Enterprises have embraced the use of mobile apps to engage with consumers and empower many of their employees.

However, unlike in the Web world where the use of analytics is deep-rooted and unquestioned, mobile app projects typically use little, if any, in-depth analytics, which leads to limited visibility into the apps’ usage and adoption.

In the case of business-to-consumer (B2C) apps, marketing obsesses over app store user reviews and download numbers, but those comments and figures don’t tell the whole story of the app experience.

For employee (B2E) apps, line of business (LOB) executives assume if they build a mobile app users will come, but few implement mobile analytics to understand scenarios, such as why an app may be getting poor adoption or low usage rates.

Mobile strategists need to ensure that mobile analytics relevant to their business goals are incorporated and used with each mobile app in order to maximise the value and return of each app project.

Mobile analytics are an essential part of the mobile software development life cycle (SDLC), and continue to provide benefits throughout the life of a live app in production by providing data that can be used to improve user engagement, increase user retention and identify specific functions to enhance the overall user experience (UX).

Mobile analytics is critical for continuous improvement of the app itself, as well as for gathering useful business intelligence.

A multifaceted mobile analytics plan will help an enterprise quantify their mobile app strategy.

For more on this topic, check out a note that Adrian Leow and I wrote titled “Use Mobile Analytics to Increase Mobile App Engagement and Performance.”

It provides the best practices for implementing the three core components of a complete mobile analytics solution: benchmark, operational and behavioral analytics.

By Jason Wong - Analyst, Gartner