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App Development
8 minutes read

App Conversion Tracking: Ultimate Guide

By Robert Kazmi
By Robert Kazmi
App Development
8 minutes read

App conversion tracking is an important part of mobile app development. It would be extremely difficult to fully realize the vision you have for your mobile app without the aid of conversion tracking. 

Certain app conversions or actions may be more important to reaching your goals than others, but all trackable actions or events can be beneficial to the continued development and improvement of your mobile app. 

In this post, we will fully explore mobile app conversion tracking, discuss why it is important, what data can be gathered, how it can be used effectively, and what tools are available to help track and analyze conversions. 

Why is App Conversion Tracking Important?

Your business has a great mobile app. You know people are using it, it looks good, and it provides customers with a valuable service. Why should you be concerned with tracking app conversions?

No matter how great your mobile app is, you will have to make improvements to product design and update features at some point in order to stay competitive and continue to engage users. Conversion data helps give you a comprehensive view of how users are interacting with your mobile app.

If you’re going to make improvements or add new features to your app, you need to understand how your current users interact with your app, which features they use, which features they don’t use, what actions they take within your app, and which user actions help further your business goals. 

Conversion tracking also gives your business valuable insights into whether or not your mobile app is helping your business reach its goals, whether that is revenue generation, user engagement, or awareness. 

Conversion data empowers your business to make smart decisions when it comes to app optimizations and adjust your app engagement strategies according to how users actually use and interact with your mobile app. 

There is a lot of competition in the mobile app market. If you want to stay competitive and realize your business goals, app conversion tracking needs to be an integral part of your strategy. 

What Data Can Be Gathered With Conversion Tracking?

Mobile app conversion tracking can provide developers and stakeholders with a lot of different data. Most of the tools you would use to track conversions will be able to show you:

  • Number of app installs 
  • Which channel led to an app download 
  • Actions taken within the app
  • Which actions led to an in-app purchase or other desirable action
  • Number of users and number of paying users
  • App deletions 

This is a broad overview of potential conversion and app acquisition data you can view through the power of conversion tracking and analytics. You can customize your data views based on the specific goals that you have

For example, you can segment conversion data based on the channel that led to app download or in-app purchase. You can see which users are deleting your app, which platform they use, device version, app version, and more to gain a better understanding of why users leave your app and the steps you can take to improve user retention

How to Effectively Use App Conversion Tracking

The amount of conversion data that can be gathered is truly immense. The data points that are the most valuable to you will depend on a number of different factors. The most important step you can take to effectively use mobile app conversion tracking is to clearly define and understand the goals of your app and business. 

Almost all conversion tracking tools will automatically track these main conversions:

  • First app-launch after download or re-install 
  • In-app purchases 
  • Retail purchases (e-commerce)

While you can gain a lot of valuable insights from these default conversion events, your business is unique, and the truly valuable conversion events for your business might not be adequately represented in the default settings. 

Conversion tracking tools will give you the ability to define your own custom conversion events. You could set a conversion event for when a user completes a certain action in your app a specific number of times, or perhaps you set a conversion event to trigger after a user has spent a certain amount of time using your app. 

Conversion events should be defined as actions that are truly valuable to your end goals. If your end goal is revenue generation, a good conversion event could be the creation of a user profile, when a user saves payment information, or even when a user shares content or products from your app to friends on social media or messaging apps. 

Valuable conversion events will vary depending on the app and the business. That is why it is so important to clearly define the goals you have and what key metrics will help define success or failure. Once you have a clear understanding of what data is valuable in conversion tracking, setting custom conversion events and goals within analytics tools is simple. 

What Tools are Used for App Conversion Tracking?

There are a number of different tools that can be used to track app conversions. The best tool or tools for you will depend on the type of mobile app you have. As you’re well aware native iOS and Android apps are different. 

There are cross-platform apps that can be used on both types of devices using the bulk of the same source code, but even still, it may make more sense to track conversions using multiple tools to get the most comprehensive data possible. 

App conversions can be tracked using Firebase, which is a Google tool that combines a lot of the features and dashboards from Google Ads and Google Analytics. You can also use Firebase or Google Ads to track app conversions on iOS devices too, but your capabilities for tracking iOS conversions will be limited to conversions made directly from interactions with Google Ads. 

Android apps are able to access a lot more analytic and conversion data using Firebase than iOS apps will be able to. Google has added some aggregated modeling features to help give iOS apps more detailed insights and conversion reports, but this data is based on anonymous user information and modeling, so it is not nearly specific or accurate enough to be a high-level conversion tracking tool for iOS mobile apps. 

Luckily for iOS developers, Apple has its own app analytics and conversion tracking tool called App Analytics. App Analytics gives users a complete overview of their iOS app, how it performs on the App Store, user engagement data, app performance and health, payment information, and so much more. This is the most comprehensive conversion tracking tool available for iOS mobile apps. 

While Firebase and App Analytics are obviously two of the most popular and important conversion tracking tools because of the dominance of iOS and Android in the mobile app market, there are a number of other tracking and analytics tools available, including:

  • Localytics 
  • Countly 
  • App Annie 
  • devtodev
  • Flurry Analytics 

Most businesses have apps on both the Google Play Store and the App Store. It will likely make sense for you to use multiple conversion tracking tools in order to get the most detailed conversion information for each platform your app runs on. 

Final Thoughts 

Data is crucially important to modern business strategies and decision-making efforts. Your organization likely collects and analyzes data from a large number of sources related to the success of your business. App conversion tracking needs to be valued just as much as all other data related to your business. 

Mobile apps are one of the most important ways consumers interact with businesses and shop for products and services. App conversion tracking can help your business identify what features and functions are working, and more importantly, which aspects of your app aren’t working and whether it is worth the time and effort to make improvements. 

Finding the right tools for your mobile app and business can be hard. There are a lot of different tools to choose from, and it can be difficult to sift through all of the available technical information on your own. 

If you need help, turn to an app development partner. A partner can lend you their industry experience and technical expertise to help you find the right technologies for your business and goals.

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