by Jonathan Raveh, director of publishers with appnext
The mobile world keeps evolving. As the number of downloads grows and market penetration level increase, tracking methods become easier and more accurate. However, the vast majority of these methods are duplicated from the online/desktop world. This can cause advertisers to concentrate on wrong parameters in search of boosting their business in the mobile arena. So, what are these “wrong” parameters? The main issue that most advertisers and brands struggle with these days is the number of installs.
Of course, getting your app to get a substantial amount of installs is important, but without tracking additional parameters it can become completely useless, and even damage your business.
Here’s my list of the additional and super-important parameters each business has to track going into mobile: -
Usage – the most important KPI [Key Performance Indicator] of all. Track and analyse your mobile app with regards to what the user is doing while engaging with it. What’s the session length? Is this app used for customer service? Purchase?
Support? Is this what you intended it to be? If so, are you reaching your target audience?
Providing an answer to these questions can give you great insights about your business in general.
As important as it is to keep track of each user’s usage, your active users are the ones actually making a difference.
Track your DAU (Daily Active Users) and MAU (Monthly Active Users) and learn as much as you can about them, as they are more likely to create real value to your business.
Retention – with users getting tired with apps so quickly, retention is the real challenge. You can spend a lot of money on UA, but it will all go to waste if they remove your app after a week.
Not only that – users that removed your app quickly will (most likely) not have a good memory of your business.
So, track your users by the time they keep your app. Tracking 1-day, 7-days, 1-month, 3-months and 6-months retention numbers is a good start.
ARPU & LTV (Life Time value) – these are real numbers, not estimations. As a business, you must know how much value an average user on mobile is generating for you each month and during his complete lifetime cycle.
It is also important to know what tool created the revenue (in-app purchase,adverting, etc).
Keep in mind that some users prefer to use mobile a tool while generating value in other platforms (online, offline, etc), so you need to track the spike in performance in other media channels.
Traffic sources – another good indicator that helps you understand your audience better. By identifying where your users came from (social, organic promotion, advertising) you can understand your users’ needs much better.
Fortunately, this one has been around since the invention of the internet, so most businesses are already using it.
Satisfaction – unfortunately, this is still commonly ignored. Understanding how much your user is enjoying your app and receiving feedback on how you can make it even better for him can ultimately make the difference between a random user and a paying user.
When a user feels he or she is being listened to, that’s the best user a business can have.
So, No, this KPI doesn’t just mean keeping your user ranking in the appstore high enough.
It means fixing bugs and crashes quickly, giving your users a channel to bring up any issues they have and addressing those issues.
Naturally, there are a lot more actions, elements and behaviors for any business to track on mobile.
Nevertheless, these basic KPIs are (almost) everything you need to know if you are set to generate real value from your users. With the mobile eco system growing so fast, there are already many tools in the market (Flurry, & Apsalar to name a couple) that can help you get all this valuable information you need.
Good luck!
Author biog
Jonathan Raveh, has been working and covering the mobile industry for over 5 years. He is the director of publishers at appnext, a growing monetisation network for mobile and social media. Jonathan also operates his own Israeli mobile-oriented blog and writes about mobile business in several Hebrew-speaking online newspapers and blogs.
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