Measurement

“Number 1 app in UK, France and Germany…”. Those who regularly browse the Apple AppStore hunting for applications (apps) will undoubtedly be familiar with this type of catch phrase.  It’s generally what users first read when they land on app description pages (as if they were all number one!). Developers and designers use this type of technique to lure candid users to download the app by making them believe it’s the best of its kind on the market. This also illustrates how the success of an app is often assumed: the higher in the ranking, the more successful it is. But as you may probably know already, this approach is entirely flawed.

First of all, one can wonder how these rankings are built. As it is rarely clearly stated, we can only suppose that the number of downloads of an app governs its position in the table. But again, over what period of time? Number of downloads in the last month, quarter, year? This brings in the process a lot of vagueness and can surely not be used as a success measurement tool. Moreover, as Jakob Nielsen suggests in his column about iPhone App (http://www.useit.com/alertbox/mobile-apps-initial-use.html), users download more app than they actually need and use, which corroborates the idea that the number of downloads is not representative of the usage and can be resorted to as success criterion.

Then comes the question of the popularity of an app. App owners can write comments on the app description pages of the AppStore and rate them on a scale from 1 (negative) to 5 (positive). As a user experience professional, I strive to get the voice of the customer heard by my clients but I don’t consider it to be a viable success measurement method. Personal opinions are very subjective and tend to be only expressed when something goes wrong or incredibly well. Moreover, most of the app ratings derive from the ‘rating prompt’ that pops up on the iPhone when a user decides to delete an app. This biases the results in a negative way.

So how should the success of your app be measured? From a business perspective, the response is simple: the success of an app should be measured just like the success of a website, i.e. by defining and tracking KPI. Most of the apps provide a web-based service, which implies a digital connection between phones and web servers, just like there is a connection between PC and web servers. This allows data to be captured, such as number of information requests, conversion rates, app usage duration, app usage frequency, etc. In terms of web analytics tools, the capture of mobile phone applications usage is only at an embryonic stage but the trend is on the up and some of the current tools on the market are already capable of monitoring app usage.

Boasting about an app being the most used rather than the most downloaded would surely be more credible to end users!

“Never try, never fail, those are the words I live by”, or so says Drew Carey’s character Crank in the animated kids film ‘Robots’. I heard these words coming from the back of the car a few days ago as I headed off on holiday with the family for a week in North Devon. You could run a business by that motto but I’m not sure it would last long or be an exciting place to work.

On the contrary,  it is the belief of both my team and I that we must try, that sees Foviance opening for business in China this quarter, with a new office in Shanghai. Read more…

This article, written by Neil Mason, was originally published on Clickz.com on 23/10/09 and is republished here with permission.

It’s been a busy couple of weeks on the conference circuit. WebTrends held their Engage conference in London and last week I was in Washington DC for the Emetrics Marking Optimization Summit . It was good to see WebTrends out and about in the market, showing off some of their latest stuff. They’ve been working hard on their messaging by the looks of it and getting a distinctive market positioning going. The core brand themes they talked about were “Power”, “Elegance” and “Openness”. Read more…

 This article, written by Neil Mason, was originally published on Clickz.com and is republished here with permission.

I’m increasingly convinced that the issues that most businesses face around the successful deployment of analytics in their business are not to do with their technologies but to do with their businesses processes. That view was reinforced this week when I was running a workshop with a group of students studying on a Masters Programme in Internet Retailing. Read more…

This article, written by Neil Mason, was originally published on Clickz.com and is republished here with permission.

There’s the saying doing the rounds at the moment “why waste a good recession?, meaning that times like these provide an opportunity for organisations to become leaner and trim off some of the fat in the business. Whilst it’s not necessarily a very pleasant experience, the trading conditions that we are experiencing at the moment helps organisations focus on being both effective and efficient. Data and analytics have been helping organisations to optimise their processes and improve their returns. My sense though, is that the focus of analytics over the past year or so has become increasingly tactical and operational, now with murmuring in some quarters about green shoots of recovery it’s time to start thinking about how analytics is going to help companies gear back up for growth. Read more…

This article, written by Neil Mason, was originally published on Clickz.com and is republished here with permission.

Maturity models seem to be all the rage these days. These models help organisations to identify where they are on the roadmap of whatever discipline or capability the model is about and where they need to be. They help to describe the journey to world-class status or best practice. I have been using a simple “maturity model“ for a few years to help organisations identify where they are in terms of their development of their digital marketing optimisation capabilities. I’ve found it a useful device to help people understand the journey they are on and a sense of the ultimate destination. Read more…

 This article, written by Neil Mason, was originally published on Clickz.com and is republished here with permission. 

Last week I was over in San Jose for the Emetrics Marketing Optimisation Summit for three days of input and output on all issues around digital analytics. As usual there was a wide variety of content to absorb and a breadth of issues to discuss. As I sit and write this at the airport on my way home (got to meet those ClickZ deadlines…) I get a chance to reflect on some of the key themes that came out of the conference. Read more…

This article, written by Neil Mason, was originally published on Clickz.com and is republished here with permission.

The first sign of spring is the beginning of the conference season and it kicked off for me this week when Omniture came to town hosting their European Summit in London. Around a 1,000 people from across Europe gathered together last Tuesday to listen to what one of the largest marketing technologies companies had to say. Read more…