It feels like we live in unsteady times.

To survive in the competitive app market, it’s important to recognize fundamental shifts in the app economy.

In light of our Masterclass on “App Metrics 101”, I want to highlight how analytics has changed over the last years.

Mobile Apps, and products in general, are defined by experience today.

In the 1800s, people just delivered a product. Let’s take coffee as an example.

In the past, you just ordered coffee and got it.

That’s it. Ask for it, pay, get your coffee and get out.

Because it was basic, there was not much to analyze. Today, there’s more to think about, especially in customer experience.
Coffee chains like Costa Coffee have developed a sophisticated experience that makes you feel like you’re in a cozy Italian coffee shop.

At the same time, they take advantage of modern technology, for example via their app.

Analytics changed from being about basic information to an analytics approach that takes experience into account.

This is confirmed by the companies that are winning in our current economy.

Companies like AirBnB, Google and Amazon all bet on Experience.

What is their winning analytics approach? Simply put, they get a 360-degree view on customer experience.

Winning app players have an analytics stack based on:

  • Quantitative Analytics: Quantitative analytics describes numeric information that can be expressed in graphs, charts etc.
  • Qualitative Analytics: Qualitative analytics focuses on subjective information like user behavior. Examples for this are session replays or heat maps.
  • User Research: User research is about observing users and testing prototypes on them.

User research is technically part of qualitative analytics, but because setting up a focus group is quite different to analyzing session replays, I mention them separately here.

It used to be enough to just look at the key KPIs and draw conclusions from that.

Now it isn’t. Companies that take qualitative analytics and user research into the equation are able to innovate faster.

So how do you make sure that your app is on the winning side?

We give a tactical deep dive in our Masterclass “App Metrics 101: Make Informed Product Decisions”.