Who uses mobile analytics tools?
Mobile analytics tools are most commonly used by marketing departments, but are also used by product developers for user insights.
Best Mobile Analytics Tools include:
Smartlook, Google Analytics, Firebase, Adobe Analytics, and AT Internet.
Mobile Analytics Tools TrustMap
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Mobile Analytics Tools Overview
What are Mobile Analytics Tools?
Mobile analytics tools support the analysis of mobile and web applications and may correlate data across different applications and platforms. Mobile analytics platforms supply insights about how site visitors navigate sites and applications via smartphones or tablets and how they experience the app in their mobile device's browser.
Mobile analytics for native smartphone applications allow developers to study user interaction with the app and leverage this data to guide development. For mobile app analytics, the number of downloads is a key metric, as is retention/app usage over time. Mobile analytics may cover hard ROI as well for apps that monetize directly. Many of the products in this category have a free version or freemium model, providing basic metrics at no cost to the user.
Many mobile analytics tools have invested in centralizing analytics from multiple mobile platforms and sites. This centralization is intended to help businesses track app users’ or mobile site visitors’ journeys to and from their specific site. This greater visibility presents a more comprehensive view of companies’ funnel, site attribution, and other engagement metrics.
Mobile Analytics Tools Uses
Mobile analytics tools will provide different features to serve different use cases. Some mobile analytics tools are marketing-focused. They provide engagement data for decision making about audience segmentation or where to place in-app notifications/offers to have the biggest impact. Many of these tools overlap with the mobile marketing software category.
Other marketing and advertising-focused tools also focus on mobile and marketing attribution. Mobile attribution and measurement platforms trace how users find your mobile or web app and start using it. Being able to identify the attribution source allows organizations to measure the effectiveness of advertising campaigns on different platforms and websites. It also allows marketers to see where prospects fall out of the funnel and address those specific issues to optimize their funnel.
Other mobile analytics products are more focused on user engagement and activities as a function of app design. These mobile analytics tools overlap with the usability testing and mobile app development categories.
Though many web analytics tools primarily monitor and report on online, web-based application usage, some also track mobile web page or app usage as a channel. There is some overlap between the web analytics tools that cover mobile as a channel and tools in the mobile analytics category. Part of the value proposition of these products is that users can analyze trends in cross-channel behavior within a single platform.
Mobile Analytics Tools Comparison
When comparing mobile analytics tools, consider these factors:
Mobile analytics tool vs. full web analytics package: There are a large number of products that offer mobile analytics as part of a broader web analytics suite. These suites may provide more all-in-one capabilities for tracking and comparing user experiences across devices, browsers, etc. However, they are also likely to be more expensive and less tailored for standalone mobile application analytics.
Cross-channel analytics: Mobile analytics vendors have begun offering more robust analytics around attribution and tracking mobile users’ journeys across apps or sites. Not all vendors deliver this capability, but companies that are more focused on in-app analytics may also have less need for it in the first place. Consider the specific use cases intended for you mobile analytics, as this will help companies buy a tool scaled to their needs.
Granularity: Mobile analytics tools will differ in the granularity of the visibility they provide. Some take a high level approach by focusing on visitors’ paths from platform to platform, others give visibility into inter-webpage journeys, while others drill down into navigation within specific pages via heatmaps. Many vendors offer visibility at multiple levels, but will vary in how robust each level of analytics is. Again, the use cases that companies have in mind will determine which granularity is most important.
Start a mobile analytics comparison
Mobile Analytics Tools Pricing Information
Many mobile analytics tools provide free versions. Free versions usually have more limited feature sets and/or are capped at certain volumes of visitors. Paid versions often start at around $50/month and scale up by the number of users, sessions, or data points, up to hundreds or even thousands of dollars a month for large enterprise deployments. Web analytics tools that include mobile analytics are likely to cost more due to their expanded feature sets.
Mobile Analytics Products
(1-25 of 50) Sorted by Most Reviews
Google Analytics is perhaps the best-known web analytics product and, as a free product, it has massive adoption. Although it lacks some enterprise-level features compared to its competitors in the space, the launch of the paid Google Analytics Premium edition seems likely to close the gap.
AT Internet is a European leader in digital
analytics. Active for over 20 years, AT Internet's goal is helping customers measure their
audience, optimise their digital performance and create value.
From
data collection to exploration, activation and the sharing of actionable
insights, AT Internet's…
Adobe acquired Omniture in 2009 and re-branded the platform as SiteCatalyst. It is now part of Adobe Marketing Cloud along with other products such as social marketing, test and targeting, and tag management.
SiteCatalyst is one of the leading vendors in the web analytics category and is particular…
Smartlook is a qualitative analytics solution for websites and mobile apps helping over 250,000 businesses of all sizes and industries answer the "whys" behind their users' actions. Eliminate the guesswork and discover real, actionable reasons.Smartlook provides a way to understand user behavior at …
Mixpanel aims to help companies build beloved products with leading analytics software for mobile and web.
The vendor says as the only product analytics company featured in Forbes Cloud 100 and Forrester's Digital Intelligence Wave, Mixpanel provides the insights teams need to understand their custo…
Quantum Metric is designed to help organizations build better digital products faster. Their platform for Continuous Product Design gives business and IT teams a single version of truth which the vendor describes as fast, quantified, and grounded on what customers actually experience, with the resul…
WebTrends provides an enterprise web analytics platform and, according to Forrester, has a strong focus on support for mobile and social channels and a very open platform. Webtrends competes directly with Adobe Site Catalyst, IBM Coremetrics. and comScore DigitalAnalytix.
Piwik is an open source analytics platform that enables users to measure web and mobile apps as well as intranet portals. It protects the privacy of users through advanced privacy features and its approach to data ownership. Piwik offers On-premises and Cloud deployment options.
Available in over 5…
Segment is an SF-based customer data platform that helps engineering teams at companies like Tradesy, TIME, Inc., Gap, Lending Tree, PayPal, and Fender, etc., achieve significant time and cost savings on their data infrastructure. The vendor says they also enable Product, BI, and Marketing teams to …
Woopra provides real-time customer analytics. It begins by tracking users across digital touch points (website, mobile app, help desk, marketing automation, etc.) and building a comprehensive behavioral profile for each user. These Customer Profiles are Woopra's building blocks, which are used to ge…
Google offers the Firebase suite of application development tools, available free or at cost for higher degree of usages, priced flexibly accorded to features needed. The suite includes A/B testing and Crashlytics, Cloud Messaging (FCM) and in-app messaging, cloud storage and NoSQL storage (Cloud Fi…
SAP
Roambi is a cloud-based solution designed specifically for mobile data
consumers. Part of the SAP Analytics
portfolio, SAP Roambi features a mobile-first design that transforms data from
diverse sources into rich, interactive visualizations for users. You can publish reports, dashboards, and
a…
AppsFlyer enables marketers to grow their business and innovate with a suite of comprehensive measurement and analytics solutions. Built around privacy by design, AppsFlyer states they take a customer-centric approach to help 12,000+ brands and 6,000+ technology partners make better business decisio…
Amplitude Analytics is an analytics platform for mobile and web. It is designed to help organizations segment users and analyze funnels,
retention and revenue.
Branch provides a cross-platform linking and attribution platform, offering solutions that unify user experience and measurement across devices and channels. Branch powers mobile links and cross-platform measurement to more than 3 billion monthly users across the globe. It provides cross-platform ma…
Marchex is a mobile advertising analytics company that connects online behavior to real-world, offline actions. By linking critical touchpoints in the customer journey, Marchex’s products enable a 360-degree view of marketing effectiveness. Brands and agencies utilize Marchex’s products to transform…
Free product designed to track audience reach, engagement, retention, conversions, etc. on mobile devices
Crashlytics is a mobile analytics tool which helps users find the exact line of code that their app crashed on, providing granular insight into mobile app performance and user experience. Crashlytics was acquired by Google in 2017 and is now offered as part of the Firebase product.
Leanplum is a mobile marketing automation and messaging platform with A/B testing and analytics, from the company of the same name headquartered in San Francisco, California.
Localytics in Boston offers their mobile marketing applications which features personalized messaging and push notifications enriched with embedded video or GIF support, as well as user-lifecycle analytics for app optimization and discovery analytics.
Singular, headquartered in San Francisco, offers their mobile marketing and analytics platform of the same name. The company Singular merged with Apsalar in 2017, and combined technologies to offer a single platform under the Singular brand.
CleverTap is a mobile marketing solution that helps marketers create differentiated customer engagement strategies that are designed to drive growth. The vendor’s value proposition is that thousands of brands continue to build valuable relationships with their customers using CleverTap’s Intelligent…
Apptopia offers mobile app data and market intelligence in a web tool. Mobile publishers and developers, service providers, and investors use Apptopia on a daily basis to understand and monitor competitors, inform business strategies, and identify emerging consumer interests and trends.
Download, re…
Frequently Asked Questions
What are the benefits of mobile analytics?
Mobile analytics give companies visibility into how users come to their mobile site or application, as well as what their journey and experience is within the application itself. This data can inform advertising and product development decisions.
What is the difference between mobile analytics and web analytics?
Mobile analytics focuses on mobile applications or site visitors that are using a mobile device. In contrast, web analytics focuses on all web traffic to an app or website.
How do mobile analytics work?
The most common method of collecting mobile analytics data is by implementing a tool’s Software Development Kit into the app, which will then send analytics data back to the analytics tool itself.
How much do mobile analytics tools cost?
Mobile analytics tools usually start at $25-50/month, and can scale up to hundreds of dollars a month for high volumes of traffic or data. Many products also have a free version for small scale use.