What are the best practices for analyzing mobile app user behavior over time?

If you are a UX researcher working on a mobile app, you might want to understand how your users interact with your app over time. This can help you identify patterns, trends, and opportunities for improvement. But how do you analyze user behavior over time effectively? In this article, we will share some best practices for collecting, organizing, and visualizing user behavior data over time.

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1 Choose the right metrics

When tracking and measuring user behavior for your mobile app, the first step is to decide which metrics to use. These should be in line with your app's goals, user needs, and research questions. Common metrics include retention (how often and how long users return after their first use), engagement (how frequently and deeply users interact with features and content), conversion (how many users complete desired actions or outcomes like signing up or purchasing), and satisfaction (how happy and satisfied users are with performance, usability, and value).

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2 Collect data consistently

Collecting user behavior data over time is essential, and it can be done using a combination of quantitative and qualitative methods. Analytics tools, such as Google Analytics, Firebase, or Mixpanel, can provide metrics, reports, and dashboards that show how users behave. User surveys, which are questionnaires asking for feedback on their experience with your app, can be created and distributed using online tools like SurveyMonkey or Typeform. Additionally, user interviews allow you to explore user behavior more deeply; they can be conducted remotely or in person with tools like Zoom or Skype.

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Koosha Fattahi

Product designer
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Hotjar really helped me get a sense of what users are doing on the app i designed and helped me realize what is actually being seen and what is being ignored, it even told me if people rage clicked and was frustrated with part of the ui and i found a crucial bug to report to developers.

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3 Organize data by cohorts

The third step is to organize your user behavior data by cohorts. Cohorts are groups of users who share a common characteristic or experience, such as the date they first used your app, the device they used, or the feature they accessed. By grouping users into cohorts, you can compare and contrast how different segments of users behave over time. For example, you can compare how users who signed up in January retained, engaged, converted, and satisfied with your app versus users who signed up in February.

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4 Visualize data with charts

The final step is to visualize your user behavior data over time with charts - graphical representations of data that make it easier to understand and communicate patterns, trends, and insights. Line charts are useful for showing how a metric changes over time for one or more cohorts, such as retention rate, engagement rate, or conversion rate. They can help you see the overall direction and magnitude of change over time. Bar charts are helpful for comparing metrics across different cohorts at a specific point in time, such as satisfaction score, feature usage, or problem frequency. Heat maps are ideal for seeing how a metric varies across two dimensions, such as time and location, feature and device, or user and action. They can help you see the distribution and concentration of user behavior over time.

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Koosha Fattahi

Product designer
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We love summarizing data to get a clearer view of what's going on, sometimes things look good on paper individually but when they are on chart you can analyze where you need work. google analytics without charts would be a nightmare for example.

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5 Here’s what else to consider

This is a space to share examples, stories, or insights that don’t fit into any of the previous sections. What else would you like to add?

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What are the best practices for analyzing mobile app user behavior over time?

1

2

3

4

5

1 Choose the right metrics

2 Collect data consistently

3 Organize data by cohorts

4 Visualize data with charts

5 Here’s what else to consider

User Research

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What are the best practices for analyzing mobile app user behavior over time?

1

2

3

4

5

1 Choose the right metrics

2 Collect data consistently

3 Organize data by cohorts

4 Visualize data with charts

5 Here’s what else to consider

User Research

Rate this article

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