There are thousands & thousands of apps out there in every app store. Most of them have thousands of downloads. But there are only so many apps a person can use at a time. Most of the apps are going to fade away because of non usage. Then how do you ensure your app is more engaging than the others? How do you ensure more people download your app instead of your competitors?
One way is to do mobile analytics to increase users. Understand and analyze app engagement, optimize features and deliver the best user experience. Here are some tips to do mobile analytics to increase users.
Always start with a question
You need to work backwards. Ask yourself a question whose answer will tell you what is working, what isn’t, what are the next steps. E.g, How are people checking out, how many people have exercised a promotion, how many people are taking advantage of a GPS feature that you’ve added? By first defining your questions, you know what to measure, where to look for that information. This way you can get the most out of your mobile analytics. Generally, people like to gather as much data as they can. People end up gathering data at the most granular level. They feel the more data they have the more insights they will get. That’s not the case. You must gather only as much data as necessary to give you a general direction about the answer. You are only looking for the next step.
Because you’ve defined the key business questions & measures, you can clearly set goals for your business and see its performance against the goals. This is the first step for using mobile analytics to increase users.
Spot Opportunities early on with data
Use your data to understand where the users drop off. Is it after download, in the middle of a feature? Before payment? You can add incentives for the user continue what he/she is doing. E.g, reduce the number of steps in the feature, add promotional in-app messages or offers at those steps. Use mobile analytics to increase user retention.
Understand user preferences
Once you have the right data being captured, you need to begin understanding user preferences. How do they access your app – Mobile/Web/Offline? Where do they access it from? What time of the day do they use it the most? Which features do they like/dislike the most? What is the demographic of most engaged users – teenagers/mostly women/mostly men?
Look into your data for answers to these questions. Thinking more broadly about user data allows you to take your brand to the next level with multiple touch points of engagement. This will help you know what your users are looking for in your brand and build it for them.
Conclusion
To summarize, list your business questions first, identify what to measure, acquire required data. Now, spot opportunities to improve the user experience and nudge more users to conversions. Also, use your data to understand how users interact with your brand, what they expect from it. This way you use mobile analytics to increase users.
Sreeram Sreenivasan is the Founder of Ubiq. He has helped many Fortune 500 companies in the areas of BI & software development.