I'am creating a new feature for my iOS app. After I publish the app I wants to show the new feature only for 50% of the users, so I can do some testing which version makes more orders. I have no idea how to do it without using some third parties like Optimizely.
Also is it possible to do this using Google Tag Manager(GTM).
So can someone please help me to figure this out.
Thank you very much for your time.:)
It’s hard to do it on your own, though not impossible of course: Optimizelys of the world are just programs. You’ll need to solve these problems:
Targeting: Some algorithm that will assign user session to either control or (one of) treatment(s). This has to be random, of course, or you may as well stop there.
Routing: Send sessios to the targeted experience.
Logging: You’ll need to intelligently log events from sessions as they traverse their targeted experience. These may be many, so be careful not to add latency to your app path. Your statistical analysis will be based on these.
Experience stability: how do you ensure (if you do) that a returning user sees the same experience he’s already seen.
Note as well, that Optimizely will only help you if all your changes are on the device and not on the server. If you need to instrument server changes as well, you’ll have to look into Sitespect or Variant.
I finally figured out how to do the A/B testing with 'Google Tag Manager'(GTM).
In GTM you can create a variable called 'Google Analytics Content Experiment'. With this variable you can select how many percentage of users going to see each Variation(your experiments). You can create up to 10 variations for single experiment.
GTM is so cool and powerful. GTM contains so many features that could save lot of time and I totally recommend it for anyone who is going to do A/B testing.
I'm currently looking for a way to track basic user data for mobile iOS application:
how many times the app was launched
what was the average/by session time spent in total while using app
what was the average/by session time spent on particular screen
Additionally, I'd like the solution to:
display a heatmaps or click/tap/maps (clickstreams), to show how users tried to interact with the interface
generate visit graphs (user started from this screen, then went to this screen, etc.)
The most important requirement is that this is for internal application testing (nothing malicious), and we want to categorize data by user logged in (so that we can gather data per user, not some general average).
Can anyone recommend a suitable tool? Price or paid, doesn't matter. Is Google Analytics up for the job, or do we need something else?
Youve got several options to track the user behavior in the app. You can use frameworks like :
Flurry (http://www.flurry.com/)
Mixpanel (http://mixpanel.com/)
Localytics (http://www.localytics.com/)
Google analytics
Im pretty sure there are more. Flurry is free (for now but you have some special paid features) and it´s broadly used. It´s the framework I use the most for my apps in these moments but it will depend of the client and the information you want to track. You can track events, events with information, see the stats of use, how the user has used the application, find dead holes in your app and broadly speaking, have a general idea about how your application has been used. The other frameworks are not free and you have to pay for the services but you can always use a trial version to see if this is what you want or not. Ive used localytics and its nice.
Ive tried all of them, and there are pros and cons, but to get a general idea about your application, everyone serves. Regarding heatmaps, Im not sure about that, I mean if some of the frameworks offer a solution like that, but you can always build your reports with the provided information (I know it´s not a straightforward thing or a 5 minutes thing).
Take a look, compare and decide which one can fit the best for you.
Well these days app analysis is very important and are of great help. There are large number of analytics tools available. Some of them are free some of them are paid.
below are some of them
Flurry
Google Analytics
Heatmaps
These are few which are used most. For most list visit this link
Hope this will help you. happy coding :)
Is there any way to track which visitors end up installing our iphone apps?
Basically conversion tracking for apps?
(I know linkshare is a possibility - but they're US only. I need it to be worldwide because 50%+ of our installs are from outside the US)
I bet a bunch of other developers are wondering too. Thanks for listening.
We just went through the same thing and we still haven't found a good solution. The most promising company we talked to was http://www.appsflyer.com/. We considered linkshare.com also but the solution is hacky to act as your own affiliate and they don't track free app conversions.
Take a look at Flurry.com they have a great tracking product. You can keep track of events within the app (like what buttons were clicked, which ViewControllers were shown... etc).
google mobile analytics
flurry analytics
both are useful products in usage tracking. flurry supports many platforms and google analytics has great interface.
http://www.positionapp.com/
used to be pretty good last time I used it.
Recently they deliver much slower responses, check them out anyways.
Flurry also has conversions to install tracking (outside the app).
Appsflyer and Mobileapptracking are also good solutions.
I have used distimo and I like their tracking system. You can also create campaigns with unique url and they will tell you, how many users did that particular campaign bring in.
I have a Rails 3 app that I'm looking to create in-house analytics for. The items I need to track are impressions (and unique impressions), clicks that come from those impressions, and conversions that come from those clicks. And these are all user-specific so each user can see how many impressions, clicks, and conversions they've received.
What is the best way to go about this? Should I create a separate rails app and call it with pixels? Or should I include all the analytics code in the same app?
Also, are there any analytics platforms already out there that I can customize to meet my needs?
Thanks!
Tim
Before you start re-inventing the wheel, Google Analytics provide a developer API (via OAuth, among other choices) that may provide you with the ability to do what you need (provide each user with a view of their own data).
http://code.google.com/apis/analytics/docs/gdata/home.html
Building your own, while it may seem like an initially basic thing to do, could have serious performance implications further down the line, and Google provide a very detailed view of the the data.
If you really want to write your own, I would strongly urge you not to hit the database for each request you want to track. Keep the data in Redis, or one of the alternatives and periodically persist it to the database via a background task.
If, however, you don't want to put your data into the clutches of our Google Overlord :) then you might indeed consider rolling your own. I have twice before - and I'm doing it again right now: better this time, of course!
If your traffic is not very high and you're running on any decent server platform then adding a tracking system is not going to tax your Rails app noticeably (I know that depends on what 'decent server platform' means but this stuff is pretty cheap these days). Writing to a database is typically very fast - you'd have to have shedloads of clicks to not want to do this straightaway. You can probably bypass most if not all of your before_filters and so on to get a lightning response. One app that runs 2.3.9 uses Metal to do this, for example.
In my new tracking system I have an STI table that goes with models derived from an Activity model; in here you can record both impressions and clicks. Impressions are recorded as the page is built and clicks are recorded using AJAX.
I'm not going to bother with fancy graphs and so on - I'm happy with raw numbers - but these could be added, of course.
At the moment my system is just in the usual app/ folder but I'll probably move it to an engine so I can re-use it more easily.
Hope that helps!
BTW I use Google Analytics as well for a range of sites and it's OK - I just like to do this bit myself.
Depending on how you are going to associate Google Analytics data with a specific user then you might need to double-check the privacy implications. Google doesn't allow their data to be associated with any identifying information about the users being tracked.
If there is a problem then you could try out Piwik as it's open source and you can do what you like with it. It's written in PHP, not Ruby so that might be an issue. As #d11wtq mentions, tracking systems can have performance issues if not built in the right way so you'd be better off starting from something that's already proven to work if possible.
I've worked with folks who are chatting online with their peers, constantly batting around ideas. I've also worked with folks who adamantly refuse and think it's a waste of time.
Are online live chatting forums of particular use to you? Why or why not?
Internal to your company, or external and world-wide?
Does your employer encourage or discourage their use?
Update: I see some people are voting this question down, yet so far all the answers have been positive, if with some reservations. If someone has a strong negative opinion (I hate online chatting and think it should be banned etc.) I'd really like to hear why.
If you have telecommuters, not chatting online will be the death of you.
Without chat, there is no interaction.
Without interaction, there is no problem solving.
Without problem solving, the code will suck.
The chatting part does waste a lot of time and I often wish I could just pull them out and just WriteSomeCode, but yeah, trade off scenario.
There's an additional benefit to using online converstations, in that it doesn't /have/ to be an interruption. If your working on something you can ignore them till you're done and they just have to deal with it. In real life you have a talking face to try get rid of. ( And the cool thing here is you can ignore them and they still get heard, have your cake and eat it too! )
I've used IM at the last three places I have worked. Currently the building that I am in is so large that it takes a couple of minutes just to walk to my managers office. Then there are the days that we work from home (1-2 days a week). Email for some purposes just doesn't cut it and the phone can be too disruptive and all encompassing for some tasks.
When I was doing consulting work I would give my IM contact information to my clients. About 25% of them would use it to contact me and I am still in contact with them to this day which opens up the possibility for future work! The clients that used IM felt that they had a better connection with me because they could see when I was online and available to talk.
I'm still in contact with old work colleagues through IM and this allows me quick access to their knowledge base as well.
My suggestions for using IM in the workplace are:
Use a client that supports multiple
protocols (MSN, Yahoo, AIM, Jaber,
etc)
Setup and use personal accounts for
each of the networks you are on
(i.e. don't use accounts tied
directly to your work)
Make sure your IM client records a
history of all of your conversations
Always be available but minimize
personal conversations
Provide your IM information freely
to friends, clients, and colleagues
Add appropriate groups (i.e.
friends, family, work) and filters
to reduce undesired interruptions
while still being available if
needed
Don't feel that you have to
respond to every chat request. Let
it set until you are ready to deal
with it
One other trick I use is to use text to speech software so that when a chat message comes in it is read allowed. When I am at home (or preoccupied away from the computer in the office) the message is automatically read allowed (I liken it to a ringing phone call) in order to get my attention. But, I don't have to stop what I am doing in order to know what the message is.
I used to. I found it a great resource to chat with people I used to work with. In our business I find that we tend to network alot and using that collective knowledge is awesome. Of course my company turned that off so they lose.
I know that a certain large Bank hasd an internal AIM setup so that they can IM each other. That was refreshing and dang useful. They also allowed some external access. Talk about getting the value of IM!
Yes, absolutly, I work with most of my employees, and employers via MSN/Yahoo/Skype/.../ it makes the work easier, because I can hire the better people without having to pay them to move to me.
When I need to collaborate with someone in another office, it's great ... when I'm deep in thought, I have to turn it off (just like e-mail).
It depends on the group dynamics and personal preferences. Personally, I have enjoyed my work groups that use chat to feed on each other's ideas and troubleshoot without as much walking around. If you are geography dispersed, its almost a necessity.
I find online chatting invaluable in many cases, but not normally instant messaging. Since I use many open source technologies at work, I tend to join the respective IRC channels, both to ask questions there, and sometimes to help others if I know the answer offhand.
It may depend on the work environment. As a self employed consultant, I'm always in chat - it's my primary communication to the world, along with emails for more official type communications.
Being able to converse with others creates synergy, but it also can cause distractions. A good manager can tell the difference.
At my last workplace, we used IM extensively for collaboration. Not so much at my present workplace. Infact, i have not once had to do that here in 6 months. But i do look around on the net for answers and sometimes i have posted queries on forums too. IM is a nice tool to have, but its also a time sink. Also, dont underestimate the lost focus. Its particularly hard to concentrate on getting that algo implemented right if someones constantly pinging you about how to establish a connection to an oracle database.
I work at home 2 to 3 days a week. I mainly use MSN to stay in touch with my coworkers. It's pretty useful to ask short questions quickly. If we find ourselves typing whole conversations we often agree to continue the conversation by phone.
I use IM to communicate with colleagues in other offices when it replaces a face-to-face chat. I turn off notifications in all my comms apps at work though, because they distract me otherwise.
I telecommute from California to Colorado and never have used chat. We do have daily SCRUM meetings and constant email threads. When I first started working remotely, we did try it but it seemed intrusive to several co-workers so we stopped using it, that was 4 years ago, I probably should give it another try.
It seems I have nothing to really add to what hasn't already been written.
I use it extensively, especially when remote people are involved in development. Without it your real time communication dies. It is the only viable method of communication that isn't as interruptive as phone calls or something of that nature. As we all know we can't just sit on the phone the whole time when developing, so chat is the next best thing for real time communication.
I personally don't like it. I think email allows you to take a little time to compose your thoughts.
IM seems to work for other people though. Whatever works!
Our entire business unit telecommutes. Only us first years are required to be in the office, so our enterprise IM solution is vital to staying in touch and on task. Its how my manager lets me know what project I'm working on, if I need to bill my time to another customer, or if I need to bounce ideas around. So yes, I do. Is it open for anyone to get on? No, not at all. You have to be on the intranet to access the system, and it is closed to any and all outsiders.
Out of the four professional jobs I've had over the past 8 years or so, I've only worked at one place that did not allow any type of instant messaging. All the other companies had at least some type of setup for intranet instant messaging.
I think that IM is almost necessary in today's business environment. I don't IM very much, but it's nice to have it available. Especially when I just need a quick answer to a question - like "Where is this file located?" and then boom I have a link to the file pop up right in front of my face.
I use IRC at work - it's almost a requirement for all of us who interact remotely (workign from home, different offices, and client sites) to be able to get help on problems fast.
Yup. It's actually required here. But only MSN though. We use it for development/task related communications with the team... which also help minimize noise since this company I'm currently working in is a big one where 90% are developers so utter silence is a MUST...
But if I've got questions to other members of the team, I prefer asking it personally though because I find it hard to explain some things when just chatting...
I've had to use it in my last job as my co-workers lived in the UK and my boss worked in California whereas I'm in Atlanta. It was used for quick questions and when it was "whenever you get the chance to respond" type thing. I could be on the phone and an IM pop-up and they would get an automatic message telling them that. Longer discussions were done with web cam and telephone and the ability to share a desktop to view code, data, etc.
My company won't allow it. Even if we run a IM server in house (so we aren't wasting time chatting with friends). I've tried to convince them, I find it really useful for knowing if someone is at their desk or not. The phones don't do that so well since if you don't pick up it redirects to a secretary that will get pissed if you are checking if someone's back every 5 min...
So I run a IM client on my phone so I can at least chat with a few people through out the day. (Less interrupting to others if my wife IMs me vs calls me and also easier to ignore if I need to).