At the beginning of the month, Apple debuted a new app analytics platform that gives developers a detailed look at app usage statistics. The feature was initially limited to those who requested access to the beta testing program, but as of today, Apple is giving all developers access to the App Analytics beta.
Developers are now receiving emails letting them now about the availability of the new feature, which is free with an iOS Developer Program membership and requires no additional coding or app updates.
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App Analytics gives developers access to a number of different usage stats, letting them determine the effectiveness of marketing campaigns and promotions. The feature lets developers see which websites and blogs drive the most traffic to an app, and it determines how many app downloads a developer's App Store product page earns.
By creating unique links for each marketing campaign, a developer can determine what's effective and what's not, and detailed user engagement metrics let developers see how people are using apps. There's information active devices, number of sessions, and retention, so a developer can tell how long someone's using an app and how often.
Apple's App Analytics information is currently available to all iTunes Connect users who have an Admin, Finance, or Sales role. On the consumer end, customers need not worry about developers having access to personal info -- Apple only displays aggregated data, not personally identifiable information from customers. Users also need to opt-in to share their app usage data to Apple, which can be done via Settings --> Privacy.
Top Rated Comments
This is only available for iOS apps, which is surprising considering the analytics code is probably very easy to port to OS X.
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Oh. Fantastic. More analytics. I have all the respect in the world for developers that need to turn around a bit of income, but analytics are all-to-often an arguably abusive tool that exploit the end-user. Just provide me with a paid-for app and track your sales and read your feedback.
I totally agree. Way too many apps now are the freemimum model with insane amount of ads/videos, in-app purchases and possibly intrusive analytics to pump up sales.
but analytics are all-to-often an arguably abusive tool that exploit the end-user.
And if Apple provides the analytics service you have a central opt-out. If every app runs its own service you can only opt-out if the developer offers this possibility.
If Apple is smart they add more of these services that are currently provided by third-parties. For example reliable real time crash reporting, or the option to notify analytics about options the user has set and views the user has used.
Once they have these in place they could force developers to make all these third party services opt-in, i.e. the app has to ask the user if they want to activate analytics.
Which would greatly improve users privacy. Currently almost every app has its own service, which are all activated without a way to opt-out
Just provide me with a paid-for app and track your sales and read your feedback.
If it only would be that easy...