Using the Localytics Dashboard
Usage Reports
Usage is presented in nine different reports:
Users & Sessions
This is a summary of users and session counts per app. This provides more depth than the dashboard and may be split by many different time periods.
Suggested Uses
Growth is a very important metric of app success, as is maintaining usage levels throughout the life of your app. This report gives an absolute look into growth rate and usage trends. For example, the Tip Calculator app in the live demo sees increased usage on the weekend, yet this is only visible when looking at the daily usage in a given week or month.
Notes and Common Questions
A unique user is defined as a unique device the app is installed on. This is independent of what Google or IOS account it may be attached to. Sessions are a count of how many times the app was used. If an app is launched twice within fifteen seconds it is considered one session.
New vs Returning
This report presents usage as a proportion of new versus returning users and sessions in the given time period.
Suggested Uses
This tool can be your first indication of whether an app is attracting new users and keeping existing users. This report goes well with the Engagement report for user loyalty.
Notes and Common Questions
“Why are my total number of users different from the total number of users listed in Users & Sessions and in the Dashboard?” – Part of this is from how a “New User” is defined. Users, designated by unique device ID (which is anonymous) are only new once- the very first time they use the app on that device. Only the first session ever started by a user is new. Additionally, a user can be both new and returning in the same time period. Therefore, even though one new user and one returning user may be listed in a time period, it is not always the case that it will be two separate users. The “Unique Users” metric box shows how many total unique users were seen in the time period.
Daypart
The Daypart report displays the distribution of your app usage by hour throughout a day. Below the chart Localytics also shows the highest and lowest traffic times of the day.
Suggested Uses
Evaluating hourly usage trends is an important part of maintaining your app. This may affect what advertising you cater to or when to role out updates or perform system work. It can help you understanding the peak hours of your server needs or to simply better understand the habits of your user base.
Notes and Common Questions
All times are recorded in the set Timezone. The default is UTC, where if a person in London uses the app at their noon, that will contribute to the number of users who show up in the 12:00 bucket. If a user in Boston uses the app at their own noon that will contribute to the 5pm bucket on this chart.
Device
The Device report allows shows which devices are most popular with your app with splits helping to understand how they vary by country or carrier.
Suggested Uses
This data may give valuable insight into the most common customer experience. This is especially important if the app is dependent on specific hardware characteristics such as a keyboard or front-facing camera. Understanding which phones you need to maintain will help ensure a positive user experience that increases engagement and loyalty.
Carrier
The Carrier report is a breakdown of which carriers are most frequently used.
Suggested Uses
Carriers can affect how users use their devices in different ways. Certain carriers introduce data caps that may make a heavy data-usage app undesirable or provider slower service.
Notes and Common Questions
Wired service providers will also be displayed for devices which upload while connected via Wifi.
Country
This chart is a breakdown of the users and sessions in each country.
Suggested Uses
If your app is becoming very popular in other countries you may wish to tailor certain translations or culturally-specific references to better fit with the usage expectations in that country. This may also impact marketing and feature development decisions.
OS Version
The OS Version report allows you to view which OS versions are most popular with your app and how they vary by hardware and region.
Suggested Uses
Like the device charts this chart helps understand the customer experience. This is also helpful when deciding what level of support to provide every operating system.
App Version
This report allows you to see what versions of your app are being used.
Suggested Uses
This report helps you figure out which versions of your app to support and how quickly updates are being downloaded.
Notes and Common Questions
“How is this different from the ‘App Version’ option in OS version?” -This report gives data in a time-series proportional format that makes it easy to see how quickly updates are adopted.
Advanced
The Advanced reports allows premium and enterprise users to mix-and-match the previous usage breakdowns in order to create more specific custom reports for sessions and users.
Suggested Uses
As much as Localytics tries to anticipate which reports are most important, each app is unique and may require other views and insights. The advanced view provides access to all the tools available to create your own report.
