Today’s apps aren’t as simple as they used to be 5 years ago … or even 2 years ago. There’s a lot of KPIs for mobile professionals to track and examine, from monetization efforts to usability to A/B testing (just to name a few).
In order to make the best data-driven decisions for one’s mobile app, mobile professionals need to equip themselves with the top app analytics tools in the industry. However, there’s one aspect of this whole app analysis process that should be quite easy, yet still has mobile professionals jumping through hoops: the process of researching and selecting one’s app analytics platforms.
It’s time to change that reality – starting now! Below you’ll find a list of ten carefully researched and selected app analytics tools to address all of your unique needs as a mobile professional.
Let’s Dive In!
Crashlytics (Crash Analytics)
Key Features:
- Comprehensive crash reports
- Real-time processing and alerts
- Smart charts on crash trends and insights
Every app experiences crashes, some more than others. To keep app crashes to an absolute minimum, top apps like Waze, Kayak, Walmart, and Yelp turn to Crashlytics, the industry-leading crash reporting solution. Crashlytics supports both iOS and Android, and is completely free.
It is best known for its highly detailed crash reports which consider a wide range of factors such as device, battery status, charge in progress, proximity sensor, WiFi connection, and physical phone orientation (just to name a few). Crashlytics also has the capability to examine your crashes on an aggregate level and create reports that illuminate common, noteworthy issues and trends.
It also takes into account the fact that developers are busy people, thus if any crash goes unresolved, it sends a friendly reminder to its users. If you are looking for mobile analytics with robust crash reporting and a seamless integration process – Crashlytics is your top choice.
Appsee (Qualitative App Analytics)
Key Features:
- User session recordings
- Touch heatmaps
- Conversion funnel analysis
Appsee’s mobile app analytics is spearheading a unique new data movement known as ‘qualitative analytics’. Basically, it enables mobile app professionals to see and understand exactly how users are experiencing their app instead of trying to define their UX with numerical data.
Appsee in particular is best known for its user session recordings and touch heatmaps. With user session recordings, mobile professionals can visualize how unique users are interacting with their app and whether users are encountering any points of friction within the experience. On an aggregate user level, touch heatmaps allow them to see where their users as a whole are tapping and experiencing unresponsive gestures on your app.
In conjunction with these two qualitative tools, Appsee also provides powerful crashed session videos, conversion funnel analysis, and action and retention cohorts. Lastly, Appsee also ensures a great user experience for its clients, with seamless integration via one-line of code and a super slick user interface.
Tune (Attribution App Analytics)
Key Features:
- Ad spend analysis
- Cross-device attribution
- App store keyword analysis and ranking comparison
An established leader in the mobile attribution field, Tune’s mobile app analytics offers marketers an arsenal of tools to insure the highest ROI and LTV of acquired users. Tune has efficient, real-time tracking and reporting, smooth 3rd party ad management, support for universal deep links, and robust data organization and audience segmentation.
It also allows mobile marketers to enhance their ASO and track keywords and competitors. In conjunction with its robust tracking and analytics, it also provides mobile marketers with the capability to created specific push notifications and in-app messages for particular groups of users. Tune supports several platforms as well as seven extensions/plugins of the most popular development technologies in the mobile advertising industry, such as Adobe Air and Marmalade.
Flurry (Traditional App Analytics)
Key Features:
- Event analysis
- Custom segmentation
- User personas
Flurry is a veteran when it comes to traditional mobile app analytics and is one of the most widely adopted tools. Flurry’s solution is free and was acquired by Yahoo in 2014 to be part of Yahoo’s robust Mobile Developer Suite. In terms of its product features, Flurry enables mobile developers to measure and examine retention, events, funnels, and user acquisition efforts.
In addition, Flurry Analytics is compatible with all other Flurry offerings, such as Flurry Marketplace and Flurry Personas (which allows users to segment their audience by interests, demographics, etc.). The SDK integration is quite seamless and supports iOS, Android, Windows Phone, Blackberry, Java ME.
Adjust (Attribution App Analytics)
Key Features:
- KPI and cohort analysis
- Fraud detection and prevention
- Cross-platform attribution
Adjust is another strong leader in the realm of attribution app analytics. Not only does Adjust offer robust cross-platform attribution and built in retargeting capabilities, it also provides mobile marketers with fully customizable event tracking, powerful user cohort analysis, and seamless data exports and sharing.
All of these metrics are displayed on an extremely crisp and easy-to-use dashboard. As an open source SDK, it is extremely lightweight and caters to flexible usage and multiple integrations (approx. 700+ partners). With install fraud a rampant issue in the mobile app biz, Adjust also comes equipped with a full suite of fraud combatant tools, such as in-depth behavioral analysis of every install event.
HockeyApp (Crash Analytics)
Key Features:
- Crash reporting
- User feedback
- User metrics
Although HockeyApp’s open source SDK is known for an array of features such as tester team management tools and controlled beta distribution- its crash reporting and analysis is certainly one of its strongest and most recommended features. It is also known as one of the most accurate crash detection tools in the business.
HockeyApp lets you connect your own bug tracking system for further assessment and functionality. HockeyApp is owned by Microsoft and supports iOS, Android, and Windows Phone. Subscriptions can range from $30-$500/month depending on your app’s size and needs.
Amplitude (Behavioral App Analytics)
Key Features:
- Behavioral Cohorting
- User paths
- Single-user analysis
Amplitude’s app analytics are aimed at helping mobile app makers thoroughly examine users’ in-app behavior. First, it allows clients to segment their users by a multitude of parameters such as location, install source etc. and compare these groups of users across funnels, retention, and IAPs.
It also provides mobile professionals with robust behavioral cohorting and retention insights- enabling them to pinpoint exactly which user behaviors/actions are predictive of strong retention and then optimize their app accordingly.
When certain data points warrant further investigation (i.e. an increase in shopping cart abandonment), Amplitude also gives clients the ability to zone in on specific users behind those points and examine the series of actions they took. Lastly, Amplitude also ensures comprehensive data accessibility from data exports to custom email alerts, and powerful third party integrations with attribution, A/B testing, and marketing & push notifications platforms.
Firebase (Traditional App Analytics)
Key Features:
- In-depth audience segementation
- Crash reporting
- Integration with Adwords
The term “Firebase” encompasses Google’s entire suite of app developer tools from Adwords, to storage capabilities, to pre-launch testing. Yet at the core of Firebase lies its comprehensive analytics- a powerful quantitative analytics tool that supports not only Android apps but also iOS.
The most powerful benefit of Firebase’s analytics is that it works with other Firebase features so that you can measure everything from your ad spend ROI to app crashes. Its extensive dashboard also provides users with extremely in-depth user segmentation based on factors such as device data and user behavior. The tool is free and reporting is unlimited on up to 500 distinct events.
Kochava (Attribution App Analytics)
Key Features:
- Ad cost and ROI analytics
- 360 degree LTV analysis
- Identity Link
Kochava is another great SDK to consider adding to your arsenal for attribution app analytics. It also has the most ad network integrations of any attribution tool. Kochava utilizes a unique device fingerprinting system, so that when no device identifiers are provided by a publisher network, Kochava automatically engages these “fingerprinting” algorithms to accurately attribute those users with a dice identifier.
It also provides insightful aggregate user analytics from avg. revenue per user, user retention rates, and LTV. Furthermore, Kochava supports all major platforms and frameworks including iOS, Android, Windows, Amazon, Cocos2d-x, Unity, Adobe AIR and Cordova (Phonegap).
Localytics (Marketing App Analytics)
Key Features:
- Predictive analytics
- Attribution
- Advanced audience data and remarketing
Localytics offers a wide range of tools for today’s elite mobile app marketer. Specifically, its platform is broken down into three core categories: “Discover”, “Engage”, and “Optimize”. Within “Discover”, one of its most noteworthy tools is its predictive analytics, which enables mobile marketers to better foresee which users are likely to churn, convert, view a product etc.
Within “Engage”, mobile marketers can group their users by very unique parameters and target them accordingly with relevant in-app messaging and push campaigns. Lastly, within “Optimize” clients can track the impact of their campaigns overtime and also see in real time when their app is uninstalled. Localytics is a free tool for apps with up to 10,000 monthly active users.
Wrap-Up
There’s no doubting the fact that app analytics tools play an integral role in growing and enhancing one’s mobile app. However, it is important to bear in mind that there is no “one size fits all solution”.
Instead, as you can see from the list above, there are a lot of powerful unique tools that specialize in measuring different facets of your app, from qualitative user experiences to user attribution to technical performance. We recommended selecting not one, but a few of these top choices and adding them to your app’s arsenal of tools in order to maximize your range of analysis and insights.
