What You Should Know About Measuring Your Mobile App
What exactly should you be measuring to understand the success of your application and improve results and how can you align your app measurement to business goals?
What exactly should you be measuring to understand the success of your application and improve results and how can you align your app measurement to business goals?
With an explosion in mobile application marketplaces (more than 600,000 apps on Google Play at the time of writing) and a shift in focus to mobile (more than 80 percent of marketers are planning to increase emphasis in mobile initiatives in 2013, according to recent research Google conducted with ClickZ), measuring mobile is more important now than ever.
What exactly should you be measuring to understand the success of your application and improve results? How can you align your app measurement to business goals? We’ll answer those questions in today’s post.
Apps are a different world than web, and thus require a different methodology and set of metrics. Regardless of the platform(s) your app lives on or the tools you use to measure it, it’s critical to measure three key areas: acquisition, engagement, and outcomes. Next, we’ll outline some sample metrics in each area to help you understand them better and become more effective at measuring your app today.
Acquisition Metrics: Where Do Users Come From?
Acquisition metrics show you how people are finding your app and whether they’re continuing to use it. Similar to top-of-funnel web metrics, your marketing team should be analyzing acquisition metrics consistently to ensure a healthy trend up. Some of the key acquisition metrics to measure include:
Engagement Metrics: Is Your App Sticky?
You’ve acquired a massive user base – now what? Engagement metrics help you understand how users are interacting with your app so you can add more of what they like and remove what they don’t. You can also identify potential reasons for attrition before they occur, such as excessive crashing or slow load speeds. Key engagement metrics you should keep an eye on include:
Outcomes: How Does My App Impact the Bottom Line?
Most importantly, identify the metrics that show the business value your app has created, and amplify the areas that are showing the most value. Has it helped increase sales? Brought in more high-quality leads? This is shown through outcome metrics tracked by your app analytics, and may include such metrics as:
Wrapping Up
As mobile continues to grow in importance, apps will be the new staple in the marketer’s toolbox; like social and web are today. With that, adding app measurement to your team’s marketing processes is critical to getting the most out of your mobile marketing.