Welcome to Applause! Your success is our priority and we want to make sure Applause Analytics (ALX) provides you with actionable insight into what your users are thinking and saying about their experiences with your app. To that end, we ve put together this getting started guide to walk you through the product, introduce you to key features and functions, and answer any initial questions you may have. If you run into any problems or have a question, check out help.applause.com or Contact Us! Table of Contents: 1. Data, Data, and More Data 2. Analytics Overview 3. Dashboard 4. User Preferences 5. Navigating, Filtering, Exporting 6. Application: Applause Stats 7. Application: Reviews 8. Application: Clusters 9. Application: International 10. Competition: Benchmarking 11. Competition: Compare 12. Apps Economy 13. Applause Analytics Definitions 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 13 14 16
Data, Data, and More Data Applause Analytics crawls a constantly growing number of apps and user reviews across the ios and Android app stores. ALX consumes this mountain of data and turns it into easy-to-digest chunks, providing you with actionable insight. Each function is crafted so you can keep your finger on the pulse of your users and the competition without spending hours upon hours manually sifting through reviews. Use ALX to uncover user sentiments that would have otherwise been lost amidst the noise. What s important to your users? Which features of your app do they care about? What s frustrating them the most? How is your competition faring - what are they doing right/wrong? Drive your product roadmap decisions with hard data and stay ahead of the curve by seeing where the apps economy as a whole is trending. If you need to incorporate Analytics data into other applications, our REST APIs provide programmatic access to all Applause Analytics data. We also analyze other voice of the customer feedback channels using the same technology that powers Applause Analytics. Please talk to us if you would like to learn more. Remember, there are no limits with Analytics - search as many apps as often as you want.
Analytics Overview Applause Analytics is organized as follows: Main Page: Search for an app or select one from your Custom Groups. Dashboard: A quick snapshot of the selected app, showing Applause Score, Star Rating, Activity Feed, Top Issues, and more. Application: Dive deeper into Applause Stats, Reviews, Clusters, and International data. Competition: See how apps compare to the competition with Benchmarking and Comparison charts Apps Economy: A broad look at what s trending across all categories in the App Stores. Analyst Corner: Create reports and export data to share with your stakeholders. Settings: Personalize your Analytics experience with country preference, Custom App Groups, and Custom Attributes. Note: Across Analytics you will see information icons: Mouse-over the icon for details on what you are looking at. Clicking the icon will show more information and a video tutorial of the function. Choose an App Begin by going to 360.applause.com, logging in, and choosing ALX. Search for your app (or any other app you are interested in), and select it from the list. Note that you ll be selecting either the ios or Android version of the app (indicated by the icon). To add an app to a group for future selection, click the + icon at the top of the dashboard. If the app is already part of a group, you will see a corresponding number. Click the number to manage which groups it is a part of. Alternatively, you can click your name in the lower left side, choose settings, and then create a custom group (or add the app to an existing group).
Analytics Dashboard After selecting an app, you will be brought to the dashboard. This page provides a high-level view of what s going on with the selected app. The Applause Score ranges from 0 to 100 and indicates how well the app is perceived by users who ve left reviews, and is based on input from the 10 Applause Attributes (covered below). The average Applause Score across all apps is 67. Visit the dashboard daily to see the critical issues affecting your app and the competition. Activity Feed The Activity Feed provides daily updates related to the selected app and its competitors. Activities such as new version releases, changes in star rating, and changes in average number of daily reviews will appear here. Top Issues A quick view of the top review clusters (grouping of similar reviews) affecting star rating and Applause Score. Click on a review to see the associated clustered reviews. Applause Attributes The 10 attributes that are affecting the selected app s Applause Score. Attribute scores are determined by keywords and phrases within user reviews combined with their associated star rating. Attributes are ordered by their deviation from the mean category score (or by importance within the category). The solid circle represents the selected app, and the hollow circle represents the category mean score.
User Preferences While logged in, click your user name on the lower left hand side to access your preferences. Light theme changes the Analytics background colors from dark to light. Settings allows you to modify Country Preference, Custom Groups, and Custom Attributes. Groups: Define custom sets of apps (up to 15 per group). Groups organize apps for a couple of purposes: Easily select the apps from the product switcher without searching See the other apps within the group as related apps and in the activity feed on the dashboard Ability to set the chart on Competition Benchmarking to a group Associate custom attributes to the group Alerts: Once an app is part of a group, you can setup email alerts by clicking edit Custom Attributes allow you to identify the review keywords that are important to you. For instance, if you added a new feature and want to see reviews that mention that feature, add it as a keyword. After 24 hours, the Custom Attribute will be available on the Applause Stats and Reviews pages. Country Preference: Set your default country for app store searches.
Navigating, Filtering, and Exporting Navigate to the different pages of Analytics with the left-hand navigation: Welcome to Analytics Throughout Analytics, you will have the opportunity to filter the results of each page. Filters reside on the right-hand side of the page and will instantly adjust the page once you make changes. Within most charts, you ll see an option to export to PNG. Click the export button and then rightclick on the image to save.
Application: Applause Stats For each of the 10 Applause Attributes, this page will show you a historical chart of how the attribute has performed since launch, and the top signals (keywords) that are driving the score. Mouse-over the chart to see the score for the highlighted point in time. Click on one of the Attributes in the filter to see the signals. Associated Star Rating indicates the presence of that signal across star ratings, providing you with quick insight into if its being associated with good or bad (or both) reviews. See something of interest or concern? Click the signal name or head to Reviews and dig further with search.
Application: Reviews The review page is where you will dig into areas of interest that you may have discovered on other pages. With a filter that lets you search by keyword or Attribute, its easy to find the data you are looking for. Noticed that your usability score has taken a dive, or the rising presence of a concerning signal? Get all the data you need to make a decision with a quick search. Mouse-over the chart to see the distribution of positive and negative reviews for the highlighted day. The circles indicate a release and you will generally see a spike of reviews at that point. Without filtering, the Review Stream will show you the latest reviews first. Scroll down and use the Prev / Next buttons to navigate through the pages of reviews The filter on this page is a combination and filter. For example, searching for spam while having Security and Privacy selected will only show reviews with the word spam if they were identified as having those attributes. When doing a keyword search, you may want to start broad without any Attributes selected.
Application: Clusters Think of clusters as groups of like-minded people all saying similar things. Clusters group reviews by phrase commonality, recency, and frequency. This is another great area to discover what large groups of users are saying about an app. The top chart identifies the amount of clusters per star rating (1-5). In the cluster stream, you ll see a review from each cluster and details about that cluster, such as average star rating, the date range that it occurs, and the frequent terms. To see all the reviews associated with a cluster, click on the review. Use the filter on this page to show positive and/or negative clusters, and define the amount of days you want to analyze (1-90). You can also export the data to CSV from the filter.
Application: International This page gives you a high-level look at how the selected app is performing across the app store country markets we crawl (in which the app is also available). By checking out ratings, number of reviews, and Applause scores, you can see where the app is a success and identify potential localization problems. Remember that you can look at an app in detail for a particular country store by selecting the country in the app search. Store Star Rating includes ratings that don t have a review associated with them, whereas Review Star Rating is based only on ratings that included a written review. Analytics are based off Review Star Ratings. Click the column headers Applause Score or Number of Reviews to adjust the chart. You can also select which countries you want to see in the chart by clicking the radio buttons to the left of the country names.
Competition: Benchmarking Benchmarking highlights how the selected app compares to related apps (or your custom groups) over a two week period. A red circle means the app has a star rating below 4, a green circle means a star rating of 4 or above. The distance and size of the circle is based on the number of reviews relative to the center app. Open the Applause Related Apps drop-down to change the relationship chart to custom groups. Mouse-over an app icon if you are not sure what it is, and then click on it to adjust the compare charts below. Review Sentiment charts show the volume and percentage of positive/negative reviews over the two week period defined in the filter for both your selected app and competitor.
Reviews by Applause Attributes shows the number of signal hits each day. Mouse-over the chart to see daily results. Moving the mouse horizontally will change the day and moving it vertically will adjust the Applause Attribute. Clicking on the chart will bring you to the Reviews page for the selected app. Comparative Analysis shows how the selected app compares to 4 of the competitor apps, by day, across Star Rating, Applause Score, or Review Count. Adjust the chart from the drop-down and by clicking on the circles within the chart. This will show you the app s path throughout the two weeks and the leader for each day.
Competition: Compare Select up to 4 apps to compare against the selected app. This provides a great visual into how the apps rate across the 10 Applause Attributes. Use this information to see where you excel or fall behind the competition and the category mean. Its also useful for identifying areas of opportunity to separate your app from the competition. Use the filter on the right side to search for the apps you want to compare. You can choose across countries and ios/android stores. Click Show Category Stats to display the average scores of the category (based on your main selected app) on the chart. Once you ve selected apps, you can hide them from the chart by clicking their name. You can also remove them by clicking the trashcan icon that appears to the right of the name when mousing-over the row.
Apps Economy While its important to focus directly on your app and category competitors, paying attention to the overall apps economy can also offer helpful insights. Trends across the Apple/Android marketplaces may not currently be apparent in your category, but the data may provide you with a head start on differentiating your app. Its also a great way to discover how other non-competitive apps are delighting their users. Keep in mind, these trends vary across the app stores, categories, and countries, so make sure to look into each combination that affects your app. Check back often, as the data is constantly changing. Trending Attributes shows which Applause Attributes currently appear most often in reviews - i.e. what things are most important to users. Trending Apps shows which apps are gaining or losing the most in Star Rating, Applause Score, and Review Count during the past week. Typically, apps that appear here recently released a new version - investigate the user response to their changes and plan accordingly. Hover over the app icon to see how the app was trending, positive or negative, and by what amount.
App Store Star Rating highlights the distribution of app store Star Ratings. The highlighted bar indicates where the selected app falls. Release Cadence displays the typical timeframe in which new app versions are released. The highlighted bar indicates where the selected app falls. Review Count shows the total number of apps that have a certain amount of reviews. The highlighted bar indicates where the selected app falls. Applause Score displays the distribution of Applause Score across apps. The highlighted bar indicates where the selected app falls.
Applause Analytics Definitions At its core, Applause Analytics is made up of three main components which drive everything. Signals: A collection of very special keywords and phrases that we ve identified as being key indicators that a reviewer is commenting on a specific element of an app. We call these elements Attributes. Example signals would be words like appealing, freezes, or layout. Each signal is associated with one or more Attribute, and are used to help ALX understand the context of a reviewer s comments and to help generate Applause Scores. Attributes: Attributes are 10 pieces of the app quality puzzle. They are: content, elegance, interoperability, performance, pricing, privacy, satisfaction, security, stability, and usability. Attribute scores offering a measure of how users are responding to each individual Attribute of a mobile app, giving you immediate insight into what s delighting or disappointing your users. Attribute scores are calculated using signal frequency and star ratings. Definitions of each Attribute can be found below. Applause Score: The Applause Score is calculated using Attribute scores. It provides a single, comprehensive metric to measure overall user sentiment. When calculating the Applause score, ALX is smart enough to know that not all apps should be measured the same way. What s more important to a gamer may be very different from what s important to a financial app user. Attribute scores are weighted to take user preferences within each app category into account.
Applause Analytics Definitions Definitions of the 10 Applause Attributes are below. Content: Is the provided content pleasing, applicable and accurately targeted for the app s audience? If there were localization efforts, were those efforts executed correctly? Elegance: Is the design and user experience that the app is providing delighting users or turning them off? Interoperability: Does the app integrate well with external hardware or services like Bluetooth, built in camera or 3rd party functionality? Performance: Does the app load or launch quickly? Is it responsive to user input? Pricing: Do users feel that the app is offering good value for associated costs? Privacy: Are users comfortable with the level of required submitted personal information? Satisfaction: Is the app engaging or fun? Is it meeting, exceeding or falling short of user expectations? Is the app earning and keeping users or losing them? Security: Can users log in securely? Is there perceived risk of security vulnerabilities? Stability: Does the application crash, hang or freeze with standard use? Usability: Are users having an easy time navigating through the app? Can they easily access the full breadth of the app s features?