Analytics is one of the most overlooked aspects of a software launch. Follow this guide for your next app launch so that stakeholders can drive future development from a data-driven position.
When your company launches a software application, analytics should be part of its strategic plans from the start. You’ll need to work closely with developers, product owners, and customers to determine what your minimum viable product consists of, and talk to your business owners to determine key performance indicators that should be measurable from day one. Your analytics should answer at least two questions: who are your users and what do they do?
For example, if your company knows that 90% of your users are on Android devices and are recruited through Facebook, you have data that answers who uses your app and can make a data-driven decision about where to market it. want to bring. Should you double and expand your Android user base, or should you look for other acquisition channels to grow the iOS base?
SEE: Hiring Package: Mobile App Developer (Tech Republic Premium)
Strong minimum viable analysis gives you the data you need to power your application after launch. If you’re building a digital product or service and haven’t yet considered what kind of analytics you’ll need before launch, this guide can help.
Here are good starting points for what data to capture for most minimally viable analytic implementations.
| Data to capture | User data | What are these users doing? |
|---|---|---|
| Geography | X | |
| demographics | X | |
| Time of day | X | |
| Device type | X | |
| Operating system | X | |
| Acquisition Channel | X | X |
| Download counts | X | |
| Active Daily Users | X | |
| Engagement | X | |
| Unique visits | X | |
| Revenue per user | X | |
| conversions | X |
What technical tools should you use with this analysis strategy?
One analytics tool won’t give you the 360-degree view of your application in the field and the operational flexibility you need after launch; this is especially true in the mobile app space where changes must go through a store submission and approval process. A good approach is to combine different tools in the categories analysis, abstraction, and quality of service to make sure everything you need is baked into your app.
Analytics
An analytics package is the core component for aggregating and reporting your user data. When trying to choose an analysis package, there are many factors that go into selecting the right package. An important factor is to ensure that the analytics solution is aligned with your application platform. Within a single supplier’s offering, there may also be multiple solutions to evaluate.
Two of the most popular analytics packages are: Google Analytics for Firebase and Google Analytics 4†
Google Analytics for Firebase
After several rounds of confusing name changes, Google Analytics for Firebase is Google’s solution for mobile app analytics. It still uses Google Analytics at its core, but it’s rendered as an event-based model, which is more attuned to how people use a mobile application. Google Analytics for Firebase is free with unlimited use, but there is no Service Level Agreement.
Google Analytics 4
Google Analytics 4, which was previously called Google Analytics, maintains its classic approach to analytics, ie page views. It has a fairly robust free tier and paid plans for advanced usage scenarios.
Abstraction
After the application is released and you start collecting analytics, you wish you had collected additional data points or formatted the data differently to draw more sophisticated correlations. That’s where a tag management system comes in. With a TMS, you can quickly update measurement code and related code snippets, usually from a web console. In many cases, these updates can be done after the initial deployment without the need for a code update to your live app in the field.
If you’ve never used a TMS before, there are many vendors to consider: google† Adobe and mixing panel† An interesting aspect of a TMS is that most are independent of your analytics solution, allowing you, for example, to use Google’s Tag Manager with Adobe analytics and vice versa.
Quality of service
Even with a TMS and a robust analytics implementation, you’ll find that these data points are not the same data points your engineering team needs to diagnose problems your users encounter. Which brings us to the third tool in your MVA tool bag: Quality of service measurement.
There are flavors of these QOS tools for both mobile and web as the fundamental technical differences in these applications require a different approach. For mobile, popular QOS solutions include: crash lytics† Instagram and Raygun† On the internet you can find tools such as: air brake and Upward trend†
Common data to collect are:
- Crash dumps (stack tracks).
- Intelligent grouping (quantification of unique crashes as opposed to multiple instances of the same crash).
- Custom data (developer-inserted breadcrumbs).
- Device status (hardware, operating system and environment modifiers).
What details about user privacy and data usage should you know?
While the ultimate goal of collecting analytics should be to provide the best user experience possible, privacy and data usage are important considerations. On iOS devices, you currently need to ask users for permission to track them in apps and websites owned by other companies. Android and the web are not far behind, so be sure to read and fully understand the privacy requirements for your platforms and how they apply to the analytics you collect.
What are the benefits of analytics on your software?
Successful software products must adapt to a constantly changing market. A well-planned MVA approach will create a direct line between you and your customers and significantly improve the launch of your application. You have the analytic SDK that reports on user behavior, a tag manager to make real-time changes around what you collect, and the QOS metrics your developers need to troubleshoot any user service disruptions. This 360-degree view provides the data you need to make your app a hit.
