Find out how user engagement data is recorded by MAZ apps and how to interpret it in Google Analytics
Analytics allow you to make informed decisions about updates to your apps based on all of the elements of the user experience. Learn how analytics are determined below, and then take a look at all of the events you can analyze.
What is Google Analytics?
Google Analytics is a web analytics tool to help you analyze your website/app traffic and engagement.
Google Analytics offers the following key features:
• Data visualization tools
• Segmentation for analysis of subsets, such as conversions
• Custom reports
How to track Events?
MAZ sends several data points, called Events, to Google Analytics, including events related to content consumption, transactions/purchases made by the users(subscriptions or individual in-app purchases), and some other events related to some specific features in the app.
To check Events in Google Analytics, Navigate to Behavior > Events > Top Events
An Event has the following components:
- Event Category: Pertains to the category of data being collected
- Event Action: Pertains to the particular event or user action
- Event Label: Used to send other parameters related to the event or user action
- Value: This is not used by MAZ
For example, if you play a video in an app then it sends an Event hit with the following values:
- Event Category: "Videos"
- Event Action: "Play"
- Event Label: "Baby's First Birthday"
In MAZ apps, we track Custom Events, Timed Events, Screen Views, and E-commerce Transaction Events
Custom Events:
As the name suggests, these are custom-made events. Learn more about what all events are tracked by MAZ apps.
Timed Events:
These are also custom-made events but they have an extra component and that is the time duration for the event. These events are used to record the average time spent on doing the events. For instance, the "Video Play (Unlocked)" timed event would give you the average time spent by the users on that event.
To view timed events in Google Analytics, go to Behavior > App Speed
Screen Views:
MAZ apps also log some Screen views. The app will send a screen view for a particular screen in the app every time a user arrives on that screen.
To check Screen views in Google Analytics, navigate to Behavior > Screens
How to Segment Users?
A segment is a subset of your Analytics data. For example, of your entire set of users, one segment might be users from a particular country or city. Another segment might be users who purchase the app.
In Google Analytics there are two ways to configure segmentations - Default, and Custom
To view a default (or system) segment, Navigate to Audience > Overview > + Add Segment > click on System
To build a customized segment, Navigate to Audience > Overview > + Add Segment > click on Custom
Select the segments you wish to compare and click the “Apply” button. These segments will appear in every report until you change them or leave Google Analytics.
How to Track Conversions?
Google Analytics allows you to measure transactions and analyze purchase activity on your app.
Navigate to Admin → View → Ecommerce Settings and enable the following options:
Also, enable Enhanced E-commerce Reporting.
Now to check Conversions, Navigate to Conversions > E-commerce > Overview
App Sessions
One of the most important app data points of interest in sessions. Learn how sessions are defined below.
In Google Analytics, a session is the period of time a user is active on your app or the period of time the app is sending hits to Google Analytics. By default, if a user is inactive for 30 minutes or more, any future activity is attributed to a new session. Users who exit your app and return within 30 minutes are counted as part of the original session. A hit is a user's interaction (page view, screen view, event, transaction, etc) with your app that results in data being sent to the Google Analytics Server.
A user can generate one or more sessions. All Google Analytics sessions have an expiry date. They can't last longer than 4 hours and the minimum value you can set is 1 minute. The default value set for session timeout by Google Analytics is 30 minutes. To change the session timeout, go to Admin, and then under the Property column go to Tracking Info > Session Settings
To check Sessions in Google Analytics, Navigate to Audience > Overview
How do MAZ apps record app sessions?
MAZ uses Google Analytics Measurement Protocol to send events to the Google Analytics server and uses automatic session management provided by Google Analytics. This means the MAZ apps only send hits and do not tell Google Analytics when or how to create a session. It is Google Analytics that decides on that based on when it receives hits from the app and how much time has elapsed since the last hit was received.