2016

MOBILE APP ANALYTICS TRENDS

Are You Ready?

As January approaches, so does the

opportunity to take a look at your
marketing department and its efforts.
The first month of the new year is all
about foreshadowing, goal setting and
strategizing to create a master
marketing plan for 2016.
In most companies, despite persistent
financial pressures, marketing executives are expecting to spend more
money this year on digital efforts, and
deciding where to invest promises to be
an exercise in discretion.
However, according to Forrester, the
mobile mind shift will become increasingly more important in 2016. Companies cannot afford not to treat mobile
as core to their whole customer experience. Investing in the appropriate
technologies to deliver on consumers
soaring expectations will be required.
To effectively capitalize on the mobile
app acceleration, you need to gain insight into how your consumers interact
with your mobile offerings and
anticipate what they want before they
realize it themselves.

The global mobile

revolutionwhile still in
its infancywill accelerate next year. By the end
of 2016, Forrester forecasts
that 4.8 billion individuals
globally will use a mobile
phone. Smartphone subscribers will represent 46%
of the global population.
-Predictions 2016: The Mobile Revolution Accelerates,
Forrester, November 2015

This whitepaper points to how the

mobile app revolution will play out
across nine top mobile analytics trends.
Leveraging your mobile app analytics
strategy successfully will empower you
to better shape your customer culture,
tailor your mobile marketing processes
and surpass your competition.

2013

7%

2015

2016

52%

In 2013, only seven percent of

respondents from 100 companies of
1,000 of more employees indicated
their organization had a fully
implemented mobile app strategy. In
2015, 52 percent of respondents
claim to have a fully implemented
strategy.
- Mobile Maturity Survey, Red Hat, Inc.,
November 2015

1 Consumer Mobile Expectations Will Soar

Mobile offers one of the most powerful
contact points for organizations to connect
with their audience.
When a consumer installs your app on their
device, they now have you in their pocket all
day long, everywhere they go. This provides
an incredible opportunity to listen to your
customers, engage with them and aggregate
insights that allow you to delight them even
more.
Apps are capable of delivering improved
user experiences, vibrant competitions and
new market paradigms. The reality is that
consumers now prefer apps, and expect
them to deliver a faster, more superior
experience to the web.

As a digital marketer, are you prepared to

capitalize on this ever-growing opportunity?
Sixty-nine percent of marketers agree consumers are more accepting of behavioral
targeting in mobile channelsbut 84 percent said they do not automate personalization on mobile, even though they know that
such personalization would achieve a 66
percent increase in mobile conversion rate
from the average, according to Adobes 2015
Digital Marketing Survey Results.
Mobile analytics captured from apps help
your development team deliver even better apps in the future. Capturing real-time
insights that reveal consumers behavior
and decision-making processes results in
improved user experiences.

-The 2015 U.S. Mobile App Report, comScore, September 2015

Mobile isnt a channel. Its a platform for interaction, engagement and sales that is quickly moving to rival the desktop. Every process should at least include the question, How
does mobile affect the end user? Companies should strive for a more strategic approach
with experiments and initiatives contributing to greater mobile maturity in every area.
-Digital Marketing Survey Results, Adobe, July 2015

2 The Holistic Digital Marketing Approach

In 2016 your mobile app strategy should
no longer be a solitary entity in your
marketing plan, but an extension of your
overall marketing approach. It should
be part of a cohesive brand vision
that transverses all platforms, channels and devices, forming a seamless,
cross-channel integration.
To treat mobile as a standalone silo
is a mistake of structure. Like digital
itself, mobile should be woven into the
fabric of every marketing strategy and
tactic and aligned to key business
goals.
-Digital Marketing Survey Results,
Adobe, July 2015
As brands begin to strategically blur the
lines between social, eCommerce, and
apps, companies should use analytics
insight to optimize their efforts and
prevent any static or friction.

With mobile app revenue expected to

be upwards of 58 billion dollars in 2016,
companies cant afford to miss creating
a fluid user experience that translates
across platforms and devices.
So what is the best way to achieve this
holistic brand marketing?Feed your
mobile analytics data back into your
marketing strategy and product
development.
Collecting data that provides a more
cohesive vision of the content your
users consume, their mobile behaviors,
and their lifestyle decisions will
generate insights on how to best serve
and retain your customers through
holistic marketing efforts.

- Worldwide Mobile App Revenue Forecast, Statista, 2015

3 App Aggregation Will Be All The Rage

As end-of-the-year reports begin to roll
in, trends show that in 2015, mobile
traffic exceeded desktop traffic for the
first time and is expected to be the
dominant source of traffic in the future.
The mobile revolution is fueled, in large
part, by the ever-increasing use of
smartphones. Forresters Predictions
2016: The Mobile Revolution Accelerates forecasts that by the end of 2016,
46% of the total global population will
use a mobile phone. Increasingly, that
mobile time will be spent in apps.
In the coming year, the overwhelming
number of apps will become less about
the offered features, and more about
how each app compliments, relates to,
or enriches the users lifestyle. As mobile usage becomes further ingratiated
into our culture, the way that users
spend time with their mobile devices
becomes more streamlinedusers
expect to have a convenient and

seamless mobile experience, and that

means app aggregation.
Consumers will continue to spend
most of their time in only a few apps
but will increasingly turn to aggregation apps and a handful of platforms to get the content and services
they need. Because it will be more
convenient to navigate a contextual
stream on a single platform rather
than hop among apps...
-Predictions 2016: The Mobile
Revolution Accelerates, Forrester,
November 2015
Merging various apps or features to stay
ahead of the mobile movement could
drastically alter your 3rd-party vendor
and tagging implementations. Mobile
analytics will become an integral part
of governing and validating the data
collection processes before, during,
and after the inevitable cascade of app
aggregation.

4 Mobile Marketing Strategies Must Mature

Given the undisputable evidence that
consumers continue to clamour for
winning mobile app experiencesand
the steadily increasing amount of
revenue touched by mobile app
engagementit is surprising that in
2015 only one third of digital marketers
constructed a mobile strategy,
according to Adobes 2015 Digital
Marketing Survey Results.
Companies seeking to maintain, or gain,
a competitive edge need to develop
mature mobile marketing strategies. A
key part of doing so is implementing
and maintaining a mobile analytics plan
that is aligned with your business goals.
The Adobe Survey mentioned above

also revealed that companies who have

a mature mobile marketing strategy are
200% more likely to have mobile app
analytics in place to monitor and
analyze their mobile data.
After applying a mobile analytics
solution, verifying that the data you are
collecting is accurate becomes critical.
It will do your organization no good if
you are collecting countless data sets
on your consumers if those numbers are
inaccurate due to issues with the
analytics solutions implementations.
A data quality assurance platform can
check, test and validate these implementations for you, ensuring that the
mobile data you are using is accurate.

-State of Mobile Technology For Marketers, Forrester, 2014

Planned maturity organizations recognize the advantages of strategic planning for

mobile and reap the rewards. They far outperform their peers, achieving a mobile
conversion rate 12% better than the average.
-Digital Marketing Survey Results, Adobe, July 2015

Adaptation & Continuous Testing Prove Paramount

The mobile environment is rapidly

changing, and companies who want to
keep up must achieve accurate,
real-time insights and be agile enough
to act upon them. Historically, however,
less than a quarter of digital marketers
have been able to accomplish this.

Last year, only 23% of digital

marketers planned to optimize
their mobile experiences with A/B
testing, multivariate testing or
segmentation.
-Digital Marketing Survey Results,
Adobe, July 2015
The other 77% of marketing experts are
missing out on key analytics practices
that lead to the most effective
marketing strategies.

As you build and extend your mobile

engagement strategy, it is crucial to
invest the needed time and budget into
extending your mobile measurement
capabilities. When you are continuously adapting to mobile trends and
consistently testing implementations
and processes, you can be confident in
your analytics data to make informed
decisions, anticipate opportunities and
uncover potential risks.
If you can automate your testing
processes, all the better. Automation
cuts down on time-consuming analytics
maintenance and has been shown to
increase overall conversion.
Automation of the testing process
alone was shown to increase
conversion by 15% for all
respondents.
-Digital Marketing Survey Results,
Adobe, July 2015

Behavioral Cohorting Emerges

A form of predictive analytics, behavioral cohorting analyzes users by their

collective actions and leverages their
historical data to develop customer
profile groupings. And in 2016,
behavioral cohorting will enable
targeted efforts to win your customers
mobile moments.
Traditional cohort analytics typically
groups consumers according to timeframes, usually determined by the first
engagement with your brand. However,
behavioral cohorting enables more
precise targeting of current and
potential customers, allowing brands

to address similar behavioral groups in

more effective ways.
The more effectively you communicate
with customers, the more likely you are
to maintain their loyalty and continued
engagement with your brand.
Previously, this method of
customer retention has been expensive
and time-consuming. However,
rapid advancements made in simplifying
these analytical infrastructures
indicates that in 2016, behavioral
cohorting will become increasingly
accessible and utilized.

Some mobile analytics experts suggest there are three levels of metrics that should be considered in your
mobile app strategy.
Level 1: Counters: These metrics provide a baseline of your apps success with regards to engagement,
retention and monetization. Metrics typically measured at this level include: MAUs (Monthly Active Users), DAUs (Daily Active Uniques), page views and revenue.
Level 2: Identify Problems: These are the metrics that move you towards behavior cohorting by providing
a high-level picture of user behavior. Knowing, for example how many actions users take per day, what
actions are most common, what actions users are not taking, etc. can allow you to identify and locate
issues and opportunities within your app. This insight also empowers you to to create different segments
based on user behavior or demographic (i.e. active users vs. inactive, location and age).
Level 3: What Drives Growth: After analyzing this segmented behavior and assigning behavior-based cohorting, you can apply predictive analytics to influence those behaviors which correlate to lifetime value.
Source: 50 Mobile App Development Tips #24: Analyze Consumer Behavior, Amplitude Mobile Analytics &
Optimizely, August 2015

Simpler, Less Expensive Interfaces Promote Efficiency

Since their conception, analytics

interfaces have generally been complex
and have required experienced
engineers to develop, operate, and
modify them, which can become very
expensive and time-consuming.
However, trends show that in 2016,
mobile analytics user interfaces will be
simplified, enabling teams to personalize their most relative data into
parameters as clear or complex as they
need.
Complexity is your enemy. Any fool can
make something complicated. It is hard
to make something simple.
-Business Magnate, Richard Branson
With the transition to mobile analytics
gaining traction, now is the time to construct a simple user interface, before all
the costs of developing and implementing a complex system prevents a more
efficient mobile analytics process.
Another benefit of a simpler interface
is that it is more accessible to non-analytics professionals, such as employees
from other teams, who need analytical
data to make informed decisions to
work toward your companys overarching strategic objectives.

Considering the complexity of the

analytics user interface should be paramount when choosing a mobile
analytics vendor to fit your needs. In
addition, Forrester also recommends
that you exercise caution when selecting an analytics vendor:

Shortlist mobile analytics vendors carefully. Few vendors offer

a full suite of analytics solutions
that yield actionable customer insights across all touchpoints. For
example, mobile analytics solutions today offer few options for
A/B testing. Once you have your
shortlist, youll need to carefully
choose the vendor that best meets
your business requirements. There
are many categories and attributes in and for which the vendors all look the same. Be careful
and ask questions. For developers,
there is an ever-expanding list of
ISVs, frameworks, and services
available for mobile measurement.
The sheer number and variety of
choices can be a bit overwhelming,
but the options generally break
down into a few manageable solutions.
-Use Analytics To Create Mobile
Best Practices, Forrester, May 2015

Data Visualization Replaces Spreadsheets

In addition to utilizing more simple interfaces to promote accessibility, mobile

analytics vendors are also becoming noticeably focused on visual aesthetics in
their reports, rather than simply offering
raw information or functions.

Visualization tools also further empower

non-analytical employees to understand
and interact with your organizations
mobile data, allowing for data-based
decisions to be made across teams and
throughout the whole company.

2016 will see more abandonment of

monotonous spreadsheets and an
increased dressing up of digital data
with interactive visualization tools.

As empowering as visualization is, however, it is only truly effective with accurate data.

These versatile tools promote a more

comprehensive understanding of your
online marketing data; from presenting
visuals of an overarching generalization
to a hands-on tour of narrow statistics
that divulge and analyze user behaviors.

Before creating your stunning reports,

verify that you are presenting accurate
data through the use of a mobile data
quality assurance platform which scans
your apps analytics implementations for
inconsistencies or errors.

Mobile Security Becomes a Priority

Mobile apps are difficult to secure, a

fact consumers are becoming increasingly aware of.
The number of malicious mobile
security attacks will at least double
from 2015 While these breaches
wont significantly affect consumer
behaviors, businesses will still have
to invest more to meet the level of
risk they are seeing on a daily basis.
-Predictions 2016: The Mobile
Revolution Accelerates, Forrester, November 2015

Consequently, in 2016, businesses

must preemptively increase their mobile security measures exponentially to
counter the steep incline of breeches in
security on web and mobile data.
As 3rd-party mobile security measures
increase drastically, their implementation and functionality must be monitored and validated to ensure no consumer or company data is being leaked.
Adoption of a mobile data quality platform monitors the 3rd-party vendors
and the data they collect as well as alert
you to potential threats.

- The State of Mobile Application Insecurity, Ponemon Institute, 2015

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CONCLUSION
2015 taught us that mobile is rapidly surpassing most forms of digital communication,
but that most digital marketers are not prepared to make the transition. Most companies
have yet to develop a mature analytics strategy for the mobile movemen, which includes
a sound plan for capturing, analyzing and utilizing their consumers mobile data.
This white paper outlined some mobile app analytics trends to help start your journey
toward a fully-developed mobile app analytics strategy that will help you reach your customers more effectively during their mobile moments.

Take a free tour of AppAssurance, ObservePoints new mobile app auditing solution.
AppAssurance is a data quality platform that monitors, tests and validates the
integration of your mobile apps analytics solutions to ensure you are collecting accurate
data to guide the decisions critical to your mobile success.

FREE MOBILE APP AUDIT

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ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Rob Seolas co-founded ObservePoint in 2007, helping grow the company from a lean
startup to the global leader in digital data quality, that today serves enterprise clients
worldwide.
Thought-leader, life-enthusiast and successful entrepreneur, Rob has more than 15 years
of experience leading innovation in the digital marketing space.
Quick to point out that he was fired from every job where he didnt work for himself, Rob
previously co-founded and built iLeadMedia, which was acquired by Think Partnership.
Today, Rob is an authority in mobile and web analytics and business who approaches
digital marketing challenges with the passion and energy of a visionary leader.
With extensive experience in startups and private sales investments, Rob leads
ObservePoint in redefining the role of digital data quality in business strategy across all
verticals.
ObservePoint is the premier website and mobile
marketing tag validation platform, helping
data-informed companies trust their analytics
numbers. ObservePoints solution audits millions of
web pages and mobile apps globally every month
to report data loss, inflation, and leakage to
analytics managers and stakeholders.
The ObservePoint mission is to empower
decision-makers to make the right decisions at the
right times and with accurate, digital data.
You can learn more about how were doing this at
the ObservePoint blog: http://www.observepoint.
com/blog/ and the ObservePoint careers page:
http://www.observepoint.com/careers/

ROB SEOLAS
Co-Founder and CEO
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