Why you need mobile app analytics (+ 3 best mobile analytics tools)

Mobile app analytics exists to make sure you know what you’re doing. Marketing, sales, and product management simply can’t exist without analytics: you need data to know what’s working and what doesn’t, how the users behave inside the app, and where your conversions come from.

Mobile analytics tools identify unique users, track their journeys, record their behavior, and report on the app’s performance. When it comes to ride-hailing apps, a mobile app analytics tool gathers data about app installs and first opens, clicks, sign-ups, bookings, paid trips, cancellations, etc. You can easily find out the source of the click or the installation you’re interested in: you can see if the click or the installation was the result of your marketing efforts, new design, or anything else. This information is then used to improve conversion rates and develop the best possible application.

Analytics is therefore essential when it comes to measuring the profitability of your marketing actions. The tool links the action (download, visit, or purchase) to its source – for example, a broadcasted ad that enabled the acquisition of the new user. This knowledge allows marketers to optimize their campaigns according to the sources and parameters that give the best results.

Without mobile analytics, marketers and product managers wouldn’t be able to tell what happens within the app: what the users engage with, who they are, why they click or install the app, and why they leave.

How are mobile analytics different from web analytics?

There is a vital difference between web tracking and app tracking. In web tracking, the user always remains in the same environment, which is their web browser - Chrome, Safari, Mozilla, or a different one if your tastes are weirdly niche. It is, therefore, easy for web tools to track the users throughout their journeys. All it takes is noting the actions they take by placing pixels at different places on the website. In contrast, when it comes to the app environment, once the user sees the ad or clicks on the ad, they are redirected to the store. Hence, the data becomes invisible to tracking tools because it is occurring in a different environment.

As a result, while web analytics can be usually managed with the help of Google Analytics and nothing else, completely new tools have to take over when it comes to app analytics.

Here are the three most popular ones:

Top 3 mobile app analytics tools (including on-demand business analytics)

Appsflyer

AppsFlyer is a mobile application analytics and marketing software. It enables businesses to track and optimize their acquisition funnel. Appsflyer is integrated with many apps and platforms so that marketers could perform comprehensive promotional campaigns.

Onde is one of the platforms Appsflyer is integrated with. It lets our partner maximize their ROI and grow their mobile business while making sure customer privacy is protected. Appsflyer provides deep analytics, performance metrics, and flexible reporting. Together, Onde and Appsflyer give your a bird view of the performance of your mobile app and let you dig very deep to know all the details.

Here’s how it works: internal Onde analytic lets you measure all data for all the users combined, while Appsflyer measures the results you get from paid users, i.e. the users you get by spending your marketing budget. One of Appsflyer’s most talked about features is retargeting attribution. This feature allows you to understand which campaign is best for re-engaging with users. The feature most used by marketers is the last-click attribution: it shows you the last source that caused a click that led to the app install.

Adjust

Adjust is another mobile marketing analytics platform providing solutions for measuring and optimizing campaigns while protecting user data. Adjust allows oversight of network APIs, attributions, consented ATT installs, and SKAdNetwork campaign data all in one place. Additionally, the tool provides actionable highlights for quick decisions to help marketers on the spot. Adjust also offers an audience builder solution: the tool builds dynamic segments of users based on behavior. Segments update as users fall in and out of the segment. You can link your segments to your retargeting partners.

Kochava

Kochava, the final software in today’s list, is a Kochava is a mobile attribution and marketing analytics platform, which is mainly aimed at large enterprises. It offers omnichannel measurement and attribution solutions for mobile app marketing. Kochava empowers advertisers and publishers with a platform that seamlessly integrates and manages customer identity, measurement, and data controls. It tracks results from most common publishers, such as Facebook, Google, Twitter, Snapchat, etc., traditional ad networks & DSPs, affiliates, and influencers, and has over 4,500 сertified integrations to include other sources. Kochava also tracks advanced pain media, which includes offline (OOH, DOOH, CPG, etc.), connected TV, and linear TV.

To sum up

When you need to promote your apps among drivers and customers, analytics is paramount. You need to know the real impact of all of your marketing activities, in detail, and with minimal effort from your side. You should only pay for what works and drop the actions and campaigns that don’t. This is just common sense. Yet, often, analytics is underestimated and neglected. Marketing is often thought of as a vague activity with unpredictable results and is often done based on feelings and intuition. Analytics breaks down complex data and gives you a clear understanding of your campaign performances. Every stage of the customer journey becomes clear, which makes your future marketing choices better, safer, and much more likely to bring real results.

The Onde platform is integrated with Appsflyer - one of the best mobile app analytics software. This allows our partners to always have data-based insights into their marketing performance and steadily grow their business.