5 Metrics to Measure the Success of Your Android Application

Did you know that there's more to measuring your app’s success than simply observing the increase in downloads? Through vanity metrics like downloads, you won’t know how much users are engaging in your Android application or performing actions you want them to.

There is a range of data that you need in order to analyze and boost your Android app’s performance. These data will form the foundation of your app updates and marketing strategies.

According to a recent research, nearly 25% of applications downloaded are never used more than once. The statistics was only 22% three years ago. Developing a highly engaged user experience is becoming increasingly important as brands look to meet users' expectations. Tracking Android app’s engagement metrics and using them to inform actionable solutions are crucial.

We will talk about some helpful metrics that adequately measure the success of your Android application:

User & Usage Metrics

User metrics is important to consider as it shows how large your user base is and illustrate what kind of users your application appeals to like segmented by demographic, geo or device. For a wonderful user experience, developers can also make use of the information to optimize and localize their app.

• Daily Active Users (DAU): This metric shows you the total number of users that visit your application on a daily basis.
• Monthly Active Users (MAU): Similar to DAU, this metrics shows the total number of users who visit your app monthly. Furthermore, it provides you information of the app’s popularity (increasing, stagnant, or decreasing).
• Device/OS: Since there are so many different types of devices and operating systems, it is essential for you to know that which device, operating system, and OS version your loyal user base is coming from. This will allow you to optimize your app for those platforms.
• Geo Segmentation: This metric allows you to know where your users are located. It helps you locate locazliation problems.

Engagement Metrics

Engagement metrics will show whether your users are getting value from your application and vice versa. Generally speaking, engagement metrics can be divided like so:

• Active Users: Active users are those who downloaded your application and exhibited behavior you define as actively engaged. You can use this information to find common characteristics among active users.
• Session Length: If your funnel takes five minutes to finish but the average session time is only four minutes, you should either make the funnel shorter or optimize steps to push customers further down the funnel. It will give you complete insights to unlock greater revenue potential.
• User Loyalty: Data can show the frequency of app launches and session intervals between launches. When you understand the typical time lapse between app launches, you can better time your prompts to boost regular opens.
• Goals Finished: Every application has its own purpose and goals, depending on the industry and vertical that it operates in. By tracking the total number of users who have accomplisehd the goals you can choose which screens/funnels you should focus on optimizing.

ScreenFlow

ScreenFlow essentially tracks user behavior through their screens. It records the flow between screens and total occurrences of visits to screens, visualizing the typical visitor interactions in your application.

By tracking how users are navigating your application, you will get a report of problems areas, conversion road bumps, and drop off screens.

This analytics report will also show you what the users who didn’t complete a stage did instead. This allows you to fine-tune your app’s flow to boost conversions. With this data in mind, you can execute redesigns to develop clearer funnels or develop in-app marketing campaigns to re-engage dropped users. You can read more about how Localytics's customer, Voxy, did that through their ScreenFlow analysis.

App Churn Rate

Churn rate is considered a companion metric to retention. This metric mainly measures the percentage of users who stopped using your app. This is the most important metric that provides insight to why your most active users might've stopped using your app. It does enable you to know more about new and occasional users; however, it ensures that top revenue-generating users are prioritized.

Depending on the type of the application that you have, churn rate varies. However, Localytics found that 58% of users churn within the first month while 75% of users churn by the third month.

Performance Metrics

Performance metrics also play an important role in delivering valuable insights to users' experience. It provides information on technical errors and failures. It is important to pay attention to these signals because you will inevitably lose users if your app keeps crashing or loads too slowly. Here are some common performance metrics:

• API Latency: There are lots of applications that make use of several APIs or services. API inactivity refers to the amount of time it takes for a user to get a response after he or she makes a request or a transaction. The rule of thumb should be one second per request.
• App Loading: It measures how long different requests take to load in your application. For instance, how long does it take for a game level to load or the amount of time it takes for a search to return results. It is also known as app load per session/period.
• Crash Rate: The crash rate will provide the ratio of crashes versus actions performed. With this metric, you can pinpoint the problem within your application. In the early stages, all the mobile apps crash. Developers should stay on top of these technical failures to avoid disrupting users’ experience and causing data loss.

These are some of the most important metrics for measuring the success of an Android application. If you want to build an Android application for your business, you should hire experienced Android application developers or Android application development companies with good developers.

About the Author: Sohel Ather is an Android application developer who has helped companies gain momentum with both small and large scale projects. Sohel writes about the latest technologies and mobile applications and he has shared a lots of innovative ideas of Mobile App and android application development at various technology blogs.