Three Things to Avoid while Integrating Mobile Analytics

By: Anand Jain, Co-Founder, CleverTap

The Indian market is a dynamic arena, e-commerce businesses are leaving no stone unturned to outdo each other. In such a competitive market data-driven marketing can work wonders for any business, especially for mobile apps as they offer accurate and finer user data for deeper analytics. Mobile analytics provide valuable insights to businesses and greatly improve user engagement and retention.

Most businesses now consider integrating mobile analytics to effectively market their product to the right audience at the right time to increase ROI. If you have made up your mind to give your app the advantage of data-driven insights into user behavior you are on the right path. Advanced analytics now allows apps to interact with the users in real-time while they are still actively using the application. Marketing campaigns designed with the help of data science can positively affect user engagement and lead to conversions. To make the most out of the data science at your disposal, listed below are 3 things that you must avoid when integrating mobile analytics.

• Tracking too many things at once is not tracking anything at all – While integrating mobile analytics, developers must start slow, tracking not more than 4-5 events that are of prime importance for your business. If you track too many events at a time, the results would lead to ambiguity. User actions must be tracked correctly, you can track user actions like App Launched, User Registered, Product Viewed, Article Shared, Item Added etc. User actions must be tracked across all major platforms of web and mobile to derive accurate results.
• Don’t add too many SDKs – The result of losing connect with the users when your app is loading would not be a desirable one. Users might feel that the app is too slow, or worse not working. If you flood your app with too many Software Development Kits it will unnecessarily add onto its size. A bloated app may not function smoothly and kill the UX especially if the user is using a low configuration device. Release you app only after through beta testing. Beta testers offer valuable third person perspective that will help identify issues with your app.
• What to track? – Analytics can help your app at various levels depending upon what you track. Tracking trivial user actions like clicks, forms, page clicks, and search duration might not be of much help while marketing the app. Tracking business actions can lead to beneficial insights. Take help of your team to answer these questions

1. What are the three most frequent things people do in the app?
2. What are the three most important things I would people to explore in the app?

The answer of your questions would be…

1. The three things that people do (To be tracked)
2. The three things that you would want people to do ( To be tracked)

These are the 6 most important user actions that an app developer or marketer should track. Once you have these questions answered you will more or less know what events you must track when integrating mobile analytics for your app. According to the nature of the data use funnels, segments and cohorts to track it.

Even if your app is performing steadily according to analytics, we suggest you must keep a keen eye on the feedback that you receive from users because growth metrics can easily conceal engagement metrics. Old and inactive app users can be overshadowed by impressive engagement metrics of new and active users. So lend an attentive ear to feedback.