Is your app reaching its target audience consistently? And if it isn't, how can you improve your app's engagement, loyalty and satisfaction levels?
App analytics tools frequently empower developers with actionable insights they can use to examine an app's performance and explore potential app improvements.
However, many app analytics tools are available, and recent data indicates the majority of developers remain undecided about which of these tools works best.
A December 2015 VentureBeat survey of 230 app developers with 250 million active users showed that most developers use more than one analytics solution. In addition, the survey revealed successful developers typically use more analytics solutions than others.
Finding a single app analytics tool that delivers consistent results might seem challenging, but numerous high-end options are available that deliver proven support, including:
1. Countly
Countly serves as an end-to-end platform for web, mobile applications and game analytics. And with Countly's free analytics platform, Countly Cloud Edition, developers can leverage a real-time dashboard that highlights new and online users as well as revenue analytics and e-mail and forum support, among other features.
To date, Countly has been used across more than 3,000 apps in 120 countries worldwide. It also has helped at least one developer find an analytics solution it could customize according to its data analytics needs, according to Countly CEO Onur Alp Soner.
"The CTO of [the app development company] has been looking for a solution where he could customize according to his company's data analytics needs," he told FierceDeveloper. "Having tried more than 10 different analytics and marketing platforms, the only open source and extensible platform turned out to be Countly."
Ultimately, Countly offers a great option for developers who prioritize security and scalability, Soner said.
"If you need greater data security/privacy, require real-time data, or require a solution that can be customized and "grow" with your needs, SaaS based solutions won't work. Countly is the best option for such customers," he noted.
2. Appsee
Appsee delivers a mobile analytics platform designed to help developers provide "the ultimate app experience."
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Screenshot: Appsee heatmap analytics demo. |
With a free 14-day trial of the Premium version of Appsee, developers can try out real-time, in-app analytics, evaluate up to five apps and 2 million user sessions and much more.
Plus, Appsee even provides developers with "touch heatmaps" that show where users tap, swipe and pinch on a screen. These heatmaps enable developers to find out which gestures are not getting any response from the app and modify the app as needed.
"This relatively simple aspect of an app is actually one of the biggest unknowns that most analytics platforms don't even pick up on," Appsee Chief Marketing Officer John Sela told FierceDeveloper. "Appsee, on the other hand, pinpoints this UI flaw and shows it in a visual, digestible manner."
Appsee even provides video recording capabilities, which helped music learning company JoyTunes discover new ways to enhance its Piano Maestro app.
JoyTunes iOS Dev Team Leader Yoni Tsafir said his company used AppSee learn from its users. He pointed out the insights JoyTunes received from AppSee eventually led his company to create a tutorial that helped enhance the user experience.
"When we launched Piano Maestro (almost 3 years ago), we were looking to see how users are interacting with our app so we can learn and improve it. There's no better way of doing that in volume rather than watching video recordings of the users," Tsafir said. "Appsee was a good solution for us, we were able to understand where users are getting stuck or misusing the app, and it inspired us to create a tutorial and improve other parts of the UX."
3. Apsalar
Apsalar offers Mobile Measurement & Analytics, a free analytics tool that enables developers to measure the return on investment (ROI) of their mobile apps. The company also provides a mobile app attribution tool that combines marketing measurement for app install and remarketing, as well as an audience segmentation and builder tool to help marketers customize and personalize marketing to high-performing segments of their users.
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Screenshot: Appsalar session playback demo. |
Jim Nichols, Apsalar's vice president of marketing, notes the app attribution tool helps app developers better monetize their apps by providing insights to measure and improve marketing effectiveness.
He noted Apsalar can help developers find out which user groups are most responsive to its marketing efforts, ensuring they can segment and market specifically to groups in its target audience to improve monetization.
"We are all about making marketing efforts more efficient," Nichols said. "Few leading apps make it to the top without marketing, and the more efficient that marketing is, the better your chances of success."
In addition, Apsalar's audience segmentation and builder tools may prove to deliver exceptional value for developers going forward.
"We all know that a huge percentage of apps are abandoned or uninstalls in the first hours and days of their use," Nichols added. "Segmentation enables you to deliver customer marketing messages geared specifically to the need state of particular users. This can increase the number of long-term users and payers that your app attracts."