![Why You Need Mobile App Tracking [+ Mobile app tracking tools]](https://blog.uxtweak.com/wp-content/themes/uxtweak/public/assets/images/videos-fly.png)
This is exactly why we have collated everything you need to know about mobile app tracking including best practices and top tracking tools to get you started!
It is no secret that the number of mobile app users has skyrocketed in the past few years. According to Buildfire’s ‘Mobile App Download Statistics & Usage Statistics (2023)’, 49% of people open an app 11+ times on a daily basis. With these stats on the rise, mobile app tracking is now more than ever crucial for the success of your digital product or service.
Are you ready to harness the power of mobile app tracking? Let’s dive in!
Key Takeaways:
✅ Mobile app tracking is all about systematically tracking and analyzing the behavior of your users.
🔎 The number of mobile app users has skyrocketed in the past few years.
💡 Mobile tracking fosters data-driven decisions and moves UX professionals from making decisions based on intuition.
🔒 User privacy is a hot topic. Always prioritize user privacy while you are collecting your mobile app data.
What is mobile app tracking?
Mobile app tracking is all about systematically tracking and analyzing the behavior of your users while they interact with your mobile application. Monitoring and taking stock of user interactions can take various forms from understanding where you are users are coming from to measuring key performance indicators, such as conversion or retention, and everything in between!
Accurate mobile app tracking can have a host of advantages for your organization. By leveraging this data you can better understand what is working well and what isn’t, promoting in this way data-driven decisions for performance optimization.
Why is mobile app tracking important?
Mobile app tracking is quintessential for the success of a digital product or service that is delivered via an app. Using the data points from the tracking UX professionals have a unique opportunity to make informed decisions to improve not only the the user experience of their mobile app but also boost sales! Hence, mobile app tracking is important for many reasons.
Here are some to keep in mind:
Allows for a user-centric approach
Mobile app tracking helps UX professionals get a deep understanding of how their users interact with their apps. From this observation, we can take stock of which areas of our app our working as expected and pinpoint other areas for improvement where potentially the usage might be dropping off.
Monitoring and understanding those user insights will allow for a user-centric approach when it comes to improvements as well as overall product development. Understanding how your users think, feel and act can also help you offer more personalized experiences which can in turn help you meet and exceed user expectations.
Promotes user acquisition & retention optimization
Another great reason why you should start working on your mobile app tracking is that it promotes the optimization of all the key performance indicators. Mobile app tracking can help you pinpoint the channels that are luring in the bulk of your users. Leveraging this data, you can work toward optimizing your marketing spend and hence your user acquisition.
On the other hand, mobile app tracking can help you measure and optimize your user retention. By analyzing the data, you can identify reasons why your users are dropping off and make data-driven decisions to reduce the churn rate. When it comes to apps with monetization models, mobile app tracking is critical to understanding the spending behavior of your users and how you can use this to boost sales.
Allows for testing
Another great advantage of mobile app tracking is that it allows for A/B or multivariant testing. If and when mobile app tracking brings up areas that need to be optimized you can take advantage of the tracking to test and analyze two or more different versions of a design, feature, or even app versions.
Based on the data you can decide on the best-performing version. To do that you can look at different performance metrics such as engagement (e.g. time on page, bounce rates) or conversion (e.g. conversion rates, sales, goal completion).
Fosters data-driven decisions
Overall, mobile tracking fosters data-driven decisions and moves UX professionals and other stakeholders away from making decisions based on intuition.
Data from mobile app tracking can be used to inform the product roadmap leading to the correct feature prioritization and the creation of meaningful designs that add value to the users. Ultimately, this will boost not only the overall performance of the app but also its profitability.
How to track the behavior of your mobile app users?
There are a lot of different methodologies that can be used to track and analyze the app user behavior and an array of mobile app analytics tools in the market that can help you set and implement your tracking methods successfully.
Here are some of the methods you can follow to ensure effective mobile app tracking:
1. Core analytics
When tracking the behavior of your mobile app users make sure not to miss on core app analytics.
First things first, ensure that you are tracking attribution which will help you evaluate the effectiveness of your channels when it comes to app installation and usage. Keeping track of attribution, aka how well each of your marketing channels converts, will help you identify your best-performing channels and campaigns and attribute your budget according to boost sales!
Another critical core metric to watch out for is conversion. Make sure to set up conversion goals to measure specific actions taken by the users, like for instance purchasing something or downloading an asset, to uncover areas that are working well or others that are underperforming.
Finally, you can use event tracking to track user interaction, like for instance, CTA clicks, to better understand user engagement in particular areas of the app.
2. Heatmaps and session replays
Heatmaps are another great way to track the performance of your app. Integrating behavior analytics tools that offer heatmaps is a fantastic route to understand how your users interact with your app and get a clear picture of where they spend more time, identifying in this way your best and least performing features.
Do not forget to take advantage of the session replay feature so that you can record and replay user sessions to further hone into the user behavior. Tools like UXtweak’s Session Recording Tool are perfect for this!
They allow you to replay user sessions with your product, providing a pixel-perfect reproduction of every click, scroll or mouse movement of the user.
3. User journey and funnel analysis
Finally, another way you can track and analyze the performance of your mobile app is via the creation of user journey maps or funnels! Creating user journey maps will help visualize the whole user experience from app download to key conversion goal completion. This way, you will be able to better grasp the paths that users are taking to complete key actions as well as identify any drop-off points.
Alternatively, you can use funnel analysis to observe and analyze the path that the user follows while interacting with your app. You can set up and track funnels based on specific goals or event completions.
4 best mobile app tracking tools
1. Google Analytics
Google Analytics is one of the most handy analytics tools for mobile apps in the market. This is a versatile analytics tool with a range of features providing data on user behavior and mobile app performance.
Features
- App traffic tracking
- App Conversion tracking
- App User segmentation
- App Goal tracking
Pros
- Customizable reporting
- The app goal tracking allows for advanced conversion rate optimization
Cons
- Complex UI interface & set-up
- Limited customer support for the free plan
Reviews
The ratings below are solely based on the tool’s reviews from Capterra:
- Ease of Use 4.2
- Customer Service 4.1
- Features 4.6
- Value for Money 4.7
Pricing & Plans
Google Analytics has a free version well-suited for small or medium enterprises. Google Analytics 360 is a paid-at-a-premium price plan offering advanced features.
2. UXtweak
UXtweak is an all-in-one UX platform offering a range of powerful tools for enhancing the usability of mobile apps and tracking app user behavior. You can use it to find out how users interact with your app, generate different types of heatmaps, as well as conduct usability tests and record and analyze user sessions.
Features
- Mobile Testing
- Session Recording & Heatmaps
- Website Testing
- Prototype Testing
- Survey
- Card Sorting
- Tree Testing
- Preference Test
- Five Second Test
- First Click Test
See them in action in these demos:
Pros
- A wide range of tools for mobile app tracking
- Intuitive UI
- Advanced analytics
- Free plan
- Help with recruiting
Cons
- Only supports 10 languages
Reviews
The ratings below are solely based on the tool’s reviews from Capterra:
- Overall – 4.9/5
- Ease of Use – 4.8/5
- Quality of Support – 5/5
Pricing & Plans
UXtweak has a free plan available with unlimited time for small projects. You can also choose a Pro plan for only $80 per month.
3. Hotjar
Hotjar is another great tool to consider if you are looking to set up your mobile app tracking. This tool offers a wide range of different features from heatmaps to session recordings.
Features
- Heatmaps
- Session recording
- Surveys
Pros
- Easy set-up
- Great onboarding
- Intuitive visualisations
Cons
- Limited data retention for free users
- The price!
Reviews
The ratings below are solely based on the tool’s reviews from Capterra:
- Overall 4.7
- Ease of Use 4.6
- Customer Service 4.5
Pricing & Plans
Hotjar offers a range of free and paid plans. The pricing is based on the number of page views per day and has different options to cater to businesses of all sizes.
4. Mixpanel
Mixpanel is a popular UX analytics tool when it comes to mobile app tracking. From user segmentation features to event tracking, this tool allows for detailed analysis of user journeys.
Features
- Event tracking
- Funnel analysis
- A/B testing
- Real data monitoring
Pros
- Powerful event tracking
- User segmentation features
Cons
- Technical knowledge required
- Limited features available on the free plan
Reviews
The ratings below are solely based on the tool’s reviews from Capterra:
- Overall 4.5
- Ease of Use 4.0
- Customer Service 4.3
Pricing & Plans
Mixpanel offers a range of free and paid plans. Their basic free plan features very limited features and data coverage.
Best practices for mobile app tracking
Integrating one or more analytics or behavior analytics tools with your app is a great way to get started on your mobile app tracking. However, there are a few golden rules to keep in mind to ensure that you are always collecting accurate and impactful data:
Set Clear Goals
Before even you start setting up your mobile app tracking take a step back and carefully decide on the metrics that you want to track. Make sure those goals are meaningful, specific and measurable.
Start off with the core analytics metrics that we mentioned earlier and as you progress add more tracking based on your specific needs. Don’t forget to always align the app’s objectives with the goals and overall key performance indicators of the business.
Prioritize User Privacy
User privacy is a major topic in the UX world so do not forget to always prioritize user privacy while you are collecting your mobile app data. First things first, ensure that you comply with regional data privacy regulations like GDPR.
Always keep the data of your users safe using encryption methods and anonymize your data where possible. Do not forget to delete the data that is no longer needed and always get the consent of the user to track and use their data.
Keep your data clean
Cut through the noise by only collecting data that are in line with your tracking goals. Contrary to the common belief, excessive data collection will not help you uncover more user insights as there is always the peril of missing the forest for the tree!
Another great practice is to regularly review and clean your data removing duplicates or inaccurate information.
Regularly revisit your tracking approach
Regularly review your tracking analysis approach. As app usage evolves so does its tracking and analysis. Make sure to stay on top of any new trends and do not lose the chance of ripping their fruits by tracking and analyzing them!
Ready to harness the power of mobile app tracking?
Setting your mobile app tracking will help you gain deep insights into how your users interact with your mobile app. These insights can serve as the base for user-centric and data-driven improvements that can enhance not only the overall user experience of your mobile app but also boost sales.
Get started on your mobile app tracking journey today with UXtweak, the all-in-one platform to track and analyze the behavior of your users and nail your mobile app tracking strategy.
