Overview
The Channel Analytics Tool by AppFollow consolidates data about Downloads, Page Views, and Impressions from the App Store and Google Play in one dashboard.
The tool provides calculated conversion rates and historical data, so it is possible to track download fluctuations and improve your ASO strategy.
An ASO Report connection is required to use this page. Here's how to set it up for the App Store and Google Play.
Analyze the Data
You can analyze the following app data:
- Time period: how your app performed over time.
- Location: in a particular country or worldwide.
- App metrics: Impressions, Page Views, and Downloads.
- Traffic channels: Search, Browse, App Referrer, Web Referrer.
Time Period and Location
To ensure the accuracy of download data in our Channel Analytics & Organic Dashboard, we re-collect data for the following time periods based on the store: Google Play: 12 days; App Store: 18 days. This is due to updates from the respective stores that may affect data for previous days. As a result, you may see changes in the download figures for these timeframes as store data is updated.
The graph shows the app's performance during a chosen time period. By default, you’ll see the data for the last 30 days. Using the country filter, you can investigate your app's performance worldwide or focus on particular countries to measure the optimization results.
Tracking app performance over time and breaking down the data by country helps you understand what ASO decisions had the most impact on your conversion rate.
The conversion rate on the Channel Analytics page displays the average conversion rate over the entire period.
App Metrics and Traffic Channels
You can choose one metric to track at a time: Downloads, Impressions, or Page Views. By default, you will see the metric’s performance for all channels, but you can choose to analyze only one of them.
Reviewing app metrics is essential for tracking app conversion rates. If your app has significantly more impressions than downloads, it may indicate that the app page is not convincing new users to download the app, and you should consider updating your ASO.
You can track the app performance for all traffic channels or choose one of them to take a closer look.
Exploring each of the traffic channels separately helps you find what to improve in your ASO strategy.
The Apple Search Ads channel shows only Advanced campaigns. If you're running a Basic campaign, this data is not reflected in AppFollow. To see your Search Ads data in AppFollow, switch to an Advanced campaign.
Channel descriptions
Google Play
- All traffic sources: The total number of users who installed your app from your store listing, who didn’t have it installed on any other devices at the time.
- Google Play Search: The number of users who visited your store listing after performing a search on Google Play and then installed your app. Google Ads installs included in this channel.
- Google Play Explore: The number of users who visited your store listing from Google Play pages, except search, and then installed your app. Google Ads installs included in this channel.
- Third-party referrals: The number of users who visited your store listing from outside Google Play and then installed your app, who didn’t have it installed on any other devices at the time.
App Store
- All channels: All App Store channels on one chart
- Search Ads: Sponsored ads that appear at the top of the search results page in the App Store. Only New Downloads are included here, as Re-Downloads are not counted in Apple Analytics.
- App store search: Customers viewed apps for the first time from Search on the App Store
- App store browse: Customers viewed apps for the first time while browsing (in the Featured, Categories, or Top Charts sections)
- App referrer: Customers tapped a link in an app that brought them to an app product page
- Web referrer: Customers tapped a link from a website that brought them to an app product page
Table Breakdown
Scroll down to the table breakdown section to track how the app metrics and conversion rate changed daily during the chosen time period. You can also track Impressions, Downloads, and Page Views, and evaluate the daily results. The conversion rate is also calculated here.
Export the Data
You can export the data in Excel or CSV formats. Alternatively, use the AppFollow API to push this data to any service you like.
You can learn more about the ASO Reports in this article.
Data Sources
- For iOS apps, the source is the App Analytics section from App Store Connect.
- For Android apps, the source of data in Channels Analysis is the Store performance → Store analysis section in Google Play Console with the "App install state: New users" filter¹. In AppFollow, re-downloads are not counted.
¹Google calls this "User acquisition", this means that if a user downloads an app on his phone and on his tablet, using the same Google account, it will count as 1 user acquisition but 2 installs. That is why an app can have more installs than users. In the Console, it's possible to filter by "user state" and see if the user is a new user or a returning user. This is not possible in AppFollow. The information inside Channel Analytics shows new users only.
Troubleshooting
If you're seeing any data discrepancies between data from the console and AppFollow, first of all, make sure that the corresponding filters are applied correctly in both reports (country and time period).
Google Play Console Specifics
You may notice a discrepancy in data from the Google Play Console reports. The Google Acquisition Reports page provides reports on a daily, weekly, and monthly basis. The following situations in Google Play Console are quite common:
- The total amount of views and downloads for a selected time period may not be equal to the sum of metrics by each day of the period. For example, the app has 700 downloads per week, but if you sum downloads for every day of this week, the result can be 650.
- When browsing daily reports, you can see that some of the days have 0 downloads. This can happen quite often in non-popular regions and countries. That is why the exported reports might have no data for some dates in the daily reports. We recommend using weekly reports.