It’s now become imperative for developers to have analytical data about their apps at their fingertips. It’s insufficient to simply know how many users have visited an application. App builders need summaries of the type of mobile devices users are using, whether they’ve clicked on salient features, if they’ve failed to remain on Site long enough to digest content, which country they’re from & if they’ve abandoned a carefully set up shopping cart without converting to a sale.
These points of analysis assist developers in improving their applications, they allow for A/B testing of different case scenarios & help in convincing potential clients to use an app & advertisers to part with their money. If an application can demonstrate that it has a high ‘hit rate’ for mobile users, & that these users remain on Site for lengthy periods, then this information could be used to set up an advertising profile to attract a particular type of ‘spend’.
Obviously, there are many reasons other than commercial for developers or application owners to use analytical statistics to assess how well they’re performing, but whatever the reason, quality data is key to any assessment plan. Its thus becoming clear that almost all businesses today need essential analytical tools.
In order to facilitate this endeavor, we’ll take a look at 2 popular tools:
Google Analytics
Free
Easy to integrate tool, which provides a rich set of analytical data. Simply copy & paste the code provided by Google into the ‘head’ of all pages you’d like to include in your analytical assessment, & Google will do the rest.
What you get
Once you’ve verified that you own the resource, Google offers a categorized analysis of your application’s visitors. Comparative statistics are available for the current period (usually the last week) against the previous week. Traffic is dissected according to the device, country of origin, & where your visitors have sourced your site( direct URL, link on social media, Google or other search engine, or a referral on a 3rd party Website).
Several graphs are presented displaying a variety of comparative statistics, & categories such as ‘Audience Overview’, ‘E-commerce Activity’ and ‘Audience Behavior’, giving the asset owner an in depth understanding of traffic patterns, bounce rates, returning visitors & the length of time these visitors spend on the Site.
Google offers apps for a variety of devices such as Apple & Android, so that you can view your stats on the move. The app is easy to set up, & there is no learning curve, simply add your site & view Google’s metrics. Google does offer the option to set up custom comparative testing, but if you’re not tech savvy enough to employ this option, the featured set of data, should be sufficient.
Heap Analytics
Free & paid plans available
Professional data analysis offered for your application. To install, sign up for an account & copy the ‘script’ code into the head section of every page you want analyzed.
What you get
”Heap automatically captures every Web, mobile, & Cloud interaction: clicks, submits, transactions, emails, & more”.
Heap offers real-time analysis for a host of visitor interactions on your application. Compared to Google Analytics this app has a steeper learning curve, & many of the functions must be set up individually so as to offer custom comparative metrics. If you take the time to follow the tutorials on offer on the Heap Website & set up your tools, you’ll be rewarded with a set of data tailored specifically towards your analytical objectives.
The web app works on all devices & interactively measures data & displays comparative graphs, to which you can add custom filters, date ranges, metric types & many other elements to produce statistics for almost any occurrence or profile you can think of.
Once up & running, & you’ve familiarized yourself with Heap’s functionality, you’ll have a detailed overview of your visitors’ behavior on your application. These stats identify ‘bottlenecks’ that cause ‘bounce rates’, broken code, best & worst app features, & many other useful metrics, which can be used to improve your app & design marketing campaigns.
In conclusion
There are many other companies that offer analytical services. All applications offer similar metrics, & you can find several others by ‘‘Googling” analytical apps.
