A practical checklist for mobile analytics
Every audit we run turns up some version of this. Run through this the next time mobile analytics comes up.
The version of the app your customers are running is rarely the one you just shipped. Budget a little time for it every quarter and it never becomes a project of its own.
The checklist
- Session data on mobile is noisier than on the web
- Track flows, not screens
- Respect platform privacy rules or you will be removed
- Someone is named as the owner
- There is a date to review it again
What it costs to ignore
Session data on mobile is noisier than on the web. That sounds obvious written down. It is still the thing most often skipped. It is worth deciding this deliberately rather than inheriting whatever the last person set up.
How to tell if yours is fine
Mobile releases are slower to correct than web ones, so the cost of shipping a mistake is higher. Three things worth confirming about mobile analytics before you move on:
- Someone can say what the current setup is without going to look
- Session data on mobile is noisier than on the web — and you know whether that is true here
- There is a way to tell whether the last change to this helped
Most of the value here comes from doing the first two things, not all of them.