Analysis of the Mobile App Analytics Landscape
March 10th, 2010 by Greg HarrisWhen developing AppClix, we decided in advance that the only way to really understand the needs of the users would be to actually create mobile applications and put them up for sale in the app store.
Through another company of mine, we created 4 iPhone apps. During the development, we learned all about iPhone app analytics and how our competitors work. We saw was was missing from existing solutions, and what was frustrating us.
When we put the apps in the iPhone app store on iTunes, we instantly saw what sales and marketing information was needed that was also not available easily in a single reporting solution.
Each of our apps has both AppClix, as well as one competitor installed for direct comparison of data.
We are in the process of doing specific posts outlining our experience with each of the apps and competitors that can be found at the links below. We also evaluated a few others and are waiting on app store approval.
In this post we will discuss things that are not specific to one provider.
The first issue we found right from the start is that it can be extremely uncomfortable compiling a third party dependency into our applications. As many of us know from the AppLoop experience, companies go out of business. We have also found out through our experience that there can be serious delays in data reporting by some providers.
Well what do we do then? One of our apps that uses Pinch Media has not had data refreshed in over 11 days. Well our solution to this issue for those larger developers that want their own solution with NO DEPENDENCY on anyone else is a turnkey user installed, or cloud hosted system. More on this later.
Right away while evaluating all the solutions, we noticed that the dashboard presentation of all of the providers is extremely lacking. Flurry, Pinch Media and Medialets have these “Web 2.0” interfaces that are all graphical and pretty but do not provide a simple concise display of information. Here is a comparison of the dashboards of a few. Click for full size.
As a developer and marketer, we want to see relevant information easily. This is not possible with these other solutions. Being the first, and leader does not mean you can provide an inferior product. Then again, you get what you pay for 
. Also the drill down pages are just as lacking in content and valuable information.
Here is a comparison of the “By Date” detail pages. Notice how Pinch Media has these HUGH numbers on the page. What’s that about? Also note how both Flurry and Pinch Media only show one metric at a time. You have to drop down menus and change pages to view the other metrics (also one at a time). Who can use this?
I was very disappointed when I saw how these products present the data. We found the same issues with Mobile Web Analytics when developing Mobilytics.
Please visit our more specific posts comparing these solutions and what we found.
If anyone is interested in beta testing AppClix, please contact us.
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March 12th, 2010 at 10:03 pm
[…] This is something I have always thought was a great strategy (as you can see from this previous post…). When you have a better product, then let the world know! When the competition screws up (like Pinch Media’s 10 day data refresh lag time), let the world know! […]