Qualitative Analytics: Because You Don’t Have Time For Guesswork
Look out the window. Is it already dark? Are you the last one at the office again? Are you scratching your head trying to squash that bug or fix that usability problem? Before you bash your head into your computer, we have a little time-saving secret for you, and it’s called qualitative analytics.
Qualitative analytics is the most recent breakthrough technology in the app analytics industry, and it has the tools to save you a lot of time, frustration, and smashed screens. These tools take the data you’re already looking at and make it come to life in front of your eyes, enabling you to SEE exactly how users are experiencing your app.
Why do you need qualitative analytics in your life?
If you’re a developer, UX designer, product manager, mobile marketer or any other app professional, you probably already use at least one app analytics tool. But does the data in front of you actually help your decision-making process? Do you sometimes end up even more confused? Does looking at all those numbers and graphs ever make you want to go home and curl up in the fetal position?
The point of analytics is to help you make better decisions — faster. Luckily, a qualitative analytics tool like Appsee adds an important ability that make you wonder where qualitative has been all your life: the ability to ask WHY.
You’ve seen that with quantitative analytics, you can ask and answer questions such as: “What is the user retention on my app?” “How many screens encountered crashes?” “How many users started filling their shopping cart but never completed their purchase?” These questions provide you with crucial knowledge, but what about the “why”? Qualitative analytics answer the “why” by showing real users interacting with your app, through user session recordings and touch heatmaps.
User recordings
Great news! Qualitative analytics can actually show you everything that sucks about your app, in full color and high resolution video. Don’t worry, though — your qualitative analytics tool isn’t here to judge, it’s here to help you fix up your app. It won’t take long and it won’t even hurt! Every action and every gesture a user makes is shown in single-session videos. If you’re wondering what caused a crash or an ANR, you can follow the actions that led up to a crash. If you’re trying to figure out what made users abandon a cart, a login screen, or the entire app, you can track down usability issues by watching users interact with the app.
Touch heatmaps
Every time your users puts their fingers on your app’s screens, they leave more than just Cheeto dust. They leave a trail of evidence for all the things that work, or don’t work, in your app. Qualitative analytics actually tracks and aggregates this evidence into a touch heatmap that shows you where fingers touch each screen the most. With just a quick glance, you can root out usability issues and solve them before the sun goes down. If your users are encountering an unresponsive gesture, you’ll see it. If your users hate your onboarding screen, you’ll get the hint. Read more about Appsee’s touch heatmaps, and how they can help you, in this free eBook.
One more thing
A good qualitative analytics platform doesn’t ignore quantitative data, but completes the picture for you. Qualitative visual tools make it easier and faster to reach conclusions and make decisions about your product. That bug can be found and that usability problem solved with no guesswork and no second-guessing your decisions. Answers to both the “how manys” and the “whys” are found quickly and painlessly, allowing the whole team to easily handle problems that come up without having to pull an all-nighter.
