It can be difficult to make sense of data analytics, especially when it’s associated with marketing and performance. Often there are too many metrics that are either misleading or inessential when analyzing a digital asset like a mobile app or a website.
While analytics and reporting can be tedious, it is an important part of improving any product. This is especially true for mobile apps.
App adoption has been on the rise. An average smartphone user opens nine apps every day, and thirty over a month according to TechJury.
The way people go online is changing. While apps are not completely supplanting websites, they are becoming the default choice of smartphone users.
So apps are important. If businesses can understand how to retain and engage app users, they can improve user experience and scale growth effectively.
App analytics can help in this regard. Here are a few ways you can measure app performance with analytics and use it to enhance user experience.
#1: Make popular screens discoverable
Using an app analytics tool, you can find which screens are opened most often by users. If you have an ecommerce app, popular screens can be product listings, categories, or the cart page.
The easiest way to improve user experience is to give them what they want. If a particular screen is popular, it makes sense to make it accessible.
You can do this by adding a banner that goes to the screen that your users like. Other ways include adding a bottom navigation button, or placing a direct link in the app’s side menu.
Apps are preferred over websites primarily because they offer easy accessibility. As your users grow and their preferences become apparent, it is important to update how you present content in your app, improving mobile app retention.
#2: Analyze desired action data
Every app business wants its users to perform a certain set of desirable actions.
For a shopping app, this is obviously purchasing a product.
Similarly, the desired action for an LMS app would be a user signing up for a course.
Behind every desired action is a process. For a shopping app, the purchase of a product is preceded by customers discovering it, adding it to their carts, and completing the payment process.
For app analysts, the solution is clear. Make a typical customer journey as smooth as possible to increase the number of times customers execute the desired action.
Let’s continue with the ecommerce example.
How many times do app customers add a product to the cart? How many actually click and go to the cart screen? If the number of cart visits is low, is there a way to make the cart more accessible? How many payment failures happen in the app? Are there certain payment methods that are more suited to your audience?
The best way to do this is to create multiple user journeys. Think of test cases that illustrate the many paths a customer can take to complete the desired action. Then see the screen time and visits these screens get.
This will shed light on how your customers are behaving on the app, what the bottlenecks are, and where there is room for improvement.
#3: Review your outreach efforts
App businesses don’t simply run campaigns to acquire new users and customers. Many external campaigns done via social media and email are meant for existing users.
The idea is to reach out to customers on channels they frequently visit. After all, existing users are more likely to understand and respond to a campaign as they already use the app.
Running campaigns is not an issue. Problems arise when they’re not reviewed and analyzed optimally.
Let’s say an app company sends out an email blast to all its app users and announces the addition of a new feature to the app. The desired action, in this case, is that users open the app to see and try out the new feature.
The same effort is made by the company on its social media channel as well. Let’s assume that both the company’s social media handles and email campaigns have a similar reach.
As an app analyst, there are a few things to analyze here:
- Which platform brings in more visitors, email or social media?
- What are the kind of users that are arriving on the app from these two campaigns? Are these users comprised of those who open the app regularly?
- If infrequent users are drawn to your app after you run a campaign, how much would it help if you increased the frequency of these campaigns?
You can analyze outreach campaigns in endless ways based on your business goals. The idea is to know how much would another campaign help the app, and if yes, are there any changes that would help your app even more?
A systematic analysis of your app traffic can help grow your app traffic. It also comes without needing to acquire new users which can be expensive.
#4: Revamp, hide, or remove your app’s low-value screens
We mentioned how making popular screens accessible can improve user experience a lot. On the other side of the coin is dealing with unpopular or low-value app screens.
Some of your app screens will not get a lot of attention from users. If we assume that the design and loading time of the screen is normal, the only conclusion we can draw is that your customers are not interested in the same.
Dealing with this issue is fairly simple: you remove the screen from prominent places in your app.
If this screen was accessible directly through the home screen, bottom menu, header, or side menu, it is a good idea to remove it from there.
You can replace it with a screen that shows much more promise.
Once you make it less accessible, the question is what do you do with the screen? The answer varies:
- Revamp: If a low-value screen displays a product, service, or feature you’re confident about, consider a revamp. Maybe the issue lies in how you’re presenting it to your users. Look at some of your popular screens and see what’s working for them.
- Hide: Hiding a screen in this context means making it less accessible. Let’s say you have a privacy policy link in your app’s footer. Your users don’t open it very often, but you’re still obligated to have it in your app. You can move the link to an inner screen, like the My Account page where users can access it if they wish to. You can instead add a more useful link in the footer.
- Remove: In some cases, it makes sense to simply drop a screen from your app. More app screens mean more testing for your developers and more analysis for your reporting team. You essentially lose bandwidth on If you’ve tried revamping a screen and it’s simply not working, drop it. Being ruthless with your screens makes your app lightweight and focused.
In conclusion
The best way to market your app is to make your existing users happy. Retention reduces the need to acquire new users and inspires loyalty amongst your existing userbase.
The challenge of making apps from scratch is mitigated with mobile app-making tools like AppMySite. The key lies in making your app a success once it is live on the app stores. This is best achieved with analytics tools that can help you see how customers use your mobile app.
