What Leading Mobile Analytics Platforms Have to Offer

Mobile marketing efficiency is unthinkable without qualitative mobile analytics for both apps and ads. This post reviews two of the most popular mobile analytics services and provides some additional insights about using mobile analytics.

Flurry Analytics

Photo credit: Search Engine People Blog / Foter / CC BY

Flurry and Pinch Media merged several years ago, and were subsequently acquired by Yahoo! Inc. Both companies offered analytical software for iPhone and iPad devices, with some similar and some different functions. When the brands merged, they refined their combined functions to create a service that includes functions used by all of their respective clients. For example, Flurry supported Android and monitoring unique clickstream data (User Paths), while Pinch Media offered unique features such as tracking smartphones with jailbreak and evaluating data by categories compared to absolute indicators. The combined company now offers both. Since the acquisition by Yahoo!, developers have to register in the Yahoo! system for access.

Flurry Analytics works hard to introduce functions suggested by clients. It includes one of the most active and professional research groups in the mobile space—their reports serve as the basis for many businesses to make decisions about investing in mobile strategy and mobile marketing.

Flurry Analytics is free for developers, advertisers, and publishers, although advertisers and publishers must pay for extended functions.

Advantages:

Flurry increases profits by helping your business build client satisfaction and customer retention.
Flurry saves time and money, focusing on the functions that help users the most.
Flurry helps you to make data-driven decisions—you will know for sure how, when and where your app is used and who is using it;
Flurry increases reach by detecting problematic mobile devices.

Mobclix Analytics

Mobclix is a platform for mobile apps that provides analytical data on user behavior and the advertising network. It’s one of the largest ad exchange networks for mobile devices, and it offers benefits to those developers who are willing to get profits from advertising with a reliable technology. The analytical service is free for mobile developers.

Advantages:

Mobclix shows how much time your mobile app has been in use per session.
Mobclix shows whether a Wi-Fi network or mobile 3G/4G Internet has been used during the app session.
It shows the types and versions of the mobile devices used by clients to access the app.
It tracks and locates bugs inside your mobile app.
It provides statistics on how often the app shuts down incorrectly and tracks other important events.
It offers pop-up requests for data acquisition.
Mobclix can also gather customer feedback directly with the help of special plugins.
You only need a simple SDK to start tracking and monitoring with Mobclix. It takes about 15 minutes to install, and does not require highly technical programming skills to use.

Confidentiality Considerations

Although these two analytical services offer amazing opportunities for gathering useful data, you should strictly adhere to the rules of confidentiality established by Apple. Apple requires users’ consent before their information is gathered and transmitted to your mobile app. You should use smart screens to tell the user what kind of information you’re planning to collect and how you’re going to use it.

You can also cover data sharing in the user agreement that you include in your mobile app. Make sure you describe how you use the information clearly and in layman’s language, and emphasize that all data is gathered anonymously. For instance, the Flurry Analytics website specifies all the data that is sent to the database while the mobile app is in use:

device identifier that is untied from any personal information
device model (3G, 3GS, etc.) and operating system number
name and version of the app
jailbreak check results
a check for stolen devices
payment information about the app purchase
session duration
geolocation, if the user gave consent that it be shared
gender and age of the user if Facebook Connect integration is available

Since some users worry about confidentiality, it’s important to emphasize that the information collected won’t enable you to identify individual users. Neither Flurry nor Mobclix collects names, phone numbers, email addresses, or any other personal data. When the data comes to the server, it is immediately incorporated into reports that show only aggregated numbers and no personal details. For example, in both Flurry and Mobclix you can see the following information:

number of users who received app access
average session duration
number of smartphones, categorized by operating system
number of each device model used
geographic distribution of users by country, state, and metropolitan area
number of users by gender
percentage of users by age category (21-29, 30-39, etc.)

Photo credit: wkc.1 / Foter / CC BY-NC-ND

The Bottom Line

Mobile analytics software is critical for developers and business managers. It helps to improve the app, adjust marketing strategy and pricing, and plan for future changes.

Setting up the software isn’t difficult, it doesn’t incur additional costs, and it’s free for developers.

All the analytics data in the world won’t help you if you don’t look at it. When you install your mobile analytics software, take some time to learn what the reports include, and then devote time to review them regularly and make adjustments based on what they reveal.

While it doesn’t give you a customer database of personal contact information—and you should be meticulous about informing your users about the kinds of information you are going to use and how you will use it—it provides you with powerful insights into the way your app is used and what kinds of customers are using it.

In my view, every mobile app should include analytics. The advantages significantly outweigh the moderate amount of time and effort spent on installing the code if you make good use of what analytics tell you.

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