Apple Invites Developers to Test Its New “App Analytics” Service | Hacker News Reader

Apple Invites Developers to Test Its New “App Analytics” Service

techcrunch.com

66 pointsastrodust23 comments

I just got access.

You can only see non-app store statistics like session information and retention if the users opt into developer statistics. They don't break down how many opted in vs opted out. However you can finally see app store page views vs. downloads. Also you can create campaign specific links which this will track the performance of.

If you're involuntarily collecting information then Mixpanel or GA are not going anywhere.

> If you're involuntarily collecting information then Mixpanel or GA are not going anywhere.

Also, this is iOS only from what I've seen and many apps/games will want to collect visitor data/metrics for multiple platforms (Android, web, desktop) in 1 place.

> If you're involuntarily collecting information then Mixpanel or GA are not going anywhere.

Expect a policy change in 3.. 2.. 1..

As a developer, I'm not sure how I feel about that.

As a consumer, great!

As a consumer, I'd love if Apple forced developers to respect people's decision when they opt out of being tracked. That would be a huge game changer.

You can see what percentage of installs in the past 30 days opted-in if you hover over the question mark next to "About App Analytics Data".

Thanks! Looks like 19% for me.

Some numbers for our game Apples vs. Robots [1]:

- 14% of our users opted in to share their data

- Overall conversion rate is 44% (install/app store page view)

- Conversion rate in USA/Canada is 54%, in Asia 42% (our app description is English only)

- Conversion rate iPhone 49%, iPad 37%

[1] http://applesvsrobots.com/

This will vastly outstrip competing analytics services because Apple exclusively has visibility to App Store browsing patterns.

That's what I was thinking. This sounds like the death knell for many an app data service, especially those that purport to sell insights into proprietary data that are obviously exclusive to Apple.

Hopefully we'll finally be able to accurately track download attribution on mobile web. Currently, if you need to track the performance of promotions/ad campaigns for free apps on mobile web, you need to use costly 3rd party services which use "fingerprinting" techniques of dubious accuracy

I know you said on "mobile web" but I just wanted to point out that Google Analytics can track install campaigns on both Android and iOS without dubious fingerprinting techniques, they just use IDFA/AdvertisingId to do so and is free to use.

The only drawback is that in iOS you can only track campaigns done through mobile in-app ads. No attribution for email campaigns, or mobile web campaigns.

Correct, the problem I was facing prior to this announcement is specific to mobile web (i.e. open download link from browser)

It's not too hard to accurately fingerprint source of downloads/conversions. Refer: https://github.com/jkotchoff/adwords_conversion_tracking_tit...

Just a plug because I built it, but branch.io gives this service away for free. We open all the 'black-box' fingerprinting parameters (like match duration) for you to tune as well.

I was always kind of annoyed that they didn't have any of this, and the only way you could kind of get some small part of it was by signing up for their affiliate program, so I'm a little excited for this.

I know there are a lot of other app analytics services, but this seems to include data around how potential users interact with your app in the store which is data that only Apple has.

I'll be very curious to see how this stacks up against Google Analytics (if that's its competition). Can't wait to read more about it.

One thing GA will never be able to do is analyze the page views on the App Store and the source of these page views. I think that will be the great strength of this tool. Download spikes after a press article/review won't remain unexplained anymore.

So does Google have a similar policy where only GA can get information about users in the Play store, or is that not tracked at all?

Well it's not really a question of policy, but there is no way to inject analytics on the Play Store other than link it with GA. And there is no way to have analytics on the App Store other than iTunesConnect Analytics.

we released a blog post on the functionalities of the App Store Analytics feature. https://blog.sensortower.com/blog/2015/04/30/app-analytics-f...

Would be nice to have multiple teams to one itunesconnect account first. Seems pretty obvious.

finally Apple! I've wanted to know app store page conversions for years!

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