Top Metrics to Track for Your Mobile App: Measure Stuff, Not Fluff

You made a sizable investment in developing your mobile app, and now you’re looking to gain insight into its performance. Magora’s experts have made a list of core metrics that will allow you to cut through the noise of dozens of confusing indicators and focus on bare essentials. Here’s how you can harness the full power of mobile analytics.

Metrics for App Performance

• Network errors
• App load per period
• App crashes
• Latency
• Application speed

These metrics represent the technical parameters of your application's performance. At the initial stage of launching the app it’s extremely important to keep track of crashes, load speed, errors and other issues that may cause problems for users. Pay extra attention to speed, because stats show that users tend to abandon the app if it fails to load within three seconds.

Tools: App Store Analytics, Crashlytics, Instabug, New Relic APM, Burp Suite, Xcode, native Android tools and of course good old user testing.

User Engagement Metrics

• App downloads*
• User retention*
• Session intervals
• App churn
• Event tracking
• Screen views and average visit time
• Active users

User engagement is the main indicator of your app’s success. Do you know how many people download your app, how often they launch it and how many of them abandon it for good? The seven metrics mentioned above give you an understanding of how users are interested in your application. You can track these metrics with your standard tools for analytics - it’s hardly rocket science.

Tools: Google Analytics, Kissmetrics, App Store Analytics, Mixpanel.

User Acquisition Metrics

• Lifetime value (LTV)*
• Average revenue per user (ARPU)*
• Conversion funnel
• Target revenue
• Mobile app attribution
• App abandonment
• Average order value (AOV)
• App Store ranking

Here we’ve listed the metrics that show how people are finding your application. The metrics reflect your position on app marketplaces, the channels through which users are coming to your app, how much revenue an average user brings to your business and how many users leave without spending a dime. Based on this information, you’ll be able to craft efficient marketing campaigns and make informed decisions on the budget you’re willing to spend to attract new users.

Tools: App Annie, App Store Analytics, Google Analytics, Intercom.io and your calculator.

Customer Satisfaction Metrics

• App Store rating*
• In-app feedback
• App Store reviews
• Touch heatmaps and user session recordings
• Net promoter score

This section includes metrics that reflect whether the app is achieving the goals you’ve set. They show the most frequently used features, identify the least popular functions, monitor how users are interacting with the app and tell you how likely current users are to recommend the app to others. To achieve success, you need to know your users. These metrics will show whether the customer research you conducted when you were initially planning the app is true to life and bringing in results.

Tools: App Store, Google Play, Appbot, Lookback, UserVoice, Delighted.

Have you noticed the star sign above several of the metrics? It means that we consider these five metrics to be the most essential indicators to track. Here they are once again so that you don’t forget:

• App downloads
• User retention
• Lifetime value (LTV)
• Average revenue per user (ARPU)
• App Store rating
  

Max Summers

May 23, 2017