The Usage report provides a summary of Users or Sessions observed over a specified time period. It allows you to quickly see who is using your app and to monitor key trends.
Check out the video below for a quick overview of the Usage Report.
Filtering Data
As with most Analytics reports in Localytics, you can filter your report by Date and by different Dimensions and Profiles. For more information on this practice, check out our section of Filtering in the analytics report article.
Usage Stats
At the top of the Usage report, you'll see some high-level metrics. Here's how each of those are defined in Localytics:
| Metric | Description |
|---|---|
| Sessions | number of times the app was opens |
| Avg Sessions Length | average time spent in app across all sessions |
| Unique Users | how many users were unique |
| Sessions per User | number of times the app was opened per unique users |
| New Users | percent of total users that are first time users |
You can also hover over any of these metrics within the dashboard for a quick explanation at any time.
Like most parts of the analytics report, you can save this data to a Custom Dashboard. Click here for more.
Analyzing the Usage Report
Below the top-level stats, you'll see a chart of all of your recent usage. You can view this data with a few different metrics. Here's a quick breakdown:
| Metric | Description |
|---|---|
| Sessions | Number of sessions |
| Users | Number of users who had a session |
| Sessions per User | Number of sessions divided by the number of active users |
You can also add Splits to the data to compare the report across different metrics. Click here for more about Splits.
You can use the Usage report for a number of different things. For example:
- Keep a pulse on your app's active user base and growth metrics. You can use the Export feature to add your current view to a Custom Dashboard, download a CSV or PDF file, or send daily, weekly, or monthly emails.
- Split by New vs. Returning, by Push-Enabled, or by Acquisition Source to quickly gain insights on the makeup of your user base.
- Set the metric to Sessions per User and see if active users are having more or fewer sessions over time.
A Note About Splits
If you split to your Usage data, be aware that a single user can properly be counted in multiple subsets of the data.
Here's a "New vs Returning User" example:
Andy opens your app for the first time on Tuesday, at this time he's a New User. Later that day he opens it again, now he's a Returning User. On Tuesday (and only Tuesday), Andy will be counted once as a New User and once as a Returning User when splitting by "New vs. Returning."
This is an example of a general analytics challenge called the "Hotel Problem." Just keep this in mind while you’re working with splits.