5 Mobile App Analytics Tools You Should Know About
Congrats! You have recently had your brand new application developed. Naturally, you are wishing to bring it to the next level. So what’s now? It’s the right time to start get some informative metrics!
Here Mobile analytics tools come into play, which will help you receive relevant information about your app’s promotion, such as the number of your app’s downloads, your targeted public and geographical location, possible weak points of your app, peculiarities of its usage by your clients, ways to make money on it and many others.
Read also: Estimate Budget for Mobile App Marketing?
Know what to measure
Before choosing any app analytics tool, pin down in which way the data should be analyzed and what should actually be measured. Thankfully, nowadays we have so many opportunities that there is no need to reinvent the wheel.
A famous entrepreneur and marketer Dave McClure gives a great comprehension of metrics for startup in his post, dedicated to the issue. These wise rules are perfectly relevant for mobile apps as well. According to it, marketers should stick to so-called AARRR concept, which consists of five key analytical components:
A: Acquisition – helps you understand by which paths your users come to you;
A: Activation – makes you see the percentage of users who are satisfied with their initial experience;
R: Retention – gives you understanding of how many clients actually used your app after downloads;
R: Referral – lets you get the idea whether your customers liked it enough to share their satisfaction with their friends;
R: Revenue – shows you the possible ways (if any) of monetizing such user behavior.
Read also: How to Market Your App
Mobile analytics comparison
Below you will find the information of the key players in the field, and your task will be to choose the one that you find the most appropriate for your business.
1. Flurry Analytics
Flurry is one of the oldest analytical services on the market, and its éclat even provoked Yahoo to buy them. This tool is in many ways oriented on user acquisition, so you can get detailed info about active users, average session length, exceptionally detailed user acquisition reports, audience persona, and demographics. Users are able to customize up to ten dashboards and get info on users’ devices and software versions.
• Price: Free
• Platforms: Android, iOS, Blackberry, Windows Phone, Java ME
• Benefits:
- Multisided and detailed tool;
- Ability to create conversion funnels;
- Creation of user paths;
- Easy and comprehensible reports.
• Drawbacks:
- Absence of cohort analysis;
- Absence of real time analytics;
- Sometimes one has to do many clicks to obtain the data.
Read also: How to Integrate Flurry Analytics into IOS App?
2. Google Analytics for Mobile Apps
• Price: Free
• Platforms: Android, iOS
Besides for the web analytics, Google kindly provides the best free analytics tools for applications and mobile websites. Using them, you may have reports about your product, organized in various categories, like:
- Acquisitions, where you get info about new users;
- Users, which shows you the newly obtained and returning users, their geographical location, language they speak etc.;
- Engagement, which helps you track events like you do on the web along with reports on speed, crashes etc.; and
- Outcomes category allows fixing a target and watching its flow.
• Benefits:
- Gazillions of handy features;
- Event and conversion tracking;
– Custom events
- Retention and lifetime value analyses;
- Data visualization;
- Flexible API;
- Constant evolvement and enhancement;
- Easy to cope with in case you have already had some experience with Web Google Analytics;
- Integration with other Google products (like AdMob for monetization and Google Play for tracking conversions).
• Drawbacks:
- The service is in beta at the moment;
- Google Analytics does not have iTunes integration.
3. MixPanel
• Price: Freemium
• Platforms: iOS, Android.
MixPanel provides solutions for both the web and mobile app analytics. This service offers creation, upgrade purchase, sharing, etc. 25,000 data points are given for free. In case you need more, you may purchase 500,000 data points at $150 per month. 20 million data points will cost you $2,000.
• Benefits:
- Attractive UI;
- Real-time data processing;
- Perfect for tracking users’ behavior;
- Calculation of user retention funnels;
- Ability to build complex queries basing on events and demographics;
- Comprehensible stats on users’ retention.
• Drawbacks:
- Absence of advanced features that would help track user acquisition;
- Free version allows having only a limited amount of data points.
4. AppSee
• Price: depends on the number of applications, services and sessions it is tracking. A 14-day free trial is available.
• Platforms: iOS and Android
Mobile analytics metrics offered by AppSee are focused on user experience rather than on the conventional tools. The service has a peculiar feature of capturing user experience on video for the further analysis. Together with touch heatmaps feature and an aggregated online control panel, you are in a perfect position to acknowledge how your users interact with your app
• Benefits:
- Unique approach and a great website;
- Documentation and tutorials available;
- Recording and play backing sessions;
- Heat maps, sensible to touches;
- Crash-tracking documentation;
- Special offers and discounts for start ups;
- 14-days trial provided for free.
• Drawbacks:
- Lack of transparency when it comes to detailed pricing and upgrading.
5. Countly
• Price: Freemium
• Platforms: iOS, Android, BlackBerry, Windows Phone, Mac OS X.
Countly is an open source mobile analytics marketing platform, created by consolidated efforts of many developers around the globe. With Countly, you obtain information on users and their loyalty; sessions and their frequency; countries, devices, carriers and platforms.
Premium feature of real-time crash reports is very handy, however, there is a variety of other helpful functions that are provided for free, including API access, push notifications, retention and cohorts, funnels, segmentation, real-time user tracking and revenue analytics.
Up to ten thousand events and sessions are given at no cost. The complete comparison pricing plan table can be found here.
• Benefits:
- Superb design and UI;
- Real-time analytical support;
- Since it’s an open source product, you can host it on your own server;
- Managing user permissions;
- Paid accounts are offered at affordable prices (starting with $60/month);
- Email support and help from the community;
- 20% discount for startups, and educational institutions.
• Drawbacks:
- We could not identify any! If you did, share it with the community.
As you can see, there is a broad choice of app analytics tools, and some of them are tailored for specific needs, so here is the tip: it may be reasonable to use various instruments for different applications, depending on the objectives of this or that app. We recommend testing each one and find out the ones that would serve you right.
Have you already narrowed it down and found the best mobile analytics platform? Let us know about your favorites in the comments below!
