This blog post in 1 minute…
- Analytics provide insight when you publish your app
- Two key concepts are App Installations and Active Users
- App installations are cases where a user downloads your app for the first time.
- Active Users are the number of users who have opened your app in the last month.
- Active Users are a very important metric because they show how many users are actually regularly using your app.
- Ways to increase active users include daily tasks/check ins, gamification and regularly updating content.
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Analytics
When you complete the first version of your app and publish it to the App Store or Google Play, you will naturally want to see how your app is doing and how users are engaged with it.
Google and Apple provide detailed analytics to help and for both there are two important concepts – App Installations and Active Users. Apple provide a few more fields too.
You can see these analytics on the Google Play Console or the Apple Connect console. If you have an app developed and published with Glitterbug, we will regularly share these analytics with you via email or through your admin panel.
Installations
The app Installations or App Installs are simply the number of times your app has been installed for the first time by a user.
This does not include re-downloads of your app. This metric is important as it can show you how many people are actually downloading your app.
You can drill down into this information for more detail. On both Google and Apple, you will be able to see the number of downloads for any previous time period e.g. in the last month, in the last 7 days.
You can also see trends e.g. This month vs last month. You can also break these installations down by region (e.g. how many users from each country), by the version of your app (if you have released more versions/updates) and the type of device.
Visitors vs Installations
You can also see the Store Listing Visitors on both Apple and Google. This is the number of visitors who have actually clicked on your app summary listing to view your app’s detail screen showing your description and screenshots.
It is interesting to see the percentage of visitors vs installations. If you are not getting many visitors, you might do things like improve your app name, keywords, icon or categories.
If you are getting tons of visitors but few installations, it might be good to improve your screenshots or video and your detailed information.
Active Users
The second key metric to look at is Active Users. This calculates the number of devices/users who have had at least one active session of the app in the last 30 days.
This includes both new users who are part of the installation numbers and existing users who regularly use your app. An active session is a user purposefully opening your app and using it.
Ways to increase active users
Active users are a great metric to see exactly how many of your users are regularly opening your app.
This metric is arguably more important when it comes to revenue from your app and customer engagement of your products or services if your app is an add on feature for your business.
You can increase active installs by giving users a good reason to regularly open your app.
Some Ideas
1. Gamify your app. If you have in-app purchases using gems or coins, offer a user free gems/coins every day or every few hours if they open your app and click a button to accept these.
2. Similarly, you could offer users loyalty points or discounts if they use your app every day.
3. Provide users with handy tools which they will access every day such as a daily mood checkin, diary or checklist of task to complete. This provides them with a reason to open your app.
4. Share fresh content with users through your app on a daily basis.
