Top-Notch Mobile App Analytics Tools for Proficient Insights: Choosing the Ideal Match
In the ever-crowded app market, having a clear understanding of your users and their in-app behavior is crucial for boosting retention and driving growth. That's where app analytics tools come in handy, delving into data related to how users interact with your app, allowing for informed decisions to improve app performance and growth.
App analytic tools record data related to user interactions within the mobile application, such as downloads, sessions, active users, and devices. Unique metrics may also be required for specific functions or activities of an app, like the duration it takes for users to complete their first booking on Airbnb. Insights generated by these analytics help developers make educated changes to the user experience, ultimately improving the app's performance and expansion.
But with hundreds of analytic tools available, which one should you choose? Let's explore some of the best tools currently in the market and the various categories these tools fall under:
1. Mobile App Marketing Analytics:
With millions of apps vying for user attention, effectively marketing your app is no longer an option - it's essential. Mobile app marketing analytic tools examine the data related to events like user acquisition, the characteristics of these users, and the amount of money they spend within the app. By analyzing this information, you can optimize your app's monetization strategy, attract quality users, and increase the return on investment.
Some common mobile app marketing metrics include:
- CPM (cost per mille)
- Click Through Rate (CTR)
- Traffic Source
- Number of Downloads
- User Demographics
- Cost Per Install (CPI)
- Devices
- Free to Paid Conversion Percentage
- Purchase Time Frame
- App Rating
- App Review
- Social Shares
Paying attention to these metrics can help achieve long-term success, providing valuable insights to create effective marketing campaigns. If you're looking to craft powerful app marketing strategies, take a look at our article on the 11 most powerful app marketing strategies to drive installs.
2. Mobile App Performance Analytics:
Mobile App Performance metrics delve into the robustness of an app, focusing on how the machine is actually running. These metrics are not concerned with user acquisition or app profitability but rather identify areas within the app that frequently crash, the devices that struggle to run the app, and overall reliability. By tracking these analytics, you can take swift actions to fix bugs, maintain user happiness, and avoid losing customers to competitors.
Some common mobile app performance metrics include:
- Real-time Alerts
- Crashes/Errors
- Exceptions
- Carrier Latency
- Uptime
- API Latency
Tracking mobile app performance metrics may seem dull, but it's a crucial action to take to ensure users have a reliable and robust experience with minimal downtime.
3. In-App Analytics:
In-app analytics track the behavior of users within a mobile application. With in-app analytic tools, developers can identify common drop-off points, unused features, and unusual pathways, enabling them to correct or improve these issues to increase user retention. Additionally, in-app analytics are essential in determining which features should receive development resources, ensuring funds are not wasted on unwanted or unused features.
Some valuable in-app metrics include:
- Device
- Operating System
- Pathways
- Location
- Time of Use
- Session Duration
- Most Used Screens
- App Closes
In-app analytics play a crucial role in fostering and maintaining long-lasting relationships with users, ensuring that the app performs as promised and delivers the value expected.
Top Mobile App Analytics Tools:
Here, we've compiled a list of some of the best mobile app analytics tools currently available, each with its unique features and attributes. Before deciding which one is right for your needs, read through the key features for each tool to find the one that best fits your requirements:
1. Countly
Countly offers an open-source, real-time analytics platform designed to understand and enhance user journeys. Its features include push notifications for user engagement, usability crash reporting for Android and iOS, and powerful query capabilities without the need for lengthy SQL queries. It's trusted by businesses like Microsoft and Verizon[2].
2. Firebase
Firebase, acquired by Google, delivers comprehensive app analytics and a growth platform. With this free service, developers can collect data on up to 500 events, study popular features, and optimize push notifications. Firebase's Crashlytics helps identify app crashes, enabling developers to take immediate action to fix issues. Additionally, Firebase will integrate Fabric in mid-2020, creating an even more analytically powerful tool[3].
3. Fabric
Originally created by Twitter and later acquired by Google, Fabric is a comprehensive suite of developer tools for demographic understanding and mobile app growth. Fabric provides real-time data on crash reporting and analytics, alerts on app issues affecting the user experience, and targeted localization strategies[3].
4. Apple App Analytics
Apple's analytics tool offers information on app trends and financial performance. As an Apple product, it delivers exclusive data on iOS and tvOS apps that no third-partytool can provide[3]. Key features include the ability to discover the marketing channels with the highest impact, the effectiveness of the App Store product page, and the tracking of app crashes by OS, platform, and app version.
5. Localytics
Localytics excels in understanding your target audience, offering comprehensive data on app sessions and usage. Its features include the ability to dig deep into user data, industry benchmarking for comparison with competitors, targeted messaging based on cross-data connections, and improved customer retention through engagement enhancements[3].
6. Flurry Analytics
Flurry Analytics, Yahoo-based, allows developers to measure user activity in their app for free. It's particularly helpful for developers with more than one app, as you can monitor multiple products across iOS and Android platforms for comparison[3]. Other trackable metrics and tools include tracking in-app actions, usage trends, the splitting of users by app version, usage, install data, and creating push notifications based on relevant data.
7. Amazon Pinpoint
Amazon Mobile Analytics and Amazon Pinpoint are merged tools that offer developers a powerful combination of analytics for understanding app usage and revenue as well as data for comparing new and returning customers[3]. Key features include collecting user information, creating targeted messaging, and integrating with numerous Amazon services.
8. App Annie
App Annie is a popular choice for tracking app performance based on usage, revenue, downloads, and spending. It gathers data broken down by country and app stores, with free access to reports via web dashboard, apps, emails, and CSV reports[3]. Other trackable metrics and tools include ad campaign performance, geographical user data for localization strategies, and app update impact analysis.
9. CleverTap
CleverTap is an excellent option for marketers looking to create powerful engagement strategies, featuring a dynamic representation of the audience through its robust suite of segmentation tools. CleverTap helps identify user patterns and habits, enabling marketers to set triggers for users to move to other segments based on behavioral conditions[3].
10. Appfigures
Appfigures is a trusted choice for businesses like Slack and Snapchat, offering real-time monitoring and optimization of downloads and revenue. The tool is easy to set up and offers real-time alert functionality, making it effortless to keep track of app performance[3]. Key features include hourly rankings, App Store review and reply capabilities, and the ability to create flexible reports for targeted insights.
11. Matomo
Matomo is a user-friendly, open-source tool with customization options. Its focus on user privacy enables developers to keep user data private instead of funneling it through third-party services[3]. Matomo allows collecting user information, monitoring performance, analyzing user experience, driving SEO strategies through search engine referrer metrics, and supporting personalized engagement with Appsee.
12. Mixpanel
Mixpanel offers event-based analytics, making it simple to set up: just install their SDK and start creating custom events for within-app tracking[3]. Mixpanel excels in understanding user behavior by providing insights on app usage, helping developers understand why users return to the app and why others may abandon it.
13. Amplitude
Amplitude is a top choice if you want to determine what motivates your users. Built with the vision of helping developers create apps that grow businesses and audiences, Amplitude offers features like behavioral reporting, eliminating issues to improve retention, creating stickier apps, and discovering new demographics in the customer base for effective targeting[3].
14. Keen
Keen is a valuable tool for developers with limited budgets, offering user-facing metrics that are easy to understand and user-friendly. Keen allows for integration with only a few lines of code, creating an attractive and simple interface that mirrors the look of the app[4]. Key features include tracking in-app events, gathering real-time analytics, and performing offline analysis.
15. DevMate
DevMate focuses on app distribution and management, offering marketing metrics, analytics, and real-time conversion ratios that help developers grow their apps and increase retention[5]. Key features include tracking visits, sales, and downloads for performance analysis, understanding conversion rates across campaigns, and collaborating with a dashboard containing raw data for analysis.
16. Applink
Applink's point of focus is ensuring that data is interpreted more intelligently, providing clearer insights into users and products. Applink's goal is to facilitate increased engagement, guaranteeing clarity on app performance and user experience, saving time on data gathering, and providing data for marketing campaigns[5].
17. AppsFlyer
AppsFlyer helps marketers track app installs back to each individual marketing campaign and media source, ensuring that app acquisition strategies are as efficient as possible[6]. By measuring the impact of mobile marketing, AppsFlyer empowers developers to optimize their marketing budgets and increase app growth.
18. Bango
Bango enables online payments for internet giants like Google and Amazon, as well as numerous other smaller mobile apps. Its technology offers various payment methods, ensuring that no potential customer is restricted from purchasing through your app[7]. Key features include supporting hundreds of worldwide payment providers, reaching the maximum number of paying customers faster than any other method, and providing real-time insights into customer spending.
19. TrafficGuard
TrafficGuard protects mobile ad fraud by blocking fraudulent traffic before it impacts your advertising budget[8]. Its cutting-edge technology verifies the authenticity of user data to keep marketers' budgets protected and their data accurate.
In conclusion, every developer should carefully consider the app analytic tools they use, as each tool caters to different requirements and analytics needs. Some app developers may find it beneficial to combine several tools for a well-rounded view of their app's performance. So whether you are a small app developer or part of a larger organization, investing in app analytics tools is critical for driving app growth and improving user retention.
- App marketing strategies can be optimized by analyzing metrics such as CPM, CTR, traffic source, number of downloads, user demographics, CPI, devices, free to paid conversion percentage, purchase time frame, app rating, app review, social shares, and tracking these metrics helps achieve long-term success.
- In-app analytics, like tracking device, operating system, pathways, location, time of use, session duration, most used screens, app closes, can help identify common drop-off points, unused features, and unusual pathways, enabling developers to increase user retention.
- Mobile app performance analytics like real-time alerts, crashes/errors, exceptions, carrier latency, uptime, API latency, help identify areas within the app that frequently crash, the devices that struggle to run the app, and overall reliability, allowing for swift actions to fix bugs, maintain user happiness, and avoid losing customers.
- App analytics tools such as Countly, Firebase, Fabric, Apple App Analytics, Localytics, Flurry Analytics, Amazon Pinpoint, App Annie, CleverTap, Appfigures, Matomo, Mixpanel, Amplitude, Keen, DevMate, Applink, AppsFlyer, Bango, and TrafficGuard offer a combination of app marketing, performance, and in-app analytics, catering to different requirements and analytics needs for developers.
- Mobile app revenue and ROI can be improved by optimizing marketing strategies and monetization with informed decisions, driven by app marketing analytics, enhancing user engagement and driving app growth.
