The promise of mobile business intelligence has been with us for a long time: anyone remember Cognos Go! for the Blackberry in 2007? At the time, it was a novelty, or at best, an inconsequential feature to fulfil a niche requirement. Since that time however, you have probably noticed that mobile devices have became smart and ubiquitous. This graph from The Economist (story here) illustrates the trend: tablet usage came out nowhere around 2012, mobile is on the rise and the desktop is in steep decline. Even if these trends are levelling off, this has been a huge shift in the past 5 years. A quick look around any office will give anyone anecdotal evidence of how these trends have played out in the workplace. Business people are bringing their consumer habits to work with them, encouraged even further by the growing popularity of BYOD policies. Show To understand how much of an impact the shift to mobile has had on our behaviour, consider Facebook: it was not always obvious that Facebook would be the dominant global social network. A key turning point was the decision by Mark Zuckerburg circa 2011 to reorganize around a mobile-first strategy. In 2012, VP of Product Chris Cox was quoted, “no one can present a new product concept without a mobile mock-up”. Zuckerburg and his executive team were quick to recognize the trend illustrated in the above graph. They had the foresight to see how important a mobile interface was going to be in maintaining high user engagement across the globe. Many other consumer tech companies also embraced “mobile first” strategies but the Facebook story is significant for three reasons:
The Facebook desktop browser web app has everything: the news feed, messaging, photo tagging, groups, etc. Instead of creating a mini version of the desktop Facebook app with a comprehensive set of features, they crafted user experiences around a limited feature set, specifically designed for smartphones. Facebook Messenger, Instagram and Paper are all separate from the core Facebook mobile app. The theory is that a single app cannot be all things to all people on a mobile device, where screen real estate is limited and user interaction occurs in short bursts. A similar two step shift in thinking needs to happen in order for business intelligence and analytics to become pervasive in an organization: one, make the mobile BI user experience a project priority, and two, not packing everything into a miniature web portal. The mobile interface needs to be intuitive and engaging enough that users turn to it instinctively. A report or data visualization that doesn’t render correctly on the smartphone will be dismissed as broken, not as something to be revisited later when I get back to my desk. There are many considerations when making mobile a key component of a larger BI project:
All the major BI vendors have mobile options but the feature set varies. Many claim to have a write-once, render-anywhere development environment but the results are mixed at best. Developing for mobile requires thinking differently about the layout and user interface, as the number of pixels available vary greatly from one device to another. Care must be taken to not produce a user interface than only someone with perfect eyesight and tiny fingers would love. The report or dashboard has to be reduced to the essentials that will influence the decisions and actions at hand, in the context of where the user is located at that moment. Mobile, by definition, means that the user could be anywhere, in a customer boardroom, on the shop floor, or in an airport lounge waiting for a flight. The organization that prioritizes mobile users on new BI projects will see adoption rates soar. However, there is no magic mobile sauce that can be applied to an existing BI solution. We interact differently with our smartphones, the expectations are different, and herein lies the opportunity for delivering real value: a personalized experience with an intuitive user interface, delivering context sensitive information at the right moment. As the Facebook example implies, it is not just enough to have a functional mobile experience, but an experience designed for mobile. What are the challenges of mobile analytics?The Challenges of Mobile Analytics
Many devices do not allow for cookies to track actions or do not use Javascript which can also help with website data tracking. Another challenge to ensuring the usefulness of mobile analytics is correctly segmenting users based on their mobile behavior.
Which popular type of mobile analytics determines how users interact with an app?In-app analytics is essentially “in-session” analytics – what users are actually doing inside the app and how they are interacting with the app.
What is mobile data analytics?Mobile analytics involves measuring and analysing data generated by mobile platforms and properties, such as mobile sites and mobile applications. AT Internet's analytics solution lets you track, measure and understand how your mobile users are interacting with your mobile sites and mobile apps.
Does amplitude have a mobile app?Using Amplitude is easy: simply launch the app, point your device in the direction of the sound you want to amplify, and starting hearing the world in a new way through your headphones.
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