The absence of a direct 2 way communication between the user and developer has in most cases established user analytic's as a prime mode of understanding user behavior. As the app development industry continues to feel the pressures of the competitive environment, user analytic's services become increasingly significant.

Let us take a quick look into the three major types of analytic's tools commonly used by app developers.

Google Analytics:

Google Mobile App Analytics

One of the most widely used analytics tools, Google Analytics is considered to be the most powerful and robust of its kind. Starting off with web analytics, it gradually extended its support to mobile apps -
Google Mobile App Analytics.

Google Mobile App Analytics is ahead of others when it comes to in-depth analysis of e-commerce and revenue. It can help you track your transaction data I.e in-app payment and recognize areas that drive the maximum sales.

Other than recording user behavior data, Mobile App Analytics has an advanced sense of user demographics, giving it an edge over the rest. Offering its own set of categories, the advanced segment also allows developers to benefit more out of it by using their own custom segments, thereby, letting them customize reports related to their business area.

Although it supports both Android and iOS platforms, there is more Android related information than iOS.

Pros

Has an excellent e-commerce reporting ability.
Has an acute sense of user demographics.
Integration with Google Play for conversion tracking.
Comes as a free service

Cons

Lacks the retention analysis ability of Mixpanel.
Does not offer an easy way for mobile a/b testing.
Only for Android and iOS

Flurry

An exclusive analytics tool built for mobile apps, Flurry Analytics is another commonly used alternative for tracking mobile conversions. Flurry Analytics supports for almost every major mobile platforms like iOS, Android, Windows Phone, Blackberry and Java ME.

Although Flurry may tend to appear a little complex than Google mobile app analytics, the fact that its complex structure leads to deeper data access has made it a popular alternative to many others.

For every app you monitor here, you can either use the Flurry Classic dashboard or build up to ten custom dashboards. The data accumulated through dashboard functions is more detailed, for instance, it gives a better vision of the traffic acquisition scenario across various marketing channels like mobile ad networks, mobile web and email campaigns.

Apart from monitoring the 'user types' and user behavior based upon the apps used, Flurry Analytics, it will also track the devices types, operating systems, etc.

Pros

Not just restricted to iOS and Android.
Free service for mobile apps.
Offers multiple dashboards.

Cons

Does not have retention/cohort analysis ability.
Unlike Google Analytics, it does not identify crashes easily.
Strictly restricted to the mobile apps.

Mixpanel

Mixpanel is another popular analytics tool used to calculate user engagement for both mobile and web. Compared to Google Mobile App Analytics and Flurry Analytics, Mixpanel has the easiest user interface.

Mixpanel's SDK has segmentation tools that are capable of analyzing vital and complex questions. It enables you to ask more of your data, for eg. how your app's users invite friends, which Ad words campaign is giving you the highest number of paying users, etc. Mixpanel's funnel analysis can track where the user drops out during each event.

Mixpanel has a unique retention or cohort analysis ability that gives it an edge over the rest. Through this you will be able to track when and how often your customers return and engage with an app.

Its targeting system can also group a client's users into similar profiles and display their activity feed.

The only disadvantage this tool has is its limitation of 25,000 data interactions for the free service, thereby, requiring users to purchase the Premium service for greater visibility.

Pros

-The data segmentation can answer complicated questions.
- Can track the retention in user engagement.
-More focused towards measuring user engagement.
- Caters to both the mediums of mobile and web.

Cons

-Paid service. It is priced monthly based on how many data points and profiles have been used.