Analytics are the key to effective monetisation and provide valuable information about the behaviors and metrics associated with the users of your app.
How long do they use the app, how many times do they use it, what is the user flow, what are people tapping on etc. Analytics software can give you deep insight into how and why people love or hate your app.
Analytics can also show you why and where you are making money (or why you’re not). You’ll be able to see if people shut down your app after they use it for the first few features or are they continuing to use it for a while. Are they even reaching the In-App Purchase or More screens? These are all questions that reveal critical insights when it comes to app monetisation.
Testing Is Critical – Testing is one of the most important things you can do when it comes to app monetisation. If you’re not testing then you’re not making as much money as you could be. Analytics provide you with the ability to test your monetisation strategies well beyond the revenue from the app store – and when you change something in your app you have benchmarks to go off so you can measure its success.
New vs Existing Users – In order to understand where you need to focus your efforts you need to understand if your money is coming from new or repeat users. Once you understand how your app performs on a daily basis you will start to see usage patterns that can become valuable ammunition.
Effectiveness and Conversion – Once you understand where the most engaging parts of your app are you will know where and how you should be monetising them. This can be down to something as simple as changing the place you display advertisements or in-app purchase upsells. You will improve the user experience and your ability to sell something to them.
There are three main types of analytics services that you can use to improve your app business:
1. App Store Analytics
This is the starting point for the majority of app makers to start collecting basic data. App store analytics provide information you need to understand your app’s performance in the app store such as sales, worldwide rankings and reviews.
There are also a number of analytics services that you can integrate into your app for additional data including App Annie, Distimo and App Figures.
2. User Analytics
When you are ready for some more advanced analytical data you can start to look at user analytics which can measure critical metrics such as user engagement, churn rate, conversions and revenue.
By closely monitoring how people are interacting with your app (user engagement) you can make changes to the design and product roadmap to take advantage of the information you gather. User analytics allow you to measure the effect of any given design or feature change to increase user engagement, retention and monetisation.
User analytics services include Flurry and Mixpanel.
A larger list of user analytics companies can be found here:
http://www.developereconomics.com/sector/usage-analytics/
3. Marketing Analytics
Now that you have analytics in place to monitor your performance in the app store and how users are interacting with your app, it is time to look at which marketing channels are working best to drive new loyal users to your app.
One of the problems with the analytics data you get from the app stores is that they don’t give you the data you need to scale your user acquisition, which is where marketing analytics come in and allow you to:
- Track conversions to see how many converted into downloads
- Measure user acquisition costs and lifetime user value
- Segment your users by attributing a channel to each user you acquire so you know where they came from By tracking conversions you are moving on from the simple metrics like clicks and impressions and really looking at the numbers that will drive your business. Attributing your marketing channel to each user lets you see the lifetime costs, conversions and profits for each channel you use.
When you are aware of your campaign costs and the lifetime value of your users you can manage your marketing budget more effectively.
Adjust your campaigns and shift your time and budget towards the channels that are bringing in your most loyal users and you will be streets ahead of your competitors who are driving in the dark without marketing analytics.
Marketing analytics services include Tapstream, Kontagent, Kochava and Apsalar.
We hope that gives you a good idea as to some of the options available for analysing the performance of your app.