Tracking Analytics: The Most Powerful Growth Tool for Your Mobile or Web App

When you launch an app, you may think you are nearly done. However, this is not quite the case. Completing a web or mobile app project is not a moment to sit on your laurels; there is a lot of hard work that waits in terms of tracking mobile or web app metrics. Tracking with free tools, such as Google Analytics or with any paid tool of your choice, is important to tweak web applications, improve the mobile experience for e-commerce websites, and perk up UX across native and hybrid apps. App metrics are a powerful tool to get insights into how successful your app is. But the number of metrics can be overwhelming, and tracking all of them, all the time — not always necessary. The most important task for you is to figure out what essential metrics to track to improve your app and make its best possible version. Since you can create your own metrics, you might also clarify what analytics will be the greatest contributor to growing your app.

Essential Metrics to Track for Improving Your Mobile or App

Website and mobile app development is a dynamic process. To grow, apps must change. The app development process includes corrections along the way. Therefore, what you may be initially tracking is not the same as the metrics you pick up in the later stages of the marketing funnel.

Starting with Google Analytics

For a web-based business, you should absolutely track the following:

• Users. The number of website visitors, including first-time and returning visitors, is helpful to learn the impact of your organic and paid outreach and use it to improve your blogging, keyword, and social media strategy.
• Sessions. User sessions are the time spent on your website measured in 30-minute blocks or initiated after interaction with another campaign, providing insight about specific campaign success.
• Pages per session. Figuring out how many pages users visit is a way to find out about user engagement with content, offer new content pathways, and optimize those that give results. More time equals better success; it means users find your web app appealing.
• Devices. The type of device used to access your app, including desktop, tablet, and mobile, is a metric you can use to optimize cross-device web and mobile experience.
• Source/medium and channels. Where does your traffic come from? Knowing the answer to this question helps you enhance your inbound marketing strategy.
• Pageviews. Depending on how many times a user has visited a page in one session, you can learn about how the user experience and user behavior are related and what triggers your audience to follow a particular path.
• Average time on page. What content form your audience finds most engaging? How to increase its influence by offering more interesting content, for example, videos?
• Landing pages. The first page users land on when accessing your website. You can use these analytics to maximize that page performance and understand what drives traffic to your brand.
• Exit pages. What event triggered users to leave a page? This metric is vital to improve the mobile experience on e-commerce websites. For example, what made a user drop a cart?
• Bounce rate. When a user “bounces off” from your website, it means they didn’t find the content interesting enough to check what else you have to offer.

Tracking for Omnichannel UX

Tracking website analytics is a complex process when you build a business with multiple sales funnels and vivid customer segmentation. Users do not constantly interact with your brand in a linear path. Even if you don’t have a mobile app, you need to optimize the mobile UX for a website or retail, provided you sell in physical stores. Moreover, the above essential Google metrics depend on each other. The actions you take to change one affects another. Figuring out what metrics to track is a far cry from choosing a sophisticated software tool. It is more a question of alignment between your sales strategy and your business goals. One final conclusion to pick up is that the ultimate goal of choosing appropriate metrics is the user experience. By tracking the right user analytics in real-time, you base your conclusions about your web or mobile app success on facts, not assumptions. With mobile app development, you need to monitor cross-platform and cross-device. The crucial mobile app metrics give you knowledge about user engagement, retention, acquisition, and performance.

Mobile App Analytics

There are several areas you can play with to incorporate analytics insights for mobile apps, beginning with:

• Your brand and marketing strategy
• App store optimization
• App communication (emails, SMS, and push notifications)
• In-app purchases, subscriptions, and shopping carts

Each of these areas gains precedence in various user stages. You may be more focused on the brand strategy before and as you launch your app, but switch your attention to app communication once you acquire active users that engage with your app features.

Why Tracking Mobile Experience Matters for E-commerce Websites

In mobile stores, tracking can help you understand what mobile touchpoints gain the most traction and how you can improve them to generate more revenue from your e-commerce. Touchpoints differ before, during, and after purchase. So it’s not simple to decide what are the most important ones.

• App Downloads. Poor success in this area indicates a weak point on your marketing campaigns, up in your marketing funnel.
• Active Users. By identifying the active users and what made them become inactive you can develop incentives to bring them back on.
• App Retention. You cannot expect the number of downloads to equal the number of active long-term users. Eventually, some people drop off. But you will get the most value from those loyal active users. So, it is important to identify what keeps them engaged.
• Churn Rate. Who leaves your mobile app? Several factors can impact the churn rate, including bugs, crashes, and lack of long-term value.
• Event Tracking. This is the most personalized tracking metric, which lets you observe the user flow as they interact with your app features.
• App Rating. The first thing users check when downloading a new app is its rating in the app stores. It is no wonder brands invest in improving their rating image in the stores.

From the position of your user persona, you need to think carefully about strategizing and optimizing the insight you get from tracking analytics. In a nutshell, you need to figure out any misalignment between what really matters and what you think matters. Real-time monitoring is necessary to stay on top of the funnel changes and get maximum conversions.   With a background in journalism, Michael’s passion lies in educating audiences in the realm of tech. He is especially intrigued by the world of app development and all associated facets including Android, iOS, blockchain, and dApp technology. Michael has spent the last few years working with app agencies to elevate their content strategy and expand his knowledge even further as app development technologies advance. When he’s not typing away at his computer, you can find Michael traveling the globe or taste-testing pizzas in search of the ultimate pie.