Core events & key analytics you should track for your mobile app

What core events and key analytics should you track for your mobile app? CleverTap recently answered this important question on our Quora channel.
First, consider what the conversion event for your app will be.

Conversion event

As someone looking to develop a successful mobile app, you very likely have an end goal in mind: a consistently large number of monthly active users (MAUs), increasing your daily revenue, or some other metric.

Once the end goal is defined, what must users do on your app to get you towards your goal? What makes them more than just a user – a loyal customer? Bingo, there’s the first event you think to track – your conversion event. For instance, e-commerce companies are usually looking to increase their daily revenue, in which case their conversion event would be the “Purchased” event.

Next, think of the sequence of steps users would have to take within your app/website to get to that conversion event. It’s most likely not something that happens off the bat, as soon as the user launches your app for the first time – it takes a series of events for the user to get to.

As an example for a messaging app, let’s say the end goal is increasing the number of messages sent per month. How does your user get to the point of sending a message (your app’s conversion event in this particular case)? With the following sequence of actions, as an example. Consider the following funnels:

• User Launches App → User Syncs Phone Contacts → User Sends Message to contact (Yay, message sent! – Scenario #1)
• User Launches App → User Views Message → User Responds to sender (Message sent – Scenario #2)

So it seems like app launches, message views, and message sends are core user events required to be tracked to see where along the way users are dropping off before reaching the “message sent” goal. Tracking a customer engagement metric should reveal user drop-offs at different points in the funnel to see how to make the user experience at those specific points better. This will increase the odds of your user reaching the conversion event.

For example, if out of 100% of users who launch the app in a month, only 40% of them go on to sync their phone contacts, only that 40% (or even lesser) will make it to the end goal of sending a message. This drop-off must mean that some part of the UI/UX in your app involved in syncing phone contacts is uncomfortable for the user. Upon further investigation, you might find that the “Sync” button needs to be fixed, or that your syncing process could have a lesser number of steps to ensure easier completion.

See how tracking the right events leads you on the path towards making your app better? Good luck designing your events to track the right metrics for your messaging app.

Check out our recent article on using time of day to create segments and campaigns.