Mobile applications are booming and understanding how users interact with those apps is critical when it comes to driving success for your digital product. Tracking and analyzing app behavior is much more than merely observing your app usage. It involves being in the position to harness the power of advanced tools and methods to pinpoint user flow and bottlenecks in this journey.
Via this process, you will be able to uncover a ton of invaluable insights and data that will help you refine your app and create experiences that resonate with your intended app users. Let’s dive straight in!
Key Takeaways
✅ Tracking and analyzing app user behavior is critical for the success of your mobile app.
💥 One of the main advantages of this approach is conversion rate optimization and user retention.
💡 Always stay agile when it comes to your app user behavior tracking and analyzing strategy to navigate the ever-evolving market needs.
🐝 UXtweak is one of the most comprehensive tools in the market at the moment, offering a host of features that can cover your tracking and analysis needs.
What is app user behavior?
App user behavior simply refers to the way users interact with a mobile app. It includes everything spanning from usage patterns to goal completions and engagement with the app. Tracking and analyzing user behavior is a data-driven approach by which UX professionals and product owners can pinpoint areas of friction but also discover the desired user path and improve the overall user experience.
Why should you track app user behavior?
Tracking and analyzing app user behavior has a host of advantages and can be critical for the success of your digital product. First and foremost, this data-driven approach allows for invaluable insights into how users interact with your application, and in this way, you can understand tons about the usage patterns, user engagement as well as navigation preferences.
All those insights can help not only to shape the future development of your product but also to refine the existing product features.
This approach can work wonders when it comes to all the app metrics including conversion, retention, and lowering churn rates. It also allows for experimentation with different versions of the same design to see which version performs better. In this way, when following this approach you can create an enhanced user experience that meets the needs of your user while achieving long-term success for your product.
If you are not convinced just yet, here is a list of the top advantages that you can squeeze out of this approach:
- Invaluable user insights about the usage of the app
- Enhanced app experience
- Conversion optimization and user retention
- Allows for A/B testing and data-driven improvements
- Data-driven feature development
How to analyze mobile app user behavior?
There are a lot of different methodologies that can be used to track and analyze the app user behavior. Although these methods can be used independently, combining some of them to triangulate your data is your best bet when it comes to gaining a comprehensive understanding of how users interact with our app and taking the necessary measures to enhance their experience.
Here are some of the basic ones to get started with:
Check out your App Store Analytics
One of your go-to places when it comes to tracking and analyzing app user behavior is the app stores via which your app becomes available to the users. There you will find a ton of helpful data about the number of downloads, the app uninstalls, and also valuable reviews and ratings of the app. By analyzing those data you can get invaluable insights that can guide the improvement of the app.
Track App Analytics
Good old Google Analytics and other analytics tools can be integrated into your app so that you can have a detailed view of different user metrics that are important for the success of your product. Some of the crucial metrics that you need to be looking at are page views, goal completion, and conversion rates. Simply create a tailored board to track those get started.
Some useful metrics to keep a tally of are the delivery rates, which is the percentage of push notifications that are reaching your users successfully as well as the open and click-through rates of your push notifications to see who is opening or reading your messages and gauge user engagement.
Analyze Heatmaps & Clickmaps
Heatmaps and click maps are another great way to get into the nitty gritty of your app usage. These tools can help you understand the areas that are most visited or clicked, getting in this way an understanding of what adds value to the user and what doesn’t!
Clickmaps can also help you understand if users are clicking on elements that are not clickable, something that would generally create friction in the app usage.
Example of website heatmaps.
Watch Session Recordings
Integrating tools that give you the option to capture and re-watch sessions is another fantastic way to track and analyze app user behavior. By watching session recordings you can get invaluable insights on the way that users interact with your app and get a scoop of the desired user path that users follow to achieve a particular task or goal on the app.
You can then use those insights to reinforce that particular path through your design decisions!
Take Advantage of the In-App Survey Features
Another great way to track the app’s user behavior is to take advantage of the feedback widgets that prompt users to take surveys and give feedback about their experience with the app. You can ask an array of questions to get an in-depth understanding of their experience or simply use the NPS survey as a barometer.
Mobile App Usability Testing
Last but not least, don’t forget to run a mobile app usability test and get the chance to observe how your users interact with your app live! This approach will allow you to grab screen recordings from this interaction and further analyze the data to make meaningful improvements to your app. When recording app usability tests, make sure to turn off all notifications, remove any personal data and hide desktop icons on mac to get a clean, distraction free screen recordings.
Best practices for analyzing mobile app user behavior
When it comes to tracking and analyzing app user behavior there are a few practices that you can adopt to make sure you are always getting the best insights and that you are driving your product in the correct direction:
1. Set clear app goals
Although it might be tempting to track every single metric surrounding your app, avoid doing so. Instead, set the success metrics of your business first and then track the app-specific metrics that correspond to those. This way, you can set and track specific meaningful metrics and goals and cut the noise!
Here are the top 5 metrics that you need to stay on top off:
Daily active user rate: This number will show you the active users on your app on a daily basis and it is a good indicator for the popularity and growth of your app.
Conversion rate: This magic number measures the percentage of users that complete an action on your app! The action can be anything from a click to a purchase of a product.
Crash rate: This is how you can measure how your app performs and take action to reduce those instances of your app crashing!
Churn rate: This is how you can caluclate how many users stop using your app and it is equally a great indicator of overall app performance.
2. Track nice and early
Take it from us! Don’t wait too long to embed your selected analytics tools into your app. In this way, you can get a clear picture of the growth of the app and have the ability to further analyze historical trends when it comes to app usage, as well as report on growth or seasonality accurately.
3. Segment, segment, segment
Another golden rule when it comes to tracking app user behavior is segmentation. There is an abundance of ways to segment your audience. Segmenting by user group and cohort are two great ways to create meaningful groups when it comes to analyzing data and getting valuable insights about your user’s needs and product lifecycle.
For example, you can create a segment with users who have similar demographics like age, preferences or gender. Also, when it comes to cohort segmentation a good idea is to define the different stages of your digital app usage and then segment users based on the stage that they are in. This way, you can get data exclusively from your onboarding screens or laser focus on that conversion page that you are looking to optimize!
4. Keep your data nice and tidy
Maintaining data precision is another golden rule. Check daily for irregularities in the data and tackle those early so that they do not affect the analysis later down the line!
5. Triangulate your data!
When it comes to the data analysis make sure to use two or more sources of data to back up any findings and design decisions. Ensure also that you combine both qualitative and quantitative data to get a more rounded understanding of the issue in question.
For example, when looking to improve a particular feature of your product make sure to check your google analytics data to identify any potential bottlenecks but also couple any assumptions made with qualitative data that can be taken from different sources such as customer surveys and online reviews!
6. Stay agile
Always stay curious and make sure to regularly and continuously review your analysis approach. As app usage evolves so does its tracking and analysis. Always be on the lookout for new advancements and ensure that your analysis methods are covering those advancements and the new trends.
Best tools for tracking user behavior in mobile apps
There are a host of tools for tracking user behavior in mobile apps in the market at the moment. Here are the top 5 that stood out for us. Check out our list of best website visitor tracking tools for more.
1. UXtweak
One of the best behavior analytics tools at the moment is undoubtfully UXtweak. This all-in-one platform for user experience data features an array of tools that can help you track and analyze app user behavior. Take advantage of the session recordings feature to capture user sessions for your mobile app. UXtweak also generates heatmaps providing a highly detailed view of the user interactions on your mobile app.
Use the mobile usability testing tool to see what issues users encounter when interacting with your app and how you fix them! Last but not least, UXtweak’s survey tool is ideal to capture the in-depth qualitative data needed to accompany the analytics data.
See these tools in action in the demos below 👇
2. Google Analytics
Google Analytics is a must when it comes to purely analytics tools. This tool features highly customizable reports that can be used to focus on targeted app metrics. This can include, page views and other engagement metrics.
Another cool feature to be taken advantage of here is the ability to set user goals and track the user journey to their completion! Google Analytics also allows for audience segmentation. Metrics can be viewed per segment which can help you further tailor the analysis to fit the needs of different user groups.
3. Hotjar
Hotjar is another behavioral analytics tool to use when it comes to tracking app user behaviors. Hotjar also features heatmaps that provide a visual representation of how users interact with your mobile app. They also offer a handy in-app feedback widget to collect real-time user feedback.
4. Mixpanel
Mixpanel is another great tool worth integrating with your app. Mixpanel features a funnel analysis tool that provides a great overview of the paths that the users take when navigating your app. In this way, you can easily identify bottlenecks and friction points in the user journey. We also like the A/B testing abilities that this tool offers!
5. Crazy Egg
Last but not least, Crazy Egg is another tool worth looking at. Crazy Egg features heatmaps and click maps that can be used to pinpoint the areas of the app that are getting the most attention. You can also use the user journey analysis tool to optimize the user journey paths and create a highly intuitive experience for your users.
Conclusion
In today’s dynamic market, tracking and analyzing the app user behavior is critical for the success of your digital app. Using sophisticated tools you can delve into the interaction of the user with the app and pinpoint preferences but also friction points.
Best practices when it comes to tracking and analyzing the app user behavior include setting clear goals, segmenting the users in meaningful groups, using triangulation to analyze your data, and always adopting an agile approach to your tracking and analysis strategy.
There is an array of tools out there but UXtweak is your one-stop shop when it comes to tracking and analysis of mobile app behavior.
