Data is rapidly emerging as the most crucial tool any business can have.
The more information you collect about your processes, customers, and marketplace, the easier it is to make valuable changes to your company’s performance.
However, there’s more to accessing all the benefits of data than merely collecting as much as you can.
You’ll also need to determine how you’ll analyze the information available and transform raw insights into an actionable map towards the right outcomes.
Today, we’re going to look at some of the steps you can take to reap the full benefits of insights available through mobile apps and use these insights to make a significant investment in the future of your business.
Step 1: Know What Data You Need
Not all data will be relevant to your specific goals right now. Collecting information with a focus on quantity over quality could mean that you end up with complicated or even inaccurate insights.
With that in mind, start your strategy with a plan for what kind of information you need to gather.
It might be helpful to set a goal for what you’d like to accomplish with your data insights.
For instance, you might want to find out whether most of your app users are Android or Apple users. This will be valuable if you want to expand to a different market.
You could also look into which app features your customers use the most or where in the world your clients come from.
You could even set a goal to find out how well your push notifications and other marketing efforts are performing or which strategies you should be investing more cash into.
Deciding what you want to learn about in advance will improve your chances of gathering the most valuable data for your needs.
Step 2: Ask Specific Questions
Data analysis is much easier when you’re asking specific questions. When you ask a specific question, you can get a direct answer from your data.
For instance, if you ask: “Are we getting the same number of downloads from Android users as we are from Apple customers?” you can look at your download numbers over a specific period of time and measure the average clients downloading on each platform per month.
Once you know your goals, figure out what kind of questions you’re going to ask to help you achieve your goals.
For instance, if your goal is to improve your number of monthly downloads, then you might need to ask which advertisements drive the most brand reach or which offers are most likely to encourage downloads.
Try to focus on specific time periods and groups of people when asking your questions, as this will help give you more specific answers to work with.
Step 3: Tie Insights to Specific User Behaviors
Analyzing your app’s performance can give you some useful insights into your audience’s needs and expectations.
For instance, you can separate your customers into segments or groups based on their age range, location, or reason for downloading the app. Once you have those groups, you can assess things like when older customers are most likely to uninstall an app after being offered a certain upsell or premium membership.
You can also determine which activities in your campaign for constant business growth are most likely to encourage churn and lead to poor audience engagement, low customer satisfaction, or other issues.
App analytics gives companies the tools they need to reverse engineer the steps that prompted a specific user action by showing the end-to-end customer journey.
Knowing how to tie specific metrics to specific behaviours and how to segment your audience to get more accurate insights about each individual type of customer should help you create a more effective app in the long-term.
Step 4: Use Clear Visualizations
One of the most important parts of collecting and utilizing business data is figuring out how you’re going to present the information you’ve gathered to your stakeholders and the rest of your team.
Raw data and insights can be difficult to understand for those who don’t have a lot of technical knowledge. Transforming your data into visual graphs and charts could make it easier to consume.
Remember, your aim is to make these app insights into actionable steps that your company can use to improve revenue and customer satisfaction.
Look for ways to tell a story with your data points and make it easier for your team to understand their next steps.
It’s also helpful to include the questions you asked yourself in any presentations you’re creating with your data insights. Bringing context into the discussion will make it easier for your colleagues to understand why certain pieces of information are so important.
When presenting your data, make sure to take the bigger picture into considerations.
For instance, before scrapping a specific feature or campaign, ask yourself whether any dips or surges are connected to seasonal events or special circumstances that affected your audience base.
Step 5: Build a Plan Based on What You Find
Finally, once you’ve figured out how to analyze your app metrics and share them with your team, the last step is developing an easy-to-follow plan highlighting what you need to do next.
Using your data insights, define the problem you want to accomplish or the outcome you’d like to try and aim for with a change in your processes.
Let your team know what you’re going to measure as you implement this new strategy to determine whether you’re moving in the right direction.
Set up a system so you can consistently analyze the metrics that show whether your strategies are successful or not.
You should also have a plan in place to consistently optimize and improve based on the information you collect as you go.
A/B testing different strategies and responding to new findings as quickly as possible could be a good step.
Make the Most of Your Data
Data has quickly emerged as the most valuable asset for any business keen to generate great results in the business world.
The good news for those in the app marketplace is that your business’s technical nature means that you can usually collect a lot of data in a short space of time.
However, it’s also important to remember that gathering plenty of information isn’t enough on its own. You also need to know how you’re going to use that information successfully.
With the tips above, you’ll have the tools you need to transform raw information into insights about where and how users find your app, what they expect from your company, and which actions drive the most positive results for your business.
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Lisa Michaels is a freelance writer, editor, and a thriving content marketing consultant from Portland. Being self-employed, she does her best to stay on top of the current trends in business and tech. Feel free to connect with her on Twitter @LisaBMichaels.