how to create the app analytics reports you need

Section 2WHERE YOUR USERS ARE COMING FROM: Attribution Section 3 HOW ENGAGED YOUR USERS ARE: Sessions & Cohorts WHERE YOUR USERS ARE CONVERTING OR DROPPING OUT: Funnels USING AN ANALYT

HOW TO CREATE THE

APP ANALYTICS REPORTS YOU NEED

Section 2

WHERE YOUR USERS ARE COMING FROM: Attribution

Section 3

HOW ENGAGED YOUR USERS ARE:

Sessions & Cohorts

WHERE YOUR USERS ARE CONVERTING

(OR DROPPING OUT): Funnels

USING AN ANALYTICS PLATFORM FOR

IN T RODUCTION

As an app owner, you know that launching your

app is only one step on the way to creating

a successful mobile experience Whether you’re

just entering the space, analytics are the key

to discovering what works in your app (and to

doing more of it)

But analytics alone won’t provide valuable

insights if not evaluated through your brand’s

behind creating one are independent to you

Your app analytics should be structured based

tailored, actionable insights

We’re tasking you with quite the undertaking

– organizing and optimizing your metrics might

seem overwhelming, but with the right tools,

you’ll be able to easily (and effectively)

determine what you want to know, what your

app is telling you and how to achieve the

right results

UNDERSTANDING THE TERMINOLOGY

Reading your analytics is like reading a book; you need to know

the vocabulary Every app analytics platform is different, but

there is a standard set of terminology, which is used throughout

this workbook:

· Attribution: The organic and paid channels for acquiring

app users

· Sessions: The time from when a user starts using an app

until they close or background it

Continued

ABOUT THIS WORKBOOK

In this workbook, you will gain the fundamentals necessary to

create analytics reports that will help your app succeed By

iden-tifying and quaniden-tifying your measurement goals, including the key

elements of your analytics, you will be able to read your data

ac-curately with an eye to the results that mean most for your brand

This will enable you to make the right UI/UX changes, update your

user acquisition campaigns and run smarter marketing

We’ve provided lists, tables, and questionnaires to give you the

tools to structure your analytics and gar-

ner the most accurate insights possible

Each section includes:

· An interactive table to track your plan-

ning and data

· Sample insights you can achieve with each

analytics report

· Additional resources on how to utilize

your data

IN T RODUCTION

· Segments: A group of users who did or did not do certain events,

or pair of events in sequence

· Cohorts:

time frame: day, week, or month; a measurement of retention

· Events: Actions that are completed by the user while interacting

· Event attributes: Key or value pairs that are contextual to the

· Funnels: A series of events that leads to a user converting

· LTV: The lifetime value of a user and the primary measure of ROI

Notes:

Type your notes here

Apps are still a relatively new phenomenon

Their value lies in what they provide the

user, and how that value is different from or

better than any other app Identifying this

will help you become a viable competitive

threat In creating your UI, content, offers

and other app elements, you did so with a set

of goals in mind Revisit these goals and use

them again to guide your way

What is the primary purpose of your

application? Why did you create the app in

the first place?

-Type your answer here

Type your answer here

Where is your target audience?

How it helps:

-Who is your target audience?

Type your answer here

Type your answer here

SECTION #2

Here’s where all app marketers start: how do I effectively acquire

users? The answer is most likely a strategic combination of organic

and paid promotion, including App Store optimization (ASO), to drive

a diverse initial audience and figure out what works best

Your organic promotion might include social media campaigns, an

app-specific website, ASO, email campaigns, press mentions, and

oth-er channels Rememboth-er: 63% of downloads come from general browsing

in the App Store, so organic optimization is crucial. Essentially,

you need to make your app findable and shareable

Every app is going to have organic

acquisi-tion, but not all have paid acquisition This

is an opportunity to expose your app to a

much larger audience and set yourself apart

from the crowd Ads and other forms of paid

acquisition also allow you to better target

your app to your ideal audience based on

what websites they’re visiting, what

publi-cations they’re reading, what forums they’re

visiting, and more

STEP 1: Set your Budget

User acquisition costs are on the rise, but that doesn’t mean you

have to spend a fortune to be successful Most marketers stop at

measuring the cost after downloads: essentially, cost per user

While this is a crucial metric in evaluating campaigns, it is by no

means a stopping point In truly measuring, validating and evolving

your acquisition budget, you have to look at the lifetime value

Continued

Section 2

WHERE YOUR USERS ARE COMING FROM: Attribution

STEP 2: Identify your Ad Partners

Choosing an ad partner is another project unto itself, but there

are well-known players in the space you can use, including Facebook, Millennial Media, Greystripe, Impact Radius, Fiksu, and others

Identify the pros and cons of each, and align them with your budget

to put together a plan Over time, as you track the results of your

acquisition campaigns, it will become clear which channels work best for you, and those to invest more in

(LTV) of each acquired customer to derive the total revenue you’ve

earned after cost of acquisition Using conversions, sessions per

user, LTV per user, and other monetization metrics, you can discover the root ROI of each acquisition channel

STEP 3: Track Initial Attribution Metrics

Knowing which ad networks, publishers and content are worth

invest-ing further in depends on trackinvest-ing the results of each campaign

you run Assign your campaign budget, and measure the number of

new users from each one, including the initial measure of ROI: cost

Ad Network Publisher Campaign

Millennial Media Weather Channel April Sale $3,000 1,275 $2.35

SECTION 2

These metrics will give you a strong sense of which campaigns are

working best to encourage downloads and bring in new users within

your budget

ADVANCED

STEP 4: Track ROI and Value Long-Term

To accurately gauge success, you will need to go beyond these

initial attribution metrics and track sessions per user,

transac-tions per user, and, most importantly, user LTV For these long-term revenue metrics, you’ll need an analytics platform that automati-

cally tracks and updates over time This gives you the ability to

track a host of ROI-based metrics without any manual work, with each traced back to an attribution campaign, all dynamically updated

Sample insights you can gain from tracking

acquisition channels

· Users acquired through Fiksu spend more on in-app

purchases, but have a lower LTV than users acquired

through Facebook

· Spring campaigns perform better than Summer campaigns

on Pandora

· Your ideal cost per user is under $3.00

5 Ways to Improve your App

Acquisition Strategy

App Users Acquired Through Facebook Perform

as Well as Organic Users

Major Enhancements to User Acquisition

Tracking at Localytics

ADDITIONAL RESOURCES

Type your answer here

SECTION #3

Downloads are just the first step: after

you’ve acquired users, you want to be able to

track how often those users come back, and

their value to you beyond just the app

in-stall Repeat app opens show that your users

are engaged with your app, at least to the

point that they want to come back and give it

another try And metrics like session length

and interval signal how long and how often

(respectively) users are using your app

Session length is a measurement of time spent in the app during one session

Session interval is the time between the user’s first session and

his or her next one, showing the frequency with which your users

open the app

Measure the actuals against your desired session length and

in-terval, so that you know with accuracy how long users typically do

spend in your app vs how long you want them to have the app open

Then, track growth over time to see how engaged your users are per

session, how that fluctuates, and how it changes when you launch a

major update or a marketing campaign

Continued

Section 3

HOW ENGAGED YOUR USERS ARE:

Sessions and Cohorts

STEP 2: Choose your Most Important Dimensions

While your #1 measure is going to be looking at how frequently

users return to your app by tracking sessions and engagement,

additional insights can be gleaned within that Data splits are

some of the important attributes of your returning users, and

by choosing the right ones, you can pinpoint additional recurring

trends within sessions Using this scale, prioritize your splits

by importance to choose which ones cast the most crucial lense

on your session data

Continued

Growth (%)

Avg Session Interval

Time Period

New vs Returning 1

1 1 1

2 2 2 2

3 3 3 3

4 4 4 4

5 5 5 5

Location Language Device

Avg Session Length Growth (%)

June 10, 2014 - July 10,

2014

SECTION 3

ADVANCED

STEP 3: Automatically Track Cohorts

Once you’ve begun tracking sessions, you’ll want to move on to

tracking more intricate retention metrics For example, event-based

cohort retention, which enables you to measure retention based on

engagement with a particular event This pairs retention data with

in-app actions, giving you a detailed look at exactly how power

users are interacting with your app

Generally, you can use cohorts to track the percentage of users who

return X number of days later after their first app open These

analytics are more advanced, and require the use of an analytics

platform that automatically and dynamically collects and parses this information

Continued

App Version

Carrier

1 1

1 1

1 1

1 1

1

2 2

2 2

2 2

2 2

2

3 3

3 3

3 3

3 3

3

4 4

4 4

4 4

4 4

4

5 5

5 5

5 5

5 5

ADDITIONAL RESOURCES

Sample insights you can gain from tracking sessions

and retention

· iOS users spend more time per session in the app, but

Android users return more regularly

· Your average session length is under 20 seconds in the US

·

June 17, 2014 returned after one day

Sessions vs Pageviews: Which Metric Should

SECTION #4

Events, or actions taken, can be screens viewed, push or in-app

messages opened, articles shared, items added to cart, subscriptions confirmed, purchases completed, or a number of other key conversion

events as identified by you Knowing which events your users are

acting on signal which features are most valuable in your app,

which aren’t getting enough attention, and shed light on how users

are using your app (potentially, in ways you hadn’t anticipated)

Defining your events is key to creating

fun-nels for encouraging users down conversion

paths within your app Essentially, knowing

what events you want users to complete most,

and what events work together to create a

funnel, allow you to put additional value

on how users interact with your app, and

in many cases, monetize those interactions

(more on funnels in Section #6)

STEP 1: Identify the Most Important Actions you Want

your App Users to Take

Think back to Section #1 and the goal of the app: in order to

achieve this, what are the things your users must do in-app?

What are the features you want them to interact with most? Use

those questions to discover crucial app actions, major updates

or a marketing campaign

Continued

Section 4

WHAT ACTIONS YOUR USERS ARE

TAKING IN-APP: Events

Type your answer here

Type your answer here

Type your answer here

Type your answer here

SECTION 4

Note that there can be more than one event type that tracks to

your important actions, and there can also be multiple attributes

for each event As a reminder, attributes are key/value pairs that

are contextual to the specific event being tagged For example, a

“Product View” event may have attributes tracking the product

cate-gory, whether it was shared, how long the user spent viewing it, and anything else that may be helpful in understanding user behavior

Here’s a good rule of thumb: If it is a user action or verb then

it is probably an event If it is a descriptor of an action or

adjective, then it is likely an attribute

Continued

Type your answer here

Share articles and interact with the brand on

social media more frequently

Social action - Platform (Twitter,

Facebook)

- Content (Article Name)

- Action (share, Like, follow)

Sample insights you can gain from tagging events

· That today’s front page article is getting a lot of views,

but fewer Facebook shares than you anticipated

· How many users purchased your Deal of the Day item

· That male users from Boston opened your Red Sox score push

message more than they did your Celtics one

The Beginner’s Guide to App Analytics

How to Tag Mobile Apps With Events &

Attributes – Whiteboard Wednesday

Feature Spotlight: Localytics Event-Based

Cohort Retention

ADDITIONAL RESOURCES

SECTION #4

No two app users are the same, which is why it’s considered a

mobile sin to send push and in-app messages to your entire

audi-ence What you can and should do is segment your users based on

similar behaviors and attributes to define audience subsets Your

segments get to the heart of your analytics by tying users and

usage behavior together, allowing you to draw smarter conclusions

about what your app users are looking for and run targeted,

analytics-driven marketing

Segments are created using a time period and

at least one completed event, such as shared

an article, subscribed to a newsletter,

com-pleted an in-app purchase, etc (as defined

in the previous section) You can then add a

second event to see who continued on to

com-plete another action Similarly, you can also

highlight users who completed one event but

didn’t complete another.

2nd Event (Optional)

Segment

Name Time Period 1st Event

Purchasers 1/13/2014-7/1/2014 Product Viewed Checkout Gender: Female

Custom Dimension

2nd Event (Optional)

Segment

Name Time Period 1st Event

STEP 2: Choose your Custom Dimensions

Once you have an event and time frame chosen, your segments can

be made richer by the use of custom dimensions that speak to user

attributes and behaviors more specifically Your custom dimensions

will be different depending on which segment you’re looking at –

in one case, you might want to differentiate male and female trial

subscribers, in another, you might want to see one-time buyers

Users who clicked in-app ads vs users who never click

SECTION 5

Your custom dimensions don’t have to fit strictly into these groups Instead, use your events to help inform valuable dimensions: of a

particular event, what additional information do you want to know

about the users who completed it?

BONUS STEP

Run Segment-Based Messaging Campaigns

Personalization is the next big thing in marketing – with mobile,

it’s no different The benefit that apps offer, however, is the

ability to personalize app notifications based on segments, without

the need to collect additional (and in some cases, highly personal)

user information

You can run smarter push and in-app messaging campaigns based on

your user segments, highlighting offers and content highly relevant

to each segment and boosting conversions For example, you can send

a discount code push notification to users who have left an item in

their cart and didn’t complete the checkout process

For more on app marketing, try this free guide: A Beginner’s Guide

to App Marketing.

Sample insights you can gain from creating segments

· Female users from EMEA buy more

· Free trial users acquired in the last six months click ads

more frequently than paid users

· 60% of second-screeners start the subscription process but

then never complete it