Last week I spoke at 500startup’s #500distro event on best practices for mobile analytics. It was an interesting event with lots of great talks – 500Startups did a fantastic job of arranging an in-depth look into the challenges of acquiring and retaining users. I heard the word retention over and over again – this is a huge change from the way people were speaking about analytics a couple of years ago. It was refreshing to witness the shift from “traffic” to metrics that really matter.

My talk focused on the nuances between web and mobile analytics. These differences stem largely from the fact that mobile offers much less real estate, but benefits from higher user acceptance of authentication. This means that:

1. The signup funnel is worth obsessing over

2. A/B testing is much harder, but so very important with that limited real estate

3. Retention has a steeper drop-off, but it’s easier to measure – and push notifications become an invaluable tool for re-engagement

Here is the full deck:

http://www.slideshare.net/500startups/500distro-measuring-on-mobile-making-the-most-of-the-signup-funnel-other-analytic-hot-spots

And the video is here:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6W7gbFQwzRY&list=UUsFOY-wGT9IOC4Okrq6UBfA