Chapter Title

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BEGINNER’S GUIDE TO
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APP ANALYTICS
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Page 1 of 22
The Need for
Mobile Metrics
The web analytics industry has grown in size and sophistication
over the past decade, enabling marketers to create targeted
and revenue-driven online presences. This represents a
huge shift in how brands operate and communicate with their
consumers. And it’s awesome.

But the web isn’t where the majority of your audience is going
to be anymore, and it isn’t where the learning curve is. Today,
there are over 1.2 billion mobile web users worldwide, and
mobile traffic is slated to reach over 25% of total Internet traffic
by the year-end. And now, US daily smartphone screen time has
even exceeded television time.

For brands designing, launching, promoting and investing in

mobile apps, tracking the right engagement metrics is critical
to long-term success in terms of ROI and growth. Using real-
time app insights allows you to get to know and adapt to your
users right from the start, so that they keep coming back, even
if you’re just getting started.

In this eBook, we outline how to define your brand’s mobile

goals, switch from a web-only mindset, and get started
identifying, measuring, and learning from your key app
analytics.
Switching from a Web-Centric Mindset 4
Going Beyond Downloads 6
Defining the Right Analytics for Your Goals 7
The 8 Critical Metrics to Measure 9
The 4 App Analytics Best Practices to Implement 14
Integrating to Achieve Holistic Results 21
 1

Switching from a
Web-Centric Mindset
As much as marketers wish, want and hope otherwise, mobile
and web have some important differences that come into
play when you start analyzing user data. The rise of mobile
app usage has lead to an overhaul in the traditional metrics
marketers measure. The rules for engagement have been
thoroughly defined for the web world, but that criteria doesn’t
directly translate to the mobile world.
“
“ The focus is on user sessions
instead of pageviews
People use mobile apps in a fundamentally different way. They
may spend less time in apps than on the web during a given
time, but their app sessions are more concentrated. The key
app usage funnel is similar to the web, but critically different.
The focus is on user sessions instead of pageviews. Sessions
are tracked more minutely than web visits and pageviews.

Page 4 of 22
 Switching from a Web-Centric Mindset

Web visits can be inaccurately tracked because of a lack of

user-enabled cookies, and is inconsistent in a multi-tab world.
Many web users today leave pages up that they aren’t actively
viewing, or revisit pages to recall information, not to act on
events like converting, purchasing, or downloading.

In the mobile world, users are identified by the device tracking

or through social authentication, and a session times out after
a user closes the app, or navigates away from the app for more
than 15 seconds. App interactions are tracked down to flow
and retention-based metrics that are indicative of engagement
behavior. Moving away from a pageviews mindset to a sessions
mindset is the key to approaching your app analytics.

Unfortunately, Google Analytics doesn’t cover enough to

accurately measure your mobile app metrics. At its core, it’s
a web analytics platform, and doesn’t have the capabilities
to work as an adequate source of app engagement data. So
switching from a web mindset is as much about finding the right
app analytics platform as it is changing your way of approaching
those analytics.

Page 5 of 22
 2

Going Beyond Downloads

Here’s the first place businesses get stuck: focusing on app

downloads as the primary success metric. Downloads don’t
mean much outside of the app store, and don’t reflect an
accurate number of acquisitions and organic users, nor do they
relate to usage behavior.

Today, nearly 22% of apps downloaded are never used

more than once. So if your brand is concerned mainly with
downloads, you’re tracking an empty metric. What does a
download matter if the user never opens it again? Stopping at
downloads is the same as stopping at site traffic; the real data is
about engagement.

App downloads don’t show the long term value of mobile users
to your business, so additional measurement is necessary to
see what really impacts your bottom line. The most successful
app creators are the ones that dig into granulated data to
assess retention, behavior, and revenue streams.

Page 6 of 22
 3

Defining the Right

Analytics for Your Goals
When it comes to your app, there is a set of metrics critical to
measuring user engagement. That being said, what you gain
from them stems from determining your overall brand goals.
Developers, marketers, sales executives, and even business
owners might all have slightly different goals in mind, so take
the time to answer some questions around why you launched
the app:

1 - What is the 2 - How do we 3 - What paths do 4 - What is the

primary goal of our want users to be- we want to drive conversion goal?
app? have in-app? users towards?

Not all apps are the same, so defining the right metrics for your
business puts you a step ahead. Smart marketers know they
need to use a hypothesis-driven approach and quickly learn

Page 7 of 22
 Defining the Right Analytics for Your Goals

what’s working in their apps. There’s a tendency to collect the

most granular minutia, to collect data for data’s sake, or to find
answers in search of questions. Trudging into your analytics
armed with the necessary questions to answer gives you an
immediate, and actionable, starting point for measuring app
success.

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Page 8 of 22
 4

The 8 Critical Metrics to

Measure
Have your goals set, but still not sure where to start? There are
certain metrics everyone should be tracking to measure and
harness app user engagement. Because app and web analytics
are fundamentally different, having these in your go-to list to
start out will help you discover opportunities within the data
around natural user behavior.

1. Users

Tracking your users is an important first piece of the puzzle.

Not only does it give you insight into your audience and their
natural app usage patterns, it is also vital to creating deeper
engagement, like segmenting audiences, tracking specific
behavior and launching successful app marketing campaigns.
Once you know your user base and current active users, you
have a baseline for improving engagement to increase users
across channels, those who have dropped out of a desired
funnel, or those within your market space who haven’t yet
downloaded your app. You also gain greater insight into the

Page 9 of 22
 The 8 Critical Metrics to Measure

monetization behavior of users, including the degree of usage,

who makes in-app purchases, and who clicks through to ads.

2. Session Length

Session length is measured as the period of time between app

open and close, or when the app times out after 15 seconds. It
indicates how much time your users are spending in your app
per individual session. Session length allows you to see which
audiences are spending the most time in your app and why.

“ Session length is measured as the

period of time between app open
and close
“
Tracking the length of user sessions is critical to unlocking
revenue potential in your app flows. If you’ve got a mCommerce
app, how long does your checkout flow take? If the average
session length is five minutes and your checkout flow takes six,
you need to either encourage users to stay in the app longer or
simplify the checkout process. Identifying common funnels and
how long they take versus how long a user typically spends in-
app, you can improve those funnels for better results.

3. Session Interval

Session interval is the time between the user’s first session and
his or her next one, showing the frequency with which your

Page 10 of 22
 The 8 Critical Metrics to Measure

users open the app. This can signal the immediate value gained
from downloading and running the app. When you know the
typical time lapse between sessions per user segment, you can
better optimize the user experience to prompt regular opens.

For example, if you notice that tablet users have longer session
intervals than smartphone users, it might be that you need to
improve screen flow or design in your tablet app. That could
lead to a positive change in terms of shortening the interval
between sessions for those tablet users. It could also be an
indication that you should consider adding contextual app
marketing, like in-app or push messaging campaigns, to prompt
more immersive and frequent interaction.

4. Time in App

Time in app tracks how long a user was in your app over a
period of time, e.g. user X was in my app for three of the last
24 hours. It’s another metric for identifying how often your app
is being used, and is an indicator of how valuable your app
is to users. Similar to session length and interval, this metric
measures behavior over time to give you a clear view of user
patterns, allowing you to easily classify how often users are
engaging with your app.

If a certain segment of your users is consistently opening your

app for long periods of time, you need to dig into the “why?”
Are they all following a similar screen flow, making more
purchases, or doing research? Use information like this to kick
off personalization initiatives to boost usage.

Page 11 of 22
 The 8 Critical Metrics to Measure

5. Acquisition

Acquisition represents the number of users who download

and install your app from a certain location, through organic
search, word-of-mouth, paid campaigns or in-app referrals.
This metric is especially important to track when you run
campaigns through paid partners like Facebook to promote app
downloads. Acquisitions reports track how much money you’re
spending to acquire these users, their app downloads and what
they’re doing when they get into your app.

“ You can analyze the long-term

value of acquired users against
organic users
“
Running paid acquisition campaigns comes down to ROI, and
not just in terms of downloads per campaign. You can analyze
the long-term value of acquired users against organic users,
and segment audiences to A/B test or promote conversions
through different app messaging campaigns.

6. Screen Flow

Screen flow tracks exits by screen, flow between screens, and

total occurrences of visits to screens, visualizing the typical
visitor interactions in your app. With screen flows, you can look
at a particular screen in your app and see both what users did
while on screen and where they went afterwards. In looking

Page 12 of 22
 The 8 Critical Metrics to Measure

at how users navigate your app, you can get a clear sense of
problem areas, conversion road bumps, and drop off screens.

Screen flow analytics show you exactly what those users who
didn’t complete a stage did instead, enabling you to fine-tune
your app’s flow to increase conversions. With this data in mind,
you can implement redesigns to make clearer funnels, or create
in-app marketing campaigns to re-engage dropped users.

7. Retention

Retention is measured as the percentage of users who return

to your app based on the date of their first visit. Also referred to
as cohorts, retention tracking highlights your most engaged –
and valuable – users, creating better targeting capabilities and
allowing you to track in-app purchasing by level of engagement.
Splitting out retention rate based on device, audience and
campaign, or by custom dimensions like purchase frequency,
you can experiment with marketing or personalization to test
engagement and improve your app.

Analyzing retention allows you to determine what’s working

and what isn’t in your app over time as updates occur. If you
released a new version, one of the first things you should
identify is whether or not your retention has changed. Building
long-term retention is key to funneling primed users to
conversions and purchases, as creating a highly engaged user
base is the best way to boost LTV and revenue.

Page 13 of 22
 The 8 Critical Metrics to Measure

8. Lifetime Value

Lifetime value is your primary revenue metric, representing

the financial value of the app and how much each app user or
customer is worth in his or her lifetime. It can be split out by
average monthly value or value per customer, capturing worth
over time financially and also in terms of loyalty and evangelism.
For a news app, for instance, it can be the number of articles
read or shared over time. LTV can also be tracked as revenue
per customer, a slightly different formula that correlates directly
to purchases, both in-app and across other channels for overall
spend.

LTV can show growth over time for different segments, i.e. by
acquisition channel or monthly cohorts, and signals how much
more can you spend toward acquisition to gain more of these
users and still turn a profit. It also represents the value of mobile
vs. non-mobile customers; which user segment spends more, is
more loyal, and is a bigger brand evangelist.

Page 14 of 22
The 4 App Analytics Best
Practices to Implement
It’s rare for your analytics to display all of the data you actually need
right off the bat without any customization. Tailoring your analytics
reporting to your business means that you’ll have the most relevant
information possible, and harnessing the eight critical engagement
metrics is only done successfully with these best practices in place.
Luckily, having clearly defined goals will set you up to easily identify
and implement these techniques.

Page 15 of 22
1 - Tagging Events

Events are the actions users take within your app, and can be
individually defined by your goals, such as article reading or posting
to a social network. Events also have attributes associated with them,
which are added details describing the actions, and will help you get
granular insights about those actions. An example of this could be
Event: “Content Shared,” Attributes: Platform and Content ID. Events
should be summarized at the highest level to describe the action
taking place.

Tagging an event indicates that that event is one to always watch,

and is typically part of a larger funnel. For example, if you have a
mCommerce app, you’ll want to tag all of the events that are part
of the most important funnel: the checkout process. This includes
events such as: after the user views an item, adds it to a cart, and then
starts the checkout process and completes each step, to the final
confirmation screen, and then actually confirms of the purchase.

Other events can be ads clicked, articles read, friends invited, games
played, or videos viewed. Tag the events that mean the most in
terms of brand-specific conversion goals, as these actions are most
important to analyzing goal completion.

Page 16 of 22
2 - Establishing Segments

If all of your users behaved the same way, it would be easy to analyze
and improve your app for everyone, with the same results. But your
users act differently, and need to be segmented accordingly. A
segment is defined by users who did or did not do certain events,
or pair of events in sequence, and can be a helpful way to identify
specific relationships of usage between different parts of an app.

Your engagement metrics are only made stronger by specific

segments, as you’ll be able to more clearly define user behavior
based on key characteristics, like location, device, purchasing vs.
non-purchasing, and more. Unique segments often work hand-in-
hand custom dimensions – adding a well-defined custom dimension
can immediately segment out app usage by a number of important
variables.

Page 17 of 22
3 - Choosing Custom Dimensions

Custom dimensions are customized ways to segment users in

app-specific categories. A basic set up will allow you to view app
usage by device and model, and also segment your users based
on their specific actions within an app. Good examples of custom
dimensions include registration status, subscriber type and gender.
Sometimes it is valuable to segment users based on other parameters
or information on the users. Generally, custom dimensions should be
considered as semi-permanent descriptors of the user that do not
change frequently.

Tagging an event indicates that that event is one to always watch,

and is typically part of a larger funnel. For example, if you have a
mCommerce app, you’ll want to tag all of the events that are part
of the most important funnel: the checkout process. This includes
events such as: after the user views an item, adds it to a cart, and then
starts the checkout process and completes each step, to the final
confirmation screen, and then actually confirms of the purchase.

Page 18 of 22
4 - Defining Funnels

App funnels are defined the same way as web funnels: they are
the process you want your user to follow to convert on a desired
action. Funnels are defined by the events completed to reach that
desired action, so tagging events and defining funnels should be a
coordinated effort. Defining your funnels helps you identify where
drop-offs happen in the conversion paths of your app.

In mCommerce, the major funnel is always going to be purchasing

related: a user is viewing categories and getting to search results, and
then looking at items, adding them to a cart, entering the address and
credit card information, confirmation, and/or actually checking out.
Using attributes in looking at your funnel, you can understand not only
whaAAt percentage of users drop off before adding to a cart, but also
which categories are more likely to result in proceeding to checkout.

Page 19 of 22
That’s the main purchasing funnel, but you’ll definitely want to include
different variations of this funnel too. Consider if a user started the
funnel by searching instead of viewing the category, or if they added
the items in the cart before checking out, to get a complete view into
in-app purchasing behavior.

Page 20 of 22
 6

Integrating to Achieve
Holistic Results
Your mobile app isn’t the sole channel of focus for your brand;
rather, it plays a crucial role in a multi-channel experience, and
should be evaluated as part of your marketing ecosystem. It’s
becoming increasingly important to give consistent experiences
across all channels, online and offline. You may find that your
most valuable users in the app may never engage with your
brand in a brick-and-mortar store. These users may spend most
of their time on the web and they engage with your brand in
that way.

Thinking more broadly about user data allows you to take

your brand to the next level with multiple touch points of
engagement, with your app acting as a critical component to
the process. Implementing and tracking the right data allows
you to improve the value of your app over time and develop
your brand’s multi-channel strategy.

So what’s the next step in using your app analytics? Choosing

the right analytics tool and harnessing your metrics to drive

Page 21 of 22
 Integrating to Achieve Holistic Results

improvement. Understanding your audience, their in-app

behavior, and the natural screen flows is necessary to iterating
and refining your app for better results. You can use these
engagement insights to launch app marketing campaigns,
redesigns, UX changes, and stronger funnels that boost ROI
and make your app a profitable channel in your brand’s overall
marketing strategy.

Page 22 of 22
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