How do you know what your users want when they use your app? Or why do they suddenly stop using it? The answer to these questions lies in mobile analytics. It helps developers and marketing teams understand every user action within an app.

Mobile Analytics Basics

Mobile app analytics is the process of collecting, analysing, and interpreting data related to mobile app use. The goal of mobile app analytics is to gain insight into how users interact with the app and use that data to optimise the app.

Think of analytics as a compass that guides you through the complex journey of improving the user experience. It will help you track how often users return, what features they prefer, and where problems arise.

Data from such analytics is used to make decisions about improving the mobile product experience, increasing engagement in mobile applications, and driving business results.

Mobile App Performance Metrics

The effectiveness of an app is measured by many different parameters, each with its own metric. All these indicators are important; they need to be monitored and taken into account in the overall statistics. Then, you will be able to see the full picture of your app. 

Key metrics include:

• Retention Rate — shows how many users return to the app after a certain period.
• DAU/MAU (Daily/Monthly Active Users) — the number of unique users per day or month.
• Churn Rate — the percentage of users who stop using the app over a certain period.
• LTV (Lifetime Value) — the expected profit from one user over the entire period of their interaction with the app.
• Stickiness — measures how actively users return to the app (DAU/MAU).
• Sessions — the number of user interactions with the app over a certain period.
• Conversion Rate — the percentage of users who complete a specific action, such as purchasing or signing up.

This data can help you identify the most effective channels for acquiring new users and improving the retention of existing users. Don’t worry—you don’t have to count them manually; mobile app analytics services can help with this.

Benefits of Mobile Analytics

Today, users expect seamless, intuitive, and engaging software. In the age of multi-screen and multi-session product experiences, a mobile-first mentality—based on an understanding of how users behave in both your web and mobile products (and how they move between them)—is critical to optimising engagement. Mobile analytics offers essential data that businesses can use to evaluate and enhance their mobile user experience.

By analysing this data, companies can monitor performance, benchmark against competitors, pinpoint strengths and weaknesses, and create more precise, data-driven plans, relying on facts instead of guesses or assumptions. Thanks to all this, the efficiency of app promotion and the usefulness and efficiency of the app itself increase significantly. 

App analytics helps boost business profitability by providing valuable insights:

1. User needs: Collect data on how users interact with your app to identify their preferences and requirements.
2. Conversions: Analyse steps the users perform and key conversions to determine what needs to be optimised to improve these metrics.
3. User Sources: Review which channel users come from, and which marketing campaigns lead to more app downloads.
4. ROI: Evaluate the return on acquisition channels and the most popular app features, and find opportunities for monetisation to increase profits.

How Mobile Analytics Can Help You Develop Better Apps?

Mobile analytics is useful for anyone who has Android or IOS mobile applications and who needs to understand where users come from and how they make key conversions. What other insights can mobile analytics provide?

App versions: Who is using which version of your app?

Track which app version users are on. If many use an outdated version, they may face resolved issues, creating avoidable support requests and extra work for your team. Mobile analytics can help you figure out how many users are still using old app versions, allowing you to understand the scope and urgency of moving to the latest version and then take appropriate action within your app.

Retention rate: How many users are with you for the long haul?

Retention rate measures the percentage of users who keep using your app after their first visit. Tracking how long they stay and where they leave helps you understand their journey and make changes to keep them coming back. While it’s typical for retention rates to drop after launch or the onboarding phase, dramatic drops can indicate larger issues worth addressing.

Feature adoption: How do users interact with mobile app features?

Feature adoption is a great indicator of how well new app features are being adopted and whether users are seeing value in them (and thus incorporating them into their daily lives). Tagging specific features in your mobile app helps you track how often and by whom certain areas or features are used.

Core Events: Are users getting value from your mobile app?

Tagging important features, pages, and events allows you to see if users are interacting with your app as expected. These tracked actions, known as core events, offer insights into how users engage with your product. A core event is a meaningful action a user takes, like using a feature that delivers real value and encourages them to return to the app.

Page Tags: How do users move through your mobile app?

Tagging mobile pages helps you track how users navigate your app. By seeing which pages they visit and what actions they take, you can find ways to improve workflows, simplify navigation, and enhance the overall user experience.

How To Choose An Analytics Tool For Your Mobile App?

Analytics integration should be done at the initial stage of development before the application is released to the market. It is important to start tracking metrics and indicators from the first days of the application launch. This will allow you to quickly identify problems and shortcomings of the application and take measures to eliminate them. Since mobile analytics is a vast topic, there are many tools on the market. To choose the right one, pay attention to these points:

• Features. For example, Firebase provides basic analytics, while UserX offers more advanced features like UX analytics and real-time behavior tracking. Choose a tool that fits your needs.
• SDK integration. Make sure the analytics tool integrates smoothly with your app. Many options, like UserX and Amplitude, provide flexible SDKs that are easy to set up and start collecting data quickly.
• Reporting and data visualisation. Some tools provide basic reporting, while others, like Adjust and Mixpanel, provide in-depth analytics and the ability to customise dashboards to track important metrics.

Conclusion

Choosing the right analytics tool depends on your business goals and technical requirements. Consider your product’s needs and the data you want to collect to get the most out of analytics.