Mobile Analytics Part 4: Mobile Websites vs. Mobile App Analytics
This series of posts is intended as a very basic overview of what mobile analytics are and how they can save product and project managers’ valuable hours. My previous post reviewed some of the essential product success metrics to track, while this piece will compare and contrast mobile website vs. app analytics.
Also read:
- Mobile Analytics Part 1: The Essentials
- Mobile Analytics Part 2: Choosing and Integrating a Mobile Analytics Tool
- Mobile Analytics Part 3: Understanding Your Product Success Metrics
The keys to the (mobile analytics) kingdom
I live in the smelly, wonderful metropolis of New York City, and as a result my keychain must hold the approximately 9,000 keys (may have rounded up there) it takes to get into my apartment. Occasionally when I am especially tired or it’s dark out, I pick the wrong key and endure a few anxious moments fumbling with the door, just waiting for someone to walk by and accuse me of trying to break in to the building. Adding to the confusion is that often two keys are shaped very similarly, and the impostor key will fit smoothly into the latch but then fail to turn and unbolt the door.
Where is this going? you may be asking yourself. Why is she telling me about her keychain? Fair questions! Well, this fourth and final installment of this introductory mobile analytics series is going to review some of the differences between mobile website and mobile app metrics. Since mobile websites are more powerful and responsive than ever, you might expect the measures of website success to be identical to the metrics used to describe app performance (for a review of common app metrics, check out my last piece). These measures — much like my house key and its impostor — might even seem so closely aligned as to be interchangeable.
The reality is that while mobile website and app evaluation strategies do share many similarities, it is important to know where they diverge when it comes to identifying and interpreting performance indicators.
This is especially helpful given that many mobile-enabled websites also have an app counterpart, and marketers and product managers are increasingly expected to be well-versed in tracking both.
Apps vs. mobile websites
A bicycle and a skateboard can both get you where you’re going, but they are quite different experiences — and one might work better for you than the other. Likewise, mobile-enabled websites and mobile apps are both vehicles for engaging users with a product, but there are important differences in how these platforms function. Importantly, these differences influence what analytics metrics can and should be measured. For example:
What does all this mean for my data dashboard?
Assuming your mobile analytics package collects and displays data on both mediums, it should be easy to view both mobile website and app data and the dashboard should clearly distinguish the two. Many of the metrics and analysis methods describing user/visitor behaviors are the same (e.g. ‘events’, ‘funnels’) but a few terms are slightly different for mobile website data compared to app performance data. Here are some metrics that are conceptually similar, if not equivalent, but have different names:
Other common terms you will see referenced when describing mobile website analytics are ‘traffic’, ‘hits’, ‘bounce rate’, and ‘exit rate’. I did not include these in the chart because there isn’t a precise equivalent for apps (e.g. ‘bounce rate’ is a bit like churn rate conceptually, but it would be misleading to say they are the same thing). So let’s define those:
Traffic: A measure of how much activity is taking place on your site, i.e. the total amount of visitors, visits, page views, and other measures of interaction.
Hits: This term is often used interchangeably with “visits”, but they aren’t the same thing at all! Specifically, ‘hits’ refers to the number of files that are downloaded when a page is viewed. For example, let’s say you make a single visit to a pet adoption website and the homepage contains an HTML document and five JPEGs of different puppies. You have now made one site visit, and generated six ‘hits’: the HTML file plus the five photos.
Bounce rate: The proportion of visitors who go to a site and leave after visiting only one page. If you visited the pet adoption page, took one look at those adorable puppies and clicked away, you just ‘bounced’ that site. Why don’t you like puppies? :(
Exit rate: For any given web page, the ‘exit rate’ is the proportion of visitors for which that page was the last one viewed before leaving the site. While the bounce rate refers to visitors who landed on a page and left right away, the ‘exit rate’ is calculated according to which page was the last one to be visited, regardless of how many pages the visitor looked at beforehand. So, if you went to the pet adoption website (page 1), clicked on “adopt a pet” and checked out all the puppies (page 2), selected “adopting a pet FAQs” (page 3) and then closed your browser, page 3 would be counted towards the exit rate for that website.
Now you’re a mobile app and website expert!
Whew, that was a lot of jargon and charts and terms that sound like one thing but really mean another. But you did it — you read all four pieces in this series and now you’re a mobile analytics champion! Congrats. You should adopt a puppy to celebrate.
A quick caveat: there are mobile website metrics beyond the essentials I covered here that you may need or want to measure. For example, if your product is intended to generate revenue or you are trying to determine which marketing strategy provides the most bang for your buck, there will be additional metrics to take into account.
That said, this piece was intended to provide a solid foundation for understanding the ways that users interact with mobile websites and mobile apps, and how those user experiences translate into product performance metrics. Did I succeed? What would you like to know more about, and do you have any tips for managing web and app data? Tell me below!
In this piece I helped you identify key similarities and differences between mobile website analytics and mobile app analytics. Stay tuned for future posts, and if you have a topic you want to see covered, leave it in the comments!
Sarah Carter is a social science researcher, data fiend, and content contributor for Countly. She enjoys spreadsheets, the CTRL+F function, coffee, and the Oxford comma.
