes A/B testing, analytics, app distribution, and indexing. If your business requires a more significant number of verifications and more storage space, you can calculate pricing on the Firebase website.

5. App Analytics

Apple has its own tool for analysts and developers called App Analytics which was designed to track and analyze data on iOS apps. App Analytics is used to maximize app store visibility and offers data on in-app engagement, App Store views, and tools for audience and user segmentation.

This tool is excellent for monitoring subscription activity, app engagement, the number of paying users, business performance, etc. 

App Analytics is included in the Apple developer program at a price starting from $99.

Consider Weelorum Your Trusted Partner

Weelorum develops successful mobile apps used by millions of people. This wouldn’t be possible without a profound analysis of app performance. We continuously look for ways to excel in mobile app analytics and build powerful tools for tracking mobile app data.

Weelorum professionals know how to set up mobile app tracking and how to collect app data. We provide a variety of app support and maintenance services that include monitoring an app’s  security, performance, and consistency metrics. 

Contact Weelorum and boost your app performance today.

Final Thoughts

Information is the oil of the 21st century, and analytics is the combustion engine.

Peter Sondergaard, Senior Vice President at Gartner

Mobile app developers benefit from analytics in many ways. It helps them realize what works well in their app and what should be improved. It is also a great tool to get to know their app’s users, which empowers them to deliver better products and facilitate marketing efforts.

No matter the type of app you build,  if you want it to succeed in a highly competitive market, you can’t do it without investing in mobile app analytics. 

Getting the data right can be complex and time-consuming. Weelorum can help you make things easier for you. We will help you collect crucial data, provide in-depth analysis, and suggest user-centric improvements for your mobile application.

FAQ