There are tons of mobile apps flying around. Just like products in the market, dozens of mobile apps can perform the same functions. Due to the proliferation of mobile apps in app stores, what distinguishes an app from others is how much reception it claims with users. It can, however, be a daunting task getting downloads for your app. As a solution to this, we have created the post to share some insights into how you can effectively market your mobile apps and monitor your app marketing campaigns, just like product or business marketing.
The good news is that marketing a mobile app is exactly like marketing a product or business service. So you can leverage analytics to monitor your mobile app performance and interactions while using the same tools or even more efficient ones. It gets more interesting. There is an improved form of analytics that mainly coordinates app marketing. That is mobile analytics. This post will consider what mobile analytics is, how Google Analytics 4 Firebase improves mobile tracking, and how annotations can save the day.
About Mobile Analytics
Mobile analytics entails analyzing and monitoring data created by mobile platforms and properties, such as mobile sites and apps. The analytics solution from AT Internet allows you to track, measure, and analyze how your mobile users interact with your mobile sites and apps. You may use mobile analytics data to better your cross-channel marketing campaigns, improve your customers' mobile experiences, and increase mobile user engagement and retention.
The practice of gathering user activity data, establishing intent from those indicators, and taking action to drive retention, engagement, and conversion is referred to as mobile analytics. The mobile web is included in this subject, but it mostly focuses on analytics for native iOS and Android apps. With so many firms vying to develop mobile apps and gain a competitive advantage, many overlook the importance of having the correct analytics in place. Companies that invest in the development of mobile apps should ideally use mobile analytics to improve the efficiency of the apps; otherwise, they risk making the apps popular.
Any mobile software development life cycle should include mobile analytics. Mobile app developers can use analytics tools to make data-driven decisions about user experience, design, and content. Mobile analytics helps share information and expertise, reduce app vulnerabilities, and change how users engage with apps. More companies are realizing the importance of accurate data and employing mobile app analysts. Gathering and analyzing data in real-time has become critical for businesses in terms of making choices. To stay relevant in this competitive information-rich industry, various analytic tools have become popular in recent years.
Your mobile app will not learn from end-users until you incorporate mobile app analytics into your marketing. Here are some reasons why you should leverage mobile analytics:
· It allows you to better serve your customer by receiving an in-depth understanding of their data without having to look at their prototype or comments.
· Recognizing the link between functionality, performance, in-app usage, network setups, and other factors will not only improve your mobile apps. Still, it will also aid in creating best-in-class apps that simplify work, increase productivity, and save time.
· App analytics assists in giving deep and personalized insight, which aids in attracting new users. It contributes to the market for customized and customer-centric mobile apps.
· Analytics can assist a mobile app is successfully focusing on high LTV users and purchase routes while also decreasing the churn and maintenance gap.
We're frequently asked which platform provides the finest mobile app analytics solution. We use both Google Analytics and Firebase. While these two platforms are interconnected, they serve different functions and offer various features to product owners. Because of its unique mobile characteristics, we recommend that our clients use Firebase as their primary mobile app analytics solution.
Analytics In Google Analytics 4 And Firebase
We're frequently asked which platform provides the finest mobile app analytics solution. We use both Google Analytics and Firebase. While these two platforms are interconnected, they serve different functions and offer different features to product owners. Because of its unique mobile characteristics, we recommend that our clients use Firebase as their primary mobile app analytics solution.
Google Analytics for Firebase is a cloud-based solution that provides backend support, development, and analytics for Android, iOS, and single-page web apps. It's a lot like Google Analytics. Furthermore, Firebase offers several essential app features, such as database management, cloud storage, authentication, messaging, crashlytics, A/B testing, and more.
Their initial version, dubbed "Firebase Analytics," was released in 2016. Everything was tracked using events and specific user properties instead of page views and sessions as the key drivers of activity within your program. Although it had certain restrictions at first, it was reasonably good, and app developers found it more intuitive to deal with. Because audiences were not dynamic (once a user joined an audience, they couldn't leave), they were challenging to work with. You couldn't get reports on event parameters, seeing results took a long time, and all of the funnels reported were open funnels rather than closed funnels.
Over the years, the team has gradually eliminated many of these flaws. DebugView and StreamView were added to give you more real-time information about your app. They introduced a Latest Release Report that showed you how well your app's most recent version was performing. Custom parameter reports for event parameters were added and integrated with AdMob and automatic screen monitoring. They also made significant improvements to the Audience feature, making it far more powerful and dynamic.
While the backend powering the new GA for Firebase fulfilled the product's objectives quite well, it was built hastily. Google knew they have to improve it after a few years if Google Analytics for Firebase was a success. And they were correct; as GA for Firebase grew in popularity, the Google Analytics team began to run into some of the constraints of their present infrastructure. As a result, in 2019, the Analytics team implemented a significant modification. They built a new, more robust backend that could handle more complicated requests while maintaining the previous infrastructure's "no sampling, supports as many people as you want, no expense to you" requirements. Users can now generate closed funnel reports, examine reports for multiple user attributes side by side in the same graph.
However, this modern backend is considerably more intimately integrated with Google Analytics' infrastructure and services. If you're used to engaging with Analytics as a Firebase product, this explains some of the less intuitive behavior you might see. For example, if you want to add Analytics to your Firebase project, you'll need to create a new property and link it to a Google Analytics account. And for the closed funnels, they aren't immediately accessible through the Firebase console. To get to them, you'll need to go to the Google Analytics panel.
This also explains why the name of the service was changed from "Google Analytics for Firebase" to simply "Google Analytics." Even though you can still view many of your reports through the Firebase console, it reflects that Google Analytics drives this latest generation.
Where Google Firebase And Google Analytics 4 Finally Connect
In Google Analytics, what you see as a Firebase project is referred to as a property. Every project you establish in Firebase must be linked to a GA property, and the relationship is mutual, you may say. Your app's iOS, Android, and web versions will all point to the same Firebase project, and they'll all point to the same GA property as well. Individual apps are referred to as streams by GA. Web properties are those generated with Google Analytics Classic, whereas Apps and Web properties are established with Google Analytics New Hotness Edition.
In GA, what you might think of as User Properties in Firebase are called Dimensions. They let you slice and dice your reports based on different aspects of your demographic. Registered dimensions are user properties that you manually register in your app via code. In contrast, automated dimensions are user properties that GA automatically saves for you (like device or browser type). In a similar vein, in GA, what you'd term filters in Firebase are referred to as comparisons.
Why You Need Firebase For App Analytics
Firebase lets you set up infrastructure, logging toolkits, connectors, authentication, and whatever else an app requires. All of this may be customized to meet the demands of any individual user. Firebase's free Google Analytics solution may be used to track and assess native app usage via dashboards available in the interface. When your app is live, you'll have full access to this reporting suite, allowing you to monitor everything that happens with it. You may track client involvement based on demographics, geography, and device, among other factors.
If there's something unique you want to learn about your app or clients, you can create custom events. This enables you to make more educated app-related product and marketing decisions. There are three most essential features that Firebase offers its users:
· Crashlytics: The ability to monitor problems and crashes within your app with Crashlytics is one of Firebase's strongest capabilities. It keeps track of any events that occur in the app's code. So, if a crash occurs, our developers may use Crashlytics to track down the source of the problem and resolve any stability concerns. Crashlytics can also be configured to provide real-time data and alarms, ensuring that all relevant parties are notified as soon as an issue arises.
· Security And Authentication: Firebase's secure authentication service offers an out-of-the-box end-to-end solution for user accounts, with support for both standard email and password logins as well as Google, Twitter, and Facebook social login choices, all of which are handled securely by Google. If the project requires it, Firebase additionally provides extra security options such as email and SMS verification.
· Firebase Cloud Messaging: Firebase Cloud Messaging is a solution that allows you to deliver push alerts between your back office and your app. You can use trigger-based push notifications to deliver bespoke messages based on specified system actions, such as performing certain chores or playing certain games, for more advanced integrations. Firebase also allows for user segmentation based on demographics or behavior to send these messages to particular groups.
Connect Both Platforms For Enhanced Analytics
Mobile app tracking data can be populated in a Firebase project and a GA4 property using the same development techniques. The major difference between Android and iOS data streams is where they are created initially. Data streams created in Google Analytics 4 property sync with a new Firebase project instantly, but Android and iOS data streams created in a Firebase project require a simple integration step to sync with Google Analytics 4.
After you've set up your mobile app tracking and synchronized the data streams, you can start utilizing the various possibilities the two platforms offer in terms of analysis, optimization, and marketing. You can begin sharing current Firebase Analytics data with Google Analytics 4. The procedure is quite easy and fast since Firebase and Google Analytics 4 are so closely linked. Imagine if your audience can access both a mobile app and a website. Such access gives you a complete picture of their cross-platform experience. The unified data model will offer more detailed and organized analytics.
Use GA Automated Annotations Tool For Enhanced App Analytics
GAannotations developed an easy-to-use Google Analytics annotations tool that allows you to use annotations in your web analytics report. It is compatible with Google Analytics 4, making it a handy tool to combine with Firebase for app analytics. The importance of annotations in Google Analytics cannot be understated. This means you can also enjoy these benefits in-app analytics. The insights your gather from these notes and notifications will help you understand your app performance and interactions with the audience. You can record breakpoints that will influence your marketing decisions and change the direction of your marketing for good.
Annotations can be added directly, and you can also use API keys, integrations, CSV upload, and data source. Using the "CSV Upload" feature allows you to maintain all of your previous annotations without losing any information. There is no doubt that you will enjoy using this automated Google Analytics annotations tool.