iPhone Apps and Google Analytics

Yesterday Google made an announcement via its Google Mobile Blog that I hope will generate some excitement among iPhone developers: Google Analytics are now available for iPhone apps. Essentially, this will allow iPhone developers to do what web developers have done for a long time: collect statistics about how many people are using a product, how they navigate through it, and for how long.

Analytics are important for a number of reasons. First, it gives us developers a good sense of how many people are using our app on a day to day basis. Beyond satisfying our egos (who doesn’t need a little pat on the back now and then?), this helps us figure out how quickly a product is being adopted and whether people who buy the app keep using it.

Second, analytics help us understand how people are using our products. Take Queuetastic as an example. The order of the tabs at the bottom of the screen reflects a guess that people care most about their disc and instant queues, then about searching, and so on. Using analytics, we might discover that the first thing most users do upon launching the app is open the At Home screen.  Moreover, people might be spending a lot of time on that screen.  That gives us some clues that we ought to be focusing development on the At Home tab, since it seems to be fairly important to our users.

Third, analytics can help with the business side of app development. Along with the time we spend building and refining our apps, developers have to spend time marketing our products so we can get them into users’ hands. We also keep track of what people are saying about the app, so we can respond to constructive criticism by making the next version even better. Analytics help track patterns in app usage in response to reviews, press, marketing efforts, and more.

It’s important to point out that analytics don’t provide personal data about the user of an app. Developers can use analytics to find out how many people use a particular app feature, for example, but the identities of those users remain confidential.

In coming versions, I’m looking forward to moving ahead on integrating Google Analytics into Queuetastic. With luck, it will provide us with important information about how people use the app so we can make it even better.

Posted at Nov 4, 2009 at 9:46pm | Permalink | Tags: analytics app_development