Businesses across the globe are always striving to stay on the cutting edge of technology. It’s necessary to stay competitive, but it’s also one of the best ways to appeal to a wider audience from consumers to investors. When it comes to reaching consumers, businesses can’t afford to miss out on the benefits of a state-of-the-art app.

Statistics show that 180 billion people download apps each year, but not all of those apps end up successful. Those that do focus a lot of their energy on monitoring key metrics to boost functionality, catch errors for quick fixes, and understand user behavior. Combined, these metrics allow you to create the best user experience possible, which is what every consumer is looking for.

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Apps are far more than a one-time investment. They require continual optimization and updates to function properly and stay on the cusp of advancing technology. Through various monitoring tools like AppOptics, you can handle everything from coding to functional issues with ease.

Errors

The first, and possibly most important, metric you or your teams need to pay attention to is error logging. Contained within the various logs inside of your app, there are anything from simple errors that remain almost unnoticeable to ones that destroy the user experience.

This is why larger organizations hire departments and teams to keep tabs on these errors and handle them immediately. Regardless of whether your business can afford a team or not, one tool you’ll need for this metric is log management.

There are dozens of software options out there, but you can find an excellent example of log management on this website. Clean pages, simple access, and the ability to track this metric like a hound dog are all traits you should look for in a log management tool. Storage is another trait to keep an eye out for.

Once you’re monitoring the app’s logs, your teams can handle errors in a timely fashion. There are additional tools available that can help them work within your logs quicker, as well as incorporate C# error handling tactics easier.

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The Natural Flow

Finding out how your app is being used is vital to maintaining an optimized natural flow. Your app may be designed with a specific way you intended your audience to navigate pages, but learning how users actually interact with it is often another story.

Once you understand which screens your users gravitate towards the most, you can begin to utilize those sections of your app to increase marketing efforts while maintaining a positive user experience. The goal of any app is to provide value. So, knowing which pages users value most is a highly effective way of giving them what they want.

After you’ve gathered enough information on this metric, bring in an app development professional. They can help you create a more optimal flow in the app’s layout. Plus, their years of knowledge and outside perspective can be highly beneficial.

Retention Rates

Out of those 180 billion individuals that download apps, how many of them use the app again? You might be surprised to learn that hundreds to thousands of apps are downloaded, opened once, then discarded almost immediately. In recent studies, one in every four users abandon a program after the first time they use it.

To make sure your app doesn’t suffer the same fate, you need to monitor retention rates. If users are returning multiple times in a day, week, or even in a month, then your app is appealing to them and you can begin to monetize your pages. Gaining that kind of brand loyalty isn’t easy, though.

If you find that people aren’t coming back, then several issues could be at play. Your app might have errors that make it a pain to use, it could lack a natural flow or be complicated to use, or it could simply lack the value consumers are looking for.

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Session Length

It isn’t just important to see that users are coming back to your app, you also need to know how long they use it during each session. The length of time from when a person opens your app to when they close it called session length, and it’s a metric you should become familiar with.

If you find that session lengths are dipping, then it’s probably time to revamp the app in order to make it more appealing to your core audience. These revamps can also draw in new consumers, making it a win-win situation. As your session length times increase, advertisers are more likely to buy in-app ad space from you.

Per User Revenue

Monetizing your app is usually the name of the game when creating it in the first place, but you need to understand one simple metric first. The average revenue per user is found using a quick equation, but it helps to employ a tool to keep track of the various users in your audience.

All you need to do is tally up the revenue made from your app, then divide it by the total number of users. From there, mobile developers can devise a winning strategy to make you app more profitable. This information gives them the data they need to find the right form of monetization to increase revenue.

Also published on Medium.