Shifts in modern audience attention lead to constant need to look for new analytical instruments, that can provide the biggest picture, and give an opportunity to understand app's audience better. Why and how to - explained in this article.
The modern world is moving towards universal integration. The current generation is called screenagers (from the English words "screen" and "age", as an analogy to teenager). The attention of the modern audience is constantly switching between five screens: TV, movie screen, computer, tablet and smartphone.
More and more often applications come on multiple platforms at once, to be closer to the users, and become cross-platform. Of course these applications need corresponding analytics.
Analytical service devtodev.com is pleased to introduce cross-platform analytics. Let's take a look together at what it is and why it is so cool.
What are the advantages of being cross-platform?
More users
The more platforms are chosen by the application, the more users will be able to install it to their devices. Markets of iOS and Android compete for users, and cross-platform applications allow you to have both markets at once.
Marketing becomes easier
With such a large audience there is no need to target marketing at the narrow segments of users - it is possible to access all at once. The problem of choice of means of communication with users is less vital - you may choose any information dissemination tool.
Improving resource efficiency
Modern tools allow you to develop a single application that will be available for several platforms at once. So, for the same expenditures of labor you increase your audience and, accordingly, the cash flows.
The disadvantages of cross-platform formerly known as the difficulty in the analysis of applications on different platforms. But now it is not an issue anymore, and devtodev eliminates these problems from the developers of cross-platform applications.
How does cross-platform analytics work?
Cross-platform at devtodev works for the following platforms:
iOS;
Android;
Windows (from version 8.1);
web.
If your application runs on multiple platforms from the list, you will be able to enjoy the benefits of cross-platform analytics.
Each platform has its own characteristics. It has long been known that Google Play is far ahead of iOS App Store on the number of installed applications. But it is iOS App Store ahead of Google Play on revenue. Users of iOS-devices are more likely to purchase premium content.
As for the other metrics, for example, retention of users - it is the highest on Windows Phone, according to our data. It is understandable as there is simply fewer applications for Windows Phone, and competition among applications for the minute of users' leisure is lower.
It turns out that the behavior of users in the application is different on different platforms: this may be due to the terms of the Market, and the tendency of people to monetization, and interface features of the devices themselves.
Cross-platform analytics allows you to see the differences in users by platforms. You may calculate the indicators you are interested in for each platform, to compare them with each other, identify problems and outline the development for different platforms. Cross-platform will help you to make strategic decisions on the development of the platforms and eventually, to make more money.
On the other hand, cross-platform analytics is able to abstract from the notion of a platform. If one and the same user prefers to open the application on multiple devices in one period, it is important for you to analyze his behavior, regardless of device or platform. After all this time, he remains to you one and the same user, and platform here is only the mean of communication between you and him. That is why all analytics in devtodev may be counted as depending on the platform, so regardless of it.
We are talking about groups of metrics such as:
new users;
users activity (DAU, MAU, sticky factor, lifetime and so on);
absolute monetization metrics (income before and after the subtraction of Market Commission, the number of transactions, the number of paying users);
relative monetization metrics (the percentage of paying users, ARPU, ARPPU, the average check, LTV, etc.).
Here is an example.
Let's say your application is available via web, as well as on smartphones and tablets for iOS and Android, and you want to compare the effectiveness of platforms.
The values are:
Aware of these values, you may evaluate their correlation with each other. But does this mean that the overall project MAU is 30000+40000+50000=120000? No, because one and the same user may log into the application from different platforms. And it is important to track both the audience of each platform, and overall for the project.
Overall MAU actually equals to 100,000 users. So, if it wasn't possible to track the total MAU, we could make a mistake by 20%, and for tracking changes such an error for this indicator is unacceptable.
Also, cut by the platform allows to compare the effectiveness of users retention on different platforms with each other. In our example, iOS and Android new users make 20% of the total monthly audience. But in the web-version - it is all 50%. Hypotheses may be several:
either web-version was released recently and is still gaining users,
either there is an active purchase of traffic for the web-version,
either there is a problem with users retention in the web-version.
Whatever it is, this is one more question that should be answered by the developer. It is possible that, by fixing the bugs affecting the retention of users in the web-version, we will be able to increase its LTV, and therefore increase the overall LTV and earn more.
Also, cross-platform analytics from devtodev allows you to compare users who choose one platform and several platforms at once with each other.
How many users install the application on several platforms? Can we call such users more loyal? How much better are these users monetized? Does it make sense to encourage users to use multiple platforms simultaneously? devtodev analytics allow to answer all these questions.
Let us go back to the example.
It is likely that users of our application, playing on Android and iOS, are more loyal to us (otherwise why would they install our application on both platforms?). We may count monetization metrics (LTV, ARPU, ARPPU, the amount of paying users) for these users, and if the hypothesis that they are monetized better work, it makes sense to stimulate other users to use multiple platforms simultaneously. By running the campaign "Log from Android and get a gift", we increase the percentage of loyal users from our audience, that is bound to affect our money.
Dmitry Kravtsov, CEO of devtodev:
Trend in the development of cross-platform applications is obvious. However, you should be able to analyze them, and the market did not have any profound analytics that fit exactly the needs of the developers of such applications. We decided to remove these problems from the developers and offer them the functional of our cross-platform analytics. I'm sure the developers will see the benefits of our analytics to evolve their applications in the right direction and earn even more.
What are the cases we need cross-platform analytics for?
An excellent example of cross-platform game is Hearthstone: Heroes of Warcraft from Blizzard. According to the research of Superdata, this game earns 20 million dollars a month. And total number of players exceeded 30 million users.
This game is also available for PC, for smartphones and for tablets both for iOS, and Android. In this game card mechanics allows users to compete against each other, no matter which platform they use. Cross-platform in action! All users of Hearthstone are united into one large ecosystem, and the platform doesn't matter for the user and his rival.
Furthermore, one and the same user may play Hearthstone at various platforms during the day: in the morning play a round or two on tablet, at the subway - on the phone, while at work, secretly from the chief, play on the PC. Of course, it's out of question, that on each platform the user had a separate account with a separate deck of cards and different balance of game currency.
There is no doubt that guys from Blizzard asked the following questions:
how many users are playing on each platform;
how much money each platform earns;
what is the effectiveness of the platform;
is there any difference what platform the user plays first;
are there any distortions when users from one platform have higher winning percentage, than users from the other;
how many users play on several platforms;
how are users that play on multiple platforms simultaneously monetized;
how much time users live in the game on each platform;
and so on.
Right questions and accurate answers allow Bizzard to optimize their games for each platform, to make strategic decisions for the development of new platforms (for example, recently the owners of Samsung Galaxy S6 could get three classic decks plus exclusive artwork for the cards for free as a gift). As a result, Hearthstone wins more and more users who stay in the game for a long time, and bring Blizzard even more money.
What is going to happen to cross-platform in the future?
The tendency to increase the number of cross-platform applications at the market allows us to believe that cross-platform is with us for a long time, if not forever. It will be the key trend in the applications development. So, the time to make your app cross-platform is now, and choose devtodev for an analytical system.
Read more about:
BlogsYou May Also Like
