Raj Aggarwal of Localytics gave a very interesting talk on trends in mobile. Here are some of his key findings:
- Engagement on ios is 40-50% higher than Android.
- Downloads shouldn't be your primary success metric for mobile apps, because they find that 21% of users tend to leave - they use the app once and never again.
- ios beats Android in terms of retention, primarily because the ipad offers more opportunities for engagement.
- He declared the era of paid downloads dead and that publishers are shifting to more sophisticated models such as in-app purchases, subscriptions, and commerce within the app.
Raj had some very interesting insights in terms of metrics and the importance of shifting away from traditional web metrics for measuring apps, because they simply don't apply. For example:
- Session and events are the primary use metrics instead of page views, because apps aren't a collection of pages.
- Location support is difficult. The web method of tracking IP addresses doesn't work because oftentimes it looks like everyone is coming from certain carrier gateways.
- Understanding offline usage is critical, because 51% of launches occur offline. This makes it critically important to have the ability to capture data locally, queue it up and send it when the user is back online. This requires batching and compressing, because data upload can affect battery life and data fees for the end user.
